Cricket Club Groundsman's Trials and Tribulations: Getting a Start at Last

Well the weather in Leeds has been a bit better for the last few days so I have been able to get on with some work on the grass.

Monday I was off up to Pool Cricket Club to slit their outfield I forgot my camera so sorry no photos.

When I got back to Kirkstall I spent some time identifying the square by finding my marker pegs which had got hidden under the winter growth I then marked them all with white marking fluid and that was about that for the day.

Today Tuesday was very frosty first thing but the sun was out so things had just about thawed out by

10-00 am the time I got down to the ground.

The first job I got on with was to get the old Mastiff out and cut the square.

Not looking too bad except the pitch ends at the bottom which have stood under water just about all winter (more about them later)

With the medium rake fit to the "A" Frame I rake the middle of the square from about the five foot make to the five foot mark keeping clear of the ends where I have weak or no grass at the moment.

I also seeded the bare/weak pitch ends with Hurrell,s Coldstart seed mix (well my version of it Colosseum and Topgun 50-50)

Here you can clearly see the raking and the bare ends I seeded up.

And again. After raking I left the rubbish on the surface to dry out a little while I had some lunch.

We got a small grant to re-hash the ladies toilets and Zipp the sparky along with Johnny the chippy were working away below are some pictures.

Toilet unit out and door reversed.

Johnny looking happy at his work.

Zipp who is six foot plenty creeping about in the loft he had to crawl from one end of the club to the other up there -he keeps telling me we need another hatch at the the other end.

One of the security lights on the score-box was not working so I got him to have a look at that while he was here.

I have a setting on my camera which says "Magic" the photo above is taken on that setting and the one below is just about the same view on normal setting.

I think the fertiliser companies must have the same setting on their cameras.

I find this interesting on the left is a pitch that I sprayed off two Autumn's ago and reseeded this was to get rid of a build up of annual meadow grass. The pitch on the right was not sprayed off and still has annual meadow grass in it.

Now if you look closely you will see the disease in the untreated pitch but the treated on is free of disease and that is just one reason we should try to rid our pitches of the weed grass it is vulnerable to this sort of attack.

Its been a good day today and I feel I have made some progress.

Before I left for the night I put the oddments of germination sheets on that I have kicking around my big sheets are still up at Pudsey St Lawrence C C.