Fraze mowing realities

How would you describe Fraze mowing?
Sam Green: The practice itself is the surface removal of the organic material on the top of the playing surface along with the weaker varieties of the grass species that you removed. The strongest grass plants are going to still be there in that process. It’s kind of a strongest survives mentality.

What parts of the golf course are ideal for Fraze mowing?
Sam Green: A driving range tee and tee boxes themselves as far as being able to level them out, particularly on par-3 tees. Same reason for the driving range tee. We do some fairway work now where it comes into play with the warm-season grasses. Something that’s now being done is removing the topdressing dams around the edges of a green with the smaller machines.

How much material is removed from the surface during the process?
Sam Green: That depends on the variety of the grass. In the warm-season grasses, there’s obviously more material than when there’s a cool-season grass involved. In the Fraze, if you’re going to separate out the blades and everything else on the rotor, you can actually control the amount of material that you take out during the process. Some people want to do it all at once, which is great. But there are options to where you can go in and remove 50 percent of the material thereby using less seed or get quicker recovery on Bermudagrass in a few days.

What is the typical recovery time? 
Sam Green: Let’s start with Bermudagrasses in the Southeast. On a standard Fraze, it’s somewhere between 14 and 21 days depending on the variety. The success of this process is the strength of the agronomic program surrounding it. With the right agronomic program and with the right variety of grass, you can be 14 days back on it, or if not, you might be 21 to 24 days back on it. If you’re in a cool-season environment, then obviously you’re seeding. But some of the sports field guys have had success in less than 40 days with some of the new varieties.

What type of equipment is needed? 
Sam Green: It depends on the size of the KORO by Imants Fieldtopmaker being used. But most people in the golf market use either a 1.2-meter or a 1.5-meter machine. That’s a 55- to 60-horsepower tractor or less. You need to have some sort of dump trailer and you probably want two or three of those that are running beside to speed the process up. That’s really it, and a tractor blower when you are done and start the grow-in program. And, for us, the Campey Imants piece is the Universe rotor with either the 10-millimeter teeth or the 5-millemeter teeth depending on the aggressiveness and what you want to do. Fraze mowing is the 10-millimeter teeth and being able to get after it, and in the ‘finesse’ mowing piece of the puzzle, we’re using the 5-millemeter blade and not going after it as aggressively. We have been doing some work with NC State the last two years and it was presented at the field day this year – the Fraze mowing and ‘finesse’ mowing piece of the puzzle and that’s with the Universe rotor on the KORO by Imants Fieldtopmaker.