Weather conditions have improved somewhat with relatively warm and sunny days giving us real sense of spring. the only down side has been the cold nights giving us frosts to contend with and no precipitation restricting the amount of growth and recovery. That said it is great to get the sun on your back and start to get into course set up mode. The new 11th on Lodge will be in play for the coming weekend and the Lodge Team have been doing some final prep work for the opening.

As i have mentioned earlier the course set up in terms of mowing rotas is beginning to get going and we are completing new mowing routines along with new areas of collars and aprons, below is a picture of morning course set up on the 1st Highgate with the greens, collars and aprons being cut.

The greens are currently being cut at 4.5mm predominately with pedestrian mowers as shown in the picture below. These are preferred rather than sit on mowers as they give us a better finish and lightly roll at the same time, the presentation is far greater and at this time of year when we are getting differential growth due to the cool soil temperatures, we feel these mowers are able to cut the more procumbent growth more efficiently.

This week we have applied our spring summer fertiliser an organic based product at a rate of 18gms/m2. this will help to slowly encourage growth and even out the surfaces. it is a very difficult time of year for us as the finer grasses are growing quite well but the poorer annual meadow grass is really struggling so greens were there are higher proportions of the annual meadow grass we see very mixed growth and bumpier surfaces, conversely were we have a high proportion of the finer bents and fescues the surfaces are fine. hopefully over the coming days we will see the surfaces even out more. We are completing hand watering and some automated irrigation to offset the lack of moisture.

We have also been working hard on weaker areas around collars and aprons and some tees, here we have solid tined using 15mm tines, overseeded and then top dressed using a 50/50 mix, this is 50% sand and 50% soil. this mix helps to retain moisture and give the seed a good start.

During the middle week we also saw Adrian Mortram our irrigation specialist come in for the day to start collecting data to plan precisely all our sprinkler heads and tees and greens so this can be put onto a 2d plan and used for future planning and management. We will have precise measurements for areas of tees, greens and fairways along with precise details of our irrigation system.