"Monday Monday can't trust that day"

Arrived at ground today only to fined that vandals had ripped the bolt of the side gate.

What a start to Monday!!!!  This means that one day this week I will have to sort out a new bolt, padlock and bull ring as it has been broken on the other side of the gate,what a pain, typical for school holidays.

My first job was to fit the new belt to the rotary mower and cut the whole square, the rotary is good because it picks up a few of the leafs, its nice having a ground surrounded by trees until autumn time then its a pain.

After mowing I mixed some liquid seaweed and iron and treated the square and net area, this will help get the bacteria going and the iron will give a green up knock back any moss and tuffen up the grass plant. When the square had dried I brushed it in both directions, this process not only helps presentation (I like it to look good if possible) but also lifts some leafs from the base, I hope they blow away overnight.

My pedestrian Acuspray I used for spraying it's a million times better than my old knapsack unit

My square after mowing, spraying and brushing.

I have a big problem with the outfield it was never constructed as as cricket field and still has the old "Ridge and Furrow" from when it was agricultural land. Until the last few years apart from mowing it has had no other work carried out on it excepting Verti-Draining once since we had drainage installed. 

As a result I have dry patch and about 25mm (1") of thatch in parts. 

Poor photography here you can see the toe of my boot

I am trying to spike as much as I can of the outfield however I only have a Groundsman 346 pedestrian machine which is about 18" (don't know how many mm that is) wide across the spike holes, so I am doing a section at a time. I am looking at having the outfield sprayed with a wetting agent so the more hole I can get in before that is done and the better.

While spiking the low parts the tines were going in about 4" (75mm) but on the drypatch parts it was bouncing and penetrating only around  11/2" (37mm) as you can see from the two following pictures.

A good spot hole about 4" deep

Not quit so good if you look you can see the mark I made on the peg from the first hole.

Next picture you can see the different depth of penetration.

The two marks on the peg show the two depths.

I hope you are still following me and haven't drifted off to sleep.

Part of the spiked area.

This is a part of the outfield I worked on about three weeks ago you can see the new seed has germinated well If you enlarge it.