It's been a while since I posted a blog so I thought I'd better let you know what's been occurring!

 

The rugby term got under way with bone hard pitches and grass that resembled hay. We had almost 29mm of rain since the beginning of October with most of it falling last week so the ground is starting to soften and the grass is starting to look it's natural colour. Hopefully we will be able to get the aerators on the rugby pitches soon.

 

Cricket renovation was a challenge as we had been unable to irrigate most of the squares and the ground was hard as iron. We hired in a heavy duty tractor mounted aerator and used 8mm solid tines but even then all that happened was the machine just bounced over the squares barely marking the surface in places, we even snapped a couple of tines, that has never happened to me before in nearly 30 years as a groundsman! Fortunately we also hired a Graden scarifier and set that to around 10mm deep and scarified in 4 directions on each square so at least we had a key of some sort for the top dressing and nice drills for the seed. I also panicked a bit as, due to availability, we had to hire the Graden scarifier, aerator and top dresser over a 3 week period and I was worried that by the time we were top dressing the weather would break and we wouldn't be able to finish the job. In the end we managed to complete the end of season renovation on all our squares and practice nets with a couple of days to spare before it started raining! With just the right amount of rain and unseasonably warm October days the seed has germinated and is growing well.

 

Now to tackle the leaves!!!