Gravel Banding Complete!

The marathon has ended!!
It took 9 days in total, which was a little less than we first thought. Around 50tonnes of drainage material (lytag) has been inserted into the greens, which, When it rains again will help no end. At present i'm not expecting it to work quite as expected. This is because we have been rolling the heaved lines flat  quite dramatically to hopefully give you a smoother put over the surface. This in turn will have 'sealed' them up and it might take a little while for the water to move through the upper profile and down into the drainage lines. This is why, as from the 11th March we will be using our Graden machine, to inject sand into the top inch of the soil, which should then, as I have already said in an earlier blog post, marry the 2 systems up nicely, and allow the water to get away quickly.  The company that did the banding will be back on Monday to come and put a few 'outlet' drainage pipes around greens 6, 8, 9 and 15. Somewhere near every green there is an outlet drainage pipe installed which leads into a main drain. However when we had the bunkers/green surrounds re-designed some 10 years ago, a few bunkers were placed on top. Which meant we wern't able to run the lytag bands into them. So this is why we need to insert new outlets and rejoin them to a main drain. This is not a massive job, and should only take a couple of days to complete. This, unfortunately is extra work but its essential that we do a proper job, and give the water the best chance to get away as soon as possible. The extra cost can be offset, because we haven't used as much lytag as first thought.  With a bit of luck, we should have enough pipe (and time) to sort out the horrible patch in front of the 12th green also.
Tomorrow, and next week we will be concentrating on getting the lines on the greens as flat as possible I will also be spraying a bit of Iron, and turf hardener to aid recovery a little and also to help the grass to get over all the stress of the rolling. Which should hopefully stave off any disease thats around at the moment.
Other than that, I think we're turning a corner. Fairways, roughs, and tees have all had a little winter snip. After all the poor weather, its beginning to look a bit like a golf course again!
Regards
Leigh