A huge week on course with the amount of grass growth coupled with a short public holiday week and the re-working of 9R green thrown in on top.

9R green works threw up some challenges but the finished product is very good and is ready for grassing on February 6.  One of the main issues we had was getting enough sand on site for the job as the logistics of getting sand here is way different (read difficult) than when we did the West greens.  We also had to take out nearly a metre of fill across the green which means more fill sand being required.  The sand also came in very wet following all the rain so because you now buy per tonne rather than per cubic metre, we were buying a lot of water as the moisture makes the sand heavier.  Getting the trucks in also became problematic with a road needing to be built and the existing road base had turned to mush following the rainfall and was useless.  The truck carrying the second load out of the green got bogged which wasn't the greatest start either.  And with all due respect, truck drivers aren't what they used to be.

Bogged on the way out.

The sand we used is almost identical to that used on the West greens and once again the top 100mm was amended with a variety of product with the aim being to create a five year old growing medium.  You can see in the photo below the difference in colour of the amended sand (darker) compared to the straight base sand.

Darker amended sand.

And one of the most interesting things we discovered was that the actual green area we have been mowing was actually bigger than the original green size as designed, as we cut out way wider than the ''gravel layer'' which denotes the green profile.  The photo below shows the ''green well'' which is indicated by the darker profile.ThIs was the same around the entire perimeter of the green.  We only cut out and replaced the area that had been sprayed out previously but it looks to be a huge area.

Original green edge indicated.