The Only Way to Seed

First of all.  I need to apologize about this post on two levels.  1) It’s really late.  I forgot I had these pictures on my camera.  2)  I wasn’t the one who took these pictures.  I forgot to tell my staff member to change the white balance, so these pictures are a little weird.  As in, the world has an odd purple-ish haze to it.

Ok.  Now that we have that out of the way, let’s get started with one of the coolest machines we have come across to date.  This bad boy is called a Terra Spike.

Not that I sound like a broken record (yeah, right), but we’ve been struggling with some adverse weather conditions.  Namely, a drought.  Just before the drought, it was some flooding.  I guess we just can’t be happy with the weather.  In the words of Taylor Swift. . .Like, ever.  Needless to say, it has caused us many sleepless nights trying to get a few of our fairways to get some thick grass that will sustain even through adverse conditions.  Having built the golf course forty years ago, there have been many advances in seed and we keep trying to introduce some of these new cultivores to our fairways and rough areas which have been made to stand up to tough conditions.  The trouble is that we get it established, then it gets hit by the drought and boom.  Knocks it out.  Since we have put down about 20,000 pounds of seed in the last two years, we thought we’d try something new on the few fairways that were left struggling after this year’s drought.

Because of the drought, we have been unable to aerate our fairways for a few years.  They have simply been too dry.  This machine is able to aerate and seed all at the same time.  The best part about this machine is that the seed is planted deep under the surface, so there is a much better seed to soil contact which results in a higher germination rate.

The seed gets placed in a large bin, then it is funneled down into the spikes that are both aerating and seeding at the same time.

This bad boy is a pretty expensive machine.  We decided to hire it done by Commercial Turf and Tractor which is a company that specializes in large pieces of equipment that golf courses use only a few times of year, so it doesn’t make sense to own one.  They have them, then you can rent the machine and a staff member for the day to perform the work.  It’s a win/win.  Mike came out and seeded a little over ten acres of fairways for us.  He went through about 3,000 pounds of seed.  In our main problem spots, he tore it up pretty good, but it wasn’t but a few days later that we were seeing some germination!  Here is Mike, hard at work!

While the seeding was taking place, I got a text from Ron who told me that this was the only way to seed.  I wasn’t around to get to see this machine in action.  As I was glancing through the pictures, his thoughts behind it became perfectly clear.  Here are Ron and my brother, Jason, supervising the seeding process.  Yep.  It’s definitely the only cough, cough way to seed.

Did you get your lawn aerated this fall?  It’s so important for healthy turf!  You’ll have to trust me.  I married a turf jedi.