Shock, As Weather Halts Us Again!

13th Green 12/3/13

I really do hate using the weather as an excuse. However this time I feel its warranted. As those who follow this blog know, we were due to sand inject the greens this week using our Graden scarifier. But Solid frosts and a light covering of snow have put that on hold for the minute. Its strange to think that this time last year we were basking in temperatures around the 18degrees mark, with soil temps around the 12.5c mark which was ideal for growing grass! Compare that with today's temperature of 1c, and soil temperatures of 0.1c! There is a little light at the end of the tunnel for later this week, as temperatures are due to go up to around 7c by Thursday, however this will bring rain apparently! One of the long term forecasts I looked at has predicted snow again for next monday, so lets hope they have got that wrong because that really could set the cat amongst the pigeons as we only have a 2 week work window to complete the job. Oh well, who would be a greenkeeper??! Today we have begun to vertidrain the greens, I know it seems unusual putting holes into a firm/frozen green, but it really is making a nice neat clean job, and it means we're not completely wasting this work window. I was sceptical about putting some topdressing in using our new brush to work the sand into the holes, however this has worked extremely well.........For one and a half greens, until the vehicle carrying our top dresser (Cushman) developed a diesel leak. Hopefully that will be back up and running by tomorrow so we can top dress and brush every green before we finally manage to get the Graden sand injector out early next week. But i must stress, the sand going through the machine needs to be completely bone dry, otherwise it won't run through into the slits on the green. We won't be doing this if it rains, so will have to be re-scheduled.

The lads have been able to give the 15th hole a real good tidy up, getting all the brash out from the right hand side of the tee that was encroaching, they have then worked their way down the path clearing out the left hand side, working their way up to the banking. This will improve the hole immensely in my opinion. Photos to follow.
Leigh