Monday this week was one of those days where you ask yourself - ''where do we start?''  The storm that came through on Saturday night was an absolute belter and the winds wreaked havoc with debris strewn across the courses.  Of course some of the clean up work started on Sunday morning with tees and greens cleared of debris although the wind stayed up most of Sunday as well.  But by close of Tuesday you could hardly recognise the place with all playing surfaces cleared and most bunkers done as well.  In cases like this the priority list is greens, tees, fairways and then bunkers.  At least now most of the bark off the Eucalypts has been stripped.  The crew did a great job once again in the clean up.

The radar image of Saturday nights storm.

Some of the debris on 4R.

 

I have written about the effects of shade on many occasions.  This week we turfed two of the recently cleared areas on 16 and 18R.  On 16R the area is still shade affected when compared to 18R which is just about full sun.  The photos below are of root development of the two areas three days after turfing.  The same batch of turf was used for both areas and they were laid at the same time but the number and length of the roots on 18R is way in front of 16R due to the sunlight.

Lots of healthy white roots at 18R.

 

Not so many at 16R.