It's hard to believe another week has flown by and it finished with soddenly wet conditions today.  The water table is still very high and almost any rain will cause pooling but another 70mm wasn't what we were looking for.  Some really heavy rain last Sunday morning just as the comp started caused some fairly severe damage to 9R green but fortunately there was only minor washing of the surface.  There was however quite severe ''pock marking'' almost as if it had hailed golf ball size hailstones.  We had to heavily sand the surface this week and for a green that is just over a week old it is progressing very well.  Final leveling will take some more time due to the water damage.  Todays torrential downpour at around 8.30am once again fortunately only caused some minor damage to the new chipping green which was planted on Tuesday.  We decided to construct the green with no drainage underneath and allow for surface runoff and that is why there is water pooling on the surface as the new stolons need to be kept wet at all time for the first two weeks.  It will be fine when fully grassed and in play with any rainwater sheeting across the surface.  The photo below shows the excellent root development on 9R just seven days post planting.

Just 7 days old.

And whilst it has been great growing in conditions for the new greens it has also been excellent conditions for the encroaching foreign Couchgrass on the West greens.  The photo below shows a rhizome from the outside of the green sprouting 12 inches inside the green.  It is impossible to pull these out so a herbicide spotting program will swing into action next week. 

Pesky intruders.

 

Despite the rain we still need a live irrigation system and so when there was a blowout on 14W this morning it had to be fixed.  Thanks to Gus and the intrepid crew members who braved the worst of the rain to complete the repair.  We needed to shut the system down  so that is why there were some sprinklers and hoses being used today to blow the air out of the pipelines.

It never ends.