Topdressing Greens

With temperatures staying moderately cool and grass still growing, the greens speeds have been slightly declining. It is a perfect time to topdress the greens. Our topdressing schedule stays fairly consistent and the weather has been perfect for the addition of sand. We judge the amount of sand we apply by look and feel of rate applied. There isn't a designated calculated rate set previous to topdressing. We know that we want to topdress moderately light so we play with the settings on the topdresser a bit before applying sand to the greens. For this particular day, we used the Turfco SP1530 pull-behind topdresser with kiln dried sand. The door setting was on A.5, spinners were set to full, belt was on the turtle adjustment, and drove in 1st gear high or 3rd gear low. This gave us the right rate at which to apply sand. After the topdressing process was complete, another crew member would use a small Club Car Turf2 Carry-All cart and drag the sand in with a cocoa mat. The cocoa mat that is seen in the photo is very light weight so a bag of seed is used to weigh it down to drag in the sand more efficiently. The greens are then watered for 4-6 minutes depending on the angle of the irrigation head. After a few days of rolling and mowing, these greens will be at the ideal firmness and quickness we are looking for.