Summer Sports - Cricket
CB40 match between Scotland and Hampshire
“Scotland doesn’t have a climate, just weather - we have two seasons - July and Winter!”
my fourteen pitch square. However, with the acquisition of Sisis by Dennis last year, and the closure of their Scottish outlet, this facility is no longer available. So, after several phone calls, I discovered that the closest implement I could source for hire was some 120 miles distant in Linlithgow; a town made famous for being the birthplace of Mary, Queen of Scots and a skean dubh’s throw from where William Wallace and Robert the Bruce put the Auld Enemy to the sword. Hardly just up the road! I can’t justify an outright purchase of such an implement, but I feel sure that there is a business opportunity for manufacturers or retailers to provide a rental outlet in this and other locations in Scotland. I’d be happy to discuss the options!
At the eleventh hour, a local contractor
provided me with a machine to use after having cut the whole of the square down to 5mm, allowing four passes over the square to a depth of 6mm thereby cleaning out the surface and providing a seedbed.
I’ve been using a TM1000 for the past ten seasons at a greater depth to remove a thatch layer and, as you will see in the photograph, a rather large amount was
extracted in year one. Nowadays, I don’t get a quarter of what you see, although the Law of Diminishing Returns dictates that year-on-year, I’ll get to a stage where I’d be removing some of the good material laid down in previous seasons. It’s a question of balance, I suppose! Of course, as luck would have it, rain intervened during the final pass, which meant that I had to postpone the completion of the scarifying for a time whilst the surface dried, with the inevitability that the tractor tyres were closing up the scarifying slits during the completion of the final pass, although the ground was ideal for final cleaning with a Sisis Rotorake scarifier fitted with a brush reel. A case of two steps forward and one back! With a proportion of the surface having closed over, a Sisis Variseeder came into its own by making thousands of holes over the square, followed up by distributing grass seed simultaneously. With several passes in different directions, complete coverage with Barenbrug Bar Extreme grass seed was achieved at a sowing rate of 70 g/m2
.
This was followed by an application of Mascot 3:5:10 fertiliser and Activate-R granules; the latter to aid root
development; both being applied with a cyclone-type spreader then brushed in with the aid of a four foot dragbrush. Boughton County loam has been the
preferred topdressing for many years here, but the price has been escalating due to ever increasing transportation costs. Two years ago the price per 25kg went over seven pounds per bag, albeit with delivery. This did not include tax, however! Clearly, the way forward was to consolidate deliveries into the area. Previously, I had spent twenty-five years as an Operations Manager in the transport industry, so it made economic and logistical sense to seek out other grounds to get together in a joint venture. To this end, I hooked up with JMS Sport UK of Keighley, West Yorkshire who could supply the desired loam, with the added bonus that they had contacts with a distribution company, which could deliver with a vehicle that could drop the pallets off with the aid of an on-board forklift, as some of the delivery points are inaccessible to an articulated vehicle. One is located within the perimeter security fencing of Aberdeen airport, with the other located in a small park having only a single track lane for access.
DECEMBER/JANUARY 2012 PC 89
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