DUSTY ROAD TO RECOVERY...
Organic matter was causing a problem on the square at St. Albans School’s Woollam Playing Fields. Head Groundsman, Ian Smith, explains the procedures used to cure the problem
A
fter six years of use, preparation and end of season renovations, we were still getting a build up of
organic matter in the surface of our squares on the Woollam Playing Fields, especially on those used by the younger boys. We had previously scarified with a pedestrian rota rake just going through the surface. After taking out cores to look at what was happening below, and discussing the situation with Chris Wood of the ECB, we realised that we had to be more vigorous with our scarification. We had a build up of organic matter in the top 8-10mm of the surface, below which was a dry, even, firm and clean profile which indicated a possible construction root break at 75mm. More about that later.
The pitches were still playing fine; a little short of pace for county standard but good and consistent enough for the schoolboys. Anyway, I tend to believe that county standard pitches may well be too quick and bouncy for boys learning the game.
Although the school was very happy with how they were playing we realised we had to reduce the organic matter in the surface and then keep it cleaner in the future. First we used an Amazon 180, with both scarifying and cutting blades in, to remove the surface herbage. This was
done in two directions. At the same time it also removed moss and alga that tends to form on cricket squares. We followed this with the Lloyds
Paladin and Ransomes Auto Certes wicket mowers double cutting as short as possible. We then scarified down to 10mm with our SISIS TM1000 - three passes in different directions. All the spoil was stacked elsewhere on the site to be used for landscaping works in the future. This task is best done with the square dry as it does a much cleaner job; the tungsten tipped blades have no problem working in these conditions, although it is extremely dusty! To soften the surface, we watered and seeded at 50g per square metre. We put on a third of the seed with a Cyclone spreader so that they went into the grooves left by the deep scarifyer. But, as we didn’t want the seed to come up all in lines, the other two thirds were sown with the SISIS Variseeder, dropping the seed into the holes made by the machine. We let the surface dry then drag brushed the square to pull any seed sitting on the top into the holes or grooves. Following this, we topdressed the whole of the square with Boughton Loam using a drop spreader. We only wanted enough loam to fill the holes and grooves plus a very little left on top. It worked out at about six or seven bags per
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