on to the PowerRoll (0.5 tonne), gradually increasing ballast to one tonne, followed by the Autoroller unballasted (1.2 tonnes) and finally ballasted at two tonnes. A small sarrell roller is used to keep the surface open and free draining. The square is then fed using an organic fertiliser product with an NPK ratio of 12:3:7 followed by a series of liquid feeds.
All wickets benefit from a fourteen day
prep in the lead up to a match, first being cut to 8mm, followed by a period of raking and brushing to clean up the surface and remove debris. The square is then cut to 4mm, watered and rolled (40 minutes maximum) before the final cut and mark is required. Sheets and covers are available to control the drying of the wickets.
End of season renovations involve
cleaning up the square, scarifying it in several directions to remove vegetation and creating a key for loam and seed.
Gardens
The School has extensive gardens which contain a unique collection of outdoor sculptures. Dotted around the campus are fine examples of internationally renowned works of art. Each year a new sculpture is purchased and placed in the School grounds. There are plenty of beds, borders and hedges to maintain. Wherever you look the gardens and grounds are immaculately kept.
All leaf and grass debris is collected and stored on-site, along with an abundance of horse manure from the stables. David has recently invested in a large CourseCare recycling machine that
Kingweston site
The Kingweston site is managed by Lee Carroll who has been at Millfield for seven years. He, along with Andrew Bartlett, Gerald Tonkins and David Edwards, look after the following facilities:
• Ten football pitches • A nine hole golf course • Three cricket squares • Polo field
• The Kingweston boarding house and gardens
The football and polo fields are cut with
a Toro 5400 five unit cylinder mower, apart from the main 1st team football pitch, 2nd team football pitch and 1st team training pitch, which are all cut using Dennis 36” cylinder mowers. The areas are mown at least three times a week during the growing season. All the pitches are regularly aerated, fed
Lee Carroll 64
and repaired. None of the pitches has any significant drainage schemes installed and rely on the fact that the underlying soils are very free draining. The pitches are in use three times a week for matches and training. The combination of using the right machinery, coupled with appropriate maintenance and feeding regimes and working in tandem with the weather, seems to be the recipe for success.
The first team football pitch is
extensively used with well over thirty games played each season, so additional aeration and feeding, plus a full end of season renovation is carried out. The pitch is vertidrained monthly and fed using a concoction of feeds that include Sherriff Amenities’ Sea Volution, Marathon and Scotts Invigorator. At the end of the season the pitch is scarified, hollow cored, topdressed with 100 tonnes of sand and overseeded with MM60. The pitches are marked prior to matches with a spray jet line marker. Lee has three cricket squares with a total of fifteen strips to maintain. His end of season renovations involve scarification, using a combination of the SISIS 600 and a tractor mounted Ryetec to clean up the squares, aeration using a Groundsman 465 and then topdressing with Boughton loam (10 bags per strip) before finally over sowing with MM50.
The nine hole golf course also has a members club attached to it, (Kingweston Golf Club). The greens are maintained at 6mm in the summer and 7-8mm in the winter. Both greens and tees receive spring and summer renovations that involve hollow coring, aeration, feeding and topdressing. The greens are hand mown using a Toro GM 1000 whilst the tees and fairways are cut using a Toro 3200 triple.
shreds and mixes material together. A 50/50 mix of manure and grass/leaf clippings are put through the machine on a daily basis.
The making of the compost has become a fulltime job for one staff member who spends every day of the week moving, mixing and storing the composted materials. He also has to monitor the temperature of the compost ensuring that it remains at 60O
C during
the composting cycle of eight weeks. If the temperature drops, he will turn it over or transfer it into another bay to allow more oxygen into the material which will raise the temperature. Once it has gone through its cycle the material is used around the School for mulching shrub beds and borders.
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