Well the forecast rain was unfortunately right and we had a very interrupted renovation of the West greens.  We got a great start on Sunday afternoon in very hot and dry conditions but Monday and Tuesday were a different story.  Due to the rain we were unable to hollow tine the greens which is when you remove a core which was one of the main goals of the operation.  Even though the greens are very young the opportunity to remove some organic matter by coring doesn't come around very often on such a busy course so that was disappointing.  So we could only solid tine them with a 9mm diameter tine which at least allows them to breathe as well as a 4 direction scarify.

The torrential rain on Tuesday night didn't help much as it washed away quite a bit of sand and fertiliser meaning the evenness of those two operations was compromised.  The greens need some more sand but the sand plant hasn't been able to mix our amendments in due to the rain so they will need to wait till late next week with the public holiday on Tuesday. 

The radar on Monday morning.

 

We are under there somewhere!!

 

 

 Fertiliser and sand wash on 15W.

1 River green is progressing very slowly which is hard to explain given the perfect growing conditions of late.  The constant surface moisture from the rain in December allowed a film of algae to form which we finally got to spray and it was then literally scraped off once it had dried out and the green was heavily sanded this week.

About the only thing that did go right this week was that the weather cleared for just enough time on Monday for us to get the growth regulator applied to the fairways which given the growing conditions and moisture levels was a good thing.  I have been asked before why the rough doesn't get sprayed with growth regulator and its because of the ''shielding'' effect the longer grass has by not allowing the spray to contact all the leaves which is needed.