Greens are slowly taking shape.  A light dressing yesterday and greens to be given a feed at the end of the week.   The turf iron is being used more frequently with the aim to produce better, quicker  surfaces without the stress of lowering the height of cut.  Our short term goal is to create fun fast greens ready for the professional trophy.

Our new brush arrived yesterday which will help work topdressing into the sward and into tine holes more effectively.

Last week as part of  my continual professional  development,  I went down a mine in North Yorkshire to watch the production and  manufacture of Potash, a product we use a lot in sportsturf.  A very enjoyable experience helped along by a few beers and great company.

A tough week at work!

Not quite Christmas but some new machinery to play with.

A new aerator capably of tining up to 10" deep this new machine is very smooth and will not damage and tear the surface in the same way as the older version.

A Turf Iron which will be invaluable creating a smooth surface after Solid and Hollow tining.

A new gator to replace our very tired and much used current model.

Still to come a brush for working in topdressing into the green and more importantly the holes.

The brush, aerator and turf iron are shared pieces of machinery along with South Essex and have been purchased primarily to move the greens on both courses forward to create firmer, drier surfaces.

On Friday we took delivery of our new aerator.   This is wider,  smoother and leaves a much cleaner finish than our current machines.

Slowly the course moves forward.  Greens have now had the height dropped to 4mm and will be verti-cut and topdressed next week

7th Abbotts

 The season really should have kicked off by now but the weather continues to struggle to reach anything like decent temperatures.  Heavy dressing and tining nearly a month ago went well but no recovery has meant poor bumpy greens.  Compounded by a fresh bought of disease they are performing as badly as we've seen them for years in early spring.

 Over the weekend they have been fed, sprayed for disease, given a tonic of Iron and other macro nutrients and they will have light dressings for the next few weeks.  The weather is now turning the corner and in a few weeks we will lower the height of cut, re-grind the mower units and try to create at least half decent surfaces toward the end of the month.

 Other parts of the course are moving on, albeit slowly with fairways and tees now all been feed.  We have divotted the 7,8,9 and 10th fairways on the Abbotts and just need to paint the new marker posts on the middle practice area to improve short game practicing.

      As with all my blogs I try to look to the positive in all we do.  Sometimes even I struggle.

18th Abbotts on Monday morning

Spring is slowly creeping round the corner, at last a break in the weather to enable coursework to be finished.  Abbotts greens this week have been solid-tined with 12mm tines down to 75mm on very close spacing.  This was after each green had been top dressed with 2 ton of sand.  At the moment the greens resemble beaches but a few days of warm sun will see this sand ameliorated into the profile. All Abbotts greens were feed last week with a spring starter just to push them along.