Hand Cutting Greens

After every blog that we seem to write lately it is with the anticipation of better weather. The last time that our weather station recorded no rain in a single day was the 10th December. Since then we have over 220mm of rain and the forecast is for more to come.

During intense periods such as this course maintenance as you will guess becomes an issue. We have many construction projects on the go but for actually cutting playing surfaces it becomes a problem. The only area that can be maintained and kept to a good standard are the greens. Over the years we have worked on their drainage capabilities. Not through the traditional method of land drainage but more on the rootzone side. We have done this by having a good deep aeration and sanding programme in place for the last 8 years. This allows the water to 'float' in the rootzone away from the top surface. It is paying dividends as during this intense wet spell we have not closed or gone on temporary greens.

The video above shows Mitchel cutting our 13th green with a hand mower. For the vast majority of time we use ride-on mowers to cut the greens but when ground conditions become soft we switch to hand mowers. These keep the greens in tip top condition even during the winter months. Our smoothness readings for the last two weeks have been 9.5 out of 10. Not bad considering it's January the weather we are having!