“The purse strings are as tightly drawn as ever - and so they should be”
about the Vredo seeder was the fact that there was hardly a grain of seed left showing on the surface. Like many grounds across the country, we usually get a deluge of pigeons feeding themselves to bursting on the excess seed left on the surface. This year not one bird has been seen grazing on ‘free’ seed. The machine can be set to place the seed at any given depth between 0-25mm, and we chose to seed to a depth of 15mm for the dwarf perennial ryes. The discs are set at 50mm centres so each of the pitches seeded had a minimum of four passes in different directions to make sure we got good coverage. The youth team pitch, once dressed and seeded, was vertidrained at 100mm centres to a depth of 200mm before the area was dragmatted and then fertilised with 250kgs of Sportsmaster 8:12:8 + magnesium.
The Crane staff had moved onto the
reserve team pitch to Koro off the top 15mm. There are three main pitches at the Compton training ground and we have a three-year rolling plan of turning over one pitch each year. Once the
surface was cleaned of vegetation 120 tons of MM45 was evenly spread as well as 20 cubic metres of
concentrated fibresand through the middle third of the pitch. This was then power harrowed to a depth of 75mm, incorporating the spread materials into the upper rootzone. At the same time 300kgs of controlled release 21:0:20 was spread and mixed into the profile. The area was graded and rolled a number of times to get the surface flat and consolidated in readiness for the seeding. A Blec slot seeder was used for this, as it wouldn’t disrupt the prepared surface. After seeding, a light roller was used to close the seed slots and an application of 8:12:8 pre-seed fertiliser spread to finish the job.
The first team pitch was fraize mowed and the works carried out as per the youth team pitch. The only change to that specification was that the pitch was double vertidrained instead of a hollow coring operation. It is constructed with a
New Holland serving the Groundcare industry Turf scuffi ng still a problem? Finding undersoil heating pipes
New drainage
fibre sand profile and hollow coring doesn’t tend to work very well with fibre, the tines tending to clog with fibre and inevitably end up doing the same job as solid tines.
WITH the training ground completed, everybody moved their attention (and equipment) to Molineux. The first job
SuperSteer™
your way to protecting your valuable sports turf. SuperSteer™
prevents the front
tyres damaging fi ne turf, whilst maintaining maximum traction.
Contact your local dealer for more details or visit
www.newholland.com
25
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108