A week of growing in the West greens with some nice warm weather assisting.  Unfortunately we only scored 3mm of rain from the two storms on Wednesday and Thursday when I was really looking for 50mm plus.  The courses are both drying out and a couple of irrigation issues have meant less than adequate water has been applied to the courses.

The irrigation concerns started on Saturday when an 80mm T piece started leaking on 1R fairway and required immediate action.  Two of the crew responded and the repair was done and the water turned back on but an issue started with the filter which was only allowing 60% irrigation capacity.  A couple of quite stressful days followed particularly on  Tuesday when the water was down for 3½ hours with two four day old greens needing it most.  An electrical fault took one of the pumps out as well on Tuesday night which further reduced capacity.  But we made the end of the week and the main playing areas have survived reasonably well.

The River greens renovation was a great success with the greens being heavily de-thatched then core aerated and the cores rubbed back in to the surface.  The remaining material was then blown off the surface, fertiliser and amendments applied and then top dressed with an amended sand.  Sounds easy?  It's two full hard days for the crew which followed hot on the heels of the eight week West greens project so no wonder there are some tired looks on their faces.  I think they are looking forward to being able to sit on a mower again!!

An 80mm repair on Saturday.

Rubbing the cores back in on 1R green.

  I am continually on the West greens monitoring them and often bemoaning the fact that they are not growing in fast enough.  I got a couple of photos of the same spot on 14W this week taken on Monday afternoon then again on Thursday morning to show the great progress. 

14W Monday pm.

14W Thursday am.