Rushwick Report

Good Afternoon,

I have been given a report from Clive on the current situation regarding Rushwick. Please take a look below:

I visited Rushwick on 13th October, to view the state of the strip. It is a bit better than my last visit with some grass growth after recent rainfall but still an uneven surface with bare patches. I had suggested buying several tonnes of topsoil with some grass seed to improve things, this met with mixed responses and the latest feeling was to leave this action until next spring. I now concur with this suggestion after a discussion I had with Matt, our landlord, at the field, his opinion is that there is a fairly high probability that the field will flood during the winter. Even after the flood prevention work several years ago he said there has been occasions when the water was hedge high, in this event I suspect that any recently applied topsoil would be washed away. The earlier dry weather had prevented applying topsoil and seed which may have grown sufficiently to anchor the soil.

I applied a mix of topsoil, growmore and grass seed to a few small bare patches just to see if it germinated and survived the winter. Application of grass seed at the end of March and to patches in July resulted in zero growth.

The season has resulted in periods of too cold, too wet and too dry, all conditions being unfavourable for a good growth of the grass.

I noticed that the Prestbury Park Club, near Tewksbury, have been preparing a new field in a similar timeframe as Rushwick was being improved using a similar planting method. I asked them, via E-mail, if they had any suggestions on how to improve the grass, the reply was as follows

Tue, 14 Sept at 17:23
“The earlier wet period stopped us being able to get our roller on the grass, so we have a similar problem to yourselves. With the now dry spell we still cannot roll. Hoping the rain will be sufficient and not overly wet to start the rolling again. We have our own 10 foot unit. It does take a full season to get a reasonable grass cover and hopefully next year it will be better.”

Photos on their website show the progression of their new field.

Apologies to all those that have been inconvenienced as our landlord has tried to improve the field for us and thanks to those that have used their initiative to allow ROG take offs.

One of the reasons for the revamping of the field was to avoid , where possible, flying over the neighbours land. The people who now own this farm are not living there as the place is being refurbished, they will move in as soon as they work is completed. They own restaurant(s) so they will be at home during the day so we need to be aware of this.

Action Plan for the 2022 Committee: The club will need about six people in the spring to apply about 4 tonnes of topsoil and some seed and hope for better weather.

Clive Maulden

Hopefully that report can show that Rushwick is very much a work in progress, and to just please bear with us just a little longer. We’re really excited to get Rushwick sorted and host some events there hopefully next year.

We also had a committee meeting last night, focussing on details for the AGM this year. Keep an eye out for an email over the next couple of days or so from me on that, as once again there are some changes with how things are going ahead whilst returning to some normality. We’ve also revised the rules for 35MHz requiring a non-existent pegboard, and discussed Rushwick at length.

Thanks,

Sam Booton

Club Secretary and Webmaster