Greens maintenance week 2

And so we go again, this time we are hollow tining and solid tining greens on holes 10-18. This is exactly the same procedure as week 1. For more information on this you can find it earlier on the blog. This week has been even more testing than last, as the conditions are drier than before, even though we have been hitting the greens with irrigation every night. The last few days have been very windy for the time of year, this hasn't helped, firstly the irrigation does not work efficiently in wind as the spray of water can be greatly effected, sometimes not reaching parts of some greens at all. The second problem it causes is evaporation, the wind dries the surface, reducing the moisture content of the soil, leaving the grass needing more water than is available. Hopefully the forecast is for a few showers over the next few days.

The tees therefore have received little to no water as we can not keep up with demand on the greens. Hand watering is being done on any dry areas of greens

The dry weather is having a big impact on the wear of the tines we are using here is one of the hollow tines after just 8 greens, we usually expect a tine to easily last 30 greens during moist conditions, the dry soil is more abrasive and wears down the metal at a rapid rate, so 3 sets of tines has been used instead of the usual one.

The lack of rainfall and wind is also leading to poor growing conditions, across the course grass is starting brown off, especially where there is no irrigation. This is good in the sense we can concentrate on our greens renovations without the need to get out and mow daily, however it is not good news in terms of greens recovery after the work we have done to them. Recovery is going to be slower than expected and I estimate we could be looking at double to average recovery time, so around 20 -25 days opposed to the usual 10, the initial greens we did last week on 1-9 have some holes still visible, again the dry conditions has allowed more of the sand applied to fall down the holes rather than bridge them at the surface. This shouldn't be a problem, however if we feel an extra light application of sand would benefit the smoothness of the putting surfaces then this will be applied in a couple of weeks.

We have also been fixing a few of the smaller irrigation problems such as sprinkler heads.