District News

Text Box: The new season is now well under way. For most clubs in Gippsland things are going along nicely, thanks to consistent solid rainfall over the last couple of months. From what I have seen bent greens around here are in excellent condition, with many clubs enjoying the best greens they have had for a while. Well done to all greens staff involved- the best way we can keep club members happy, and prevent the influx of synthetics, is to produce high quality greens. There are now a number of tiffdwarf greens through Gippsland, now coming out of dormancy. It is great that we have a number of greenkeepers in the area doing the hard work, and building our knowledge base for the management of tiff in our climate, and providing clubs with another option for year round bowls. Despite our good local rainfall, we are fully aware of the difficult circumstances faced in most other areas of the state. I believe that Round 3 Community Water Grants are about to be announced. Good luck to clubs that applied, hopefully success in achieving a grant can help cope with restrictions. All the best to VGA members everywhere- despite the challenging conditions if we all stick together and help each other out, we’ll get through it all right. There’s always the Gold Coast trip to look forward to! Andrew Kent

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Text Box: For a while we thought the season may have changed a reasonable year could be achieved. The rain in August and September was reasonable, twice what we had last year, but not anywhere near the average. October, the start of our pennant season looked good, but since then we have taken a step backwards. The water level is only 12% and the “Super Pipe” a long way off. The second weekend of pennant looked like a washout with 5 – 15mm predicted by the forecasters, sadly it just got cold and only 1mm was recorded. The weather then got warm with days reaching 23deg and strong winds, causing many greens to dry out requiring watering. Where do we Greenkeepers go when this happens, water, not water it seems to get harder each year. No rain and cold weather has given us no growth at the start of the season again and we face a very hard year if this type of weather continues. On a good note it was great to see someone stick up for us greenies in the RVBA Magazine, well done, some of us do know what we are doing.

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