Pitchcare Classifieds SPORTS SURFACE CONTRACTORS
Soil Science
No interest in old fashioned research
Sports Ground Contractors Ltd
D W Clark DRAINAGE LTD
SPECIALIST SPORTSTURF CONSTRUCTION & DRAINAGE CONTRACTORS • Gravel Banding • Sand Slitting
• Top Dressing • Renovation • Irrigation Unit 7, Brailes Industrial Estate, Winderton Lane, Lower Brailes Banbury, Oxfordshire OX15 5JW
Tel: 01608 685800 Fax: 01608 685801 email:
jim@dwclarkdrainageltd.co.uk Web:
www.dwclarkdrainageltd.co.uk Topsoil, subsoil and water table
Dr Tim Lodge of Agrostis Turf Consultancy Ltd discusses the merits of old fashioned research work in natural turf improvement
Natural & Synthetic
Renovation - Drainage - Maintenance Sports Pitch Design - Construction
THERE doesn’t seem to be as much interest in conducting research into the ‘pure’ science side of sports turf these days. We frequently find ourselves referring back to scientific publications going back twenty or thirty years when trying to solve problems for our clients.
The most useful subjects relate to things like particle size distribution in soils and sands and its relationship with hydraulic conductivity and pore space. Or field measurements of infiltration rate and bulk density.
SCONSTRUCTION DRAINAGE
Sand Slitting, Gravel Banding V RENOVATION
erti Draining, Hollow Coring, Scarifying, Koro Field Topmaker, Topdressing, Overseeding, Sand Spreading
www.kestrelcontractors.co.uk
Tel: 01256 880488 Email:
info@kestrelcontractors.co.uk
Tel: 01772 780545
danvicturfcare@btconnect.com
Mobile: 07768 122577
Visit our online Buyers Guide at
www.pitchcare.com for direct links to suppliers websites
ports Fields and Golf Courses
These are all entirely pertinent features in relation to the performance and improvement of natural turf surfaces. In fact, I would say that most of the situations we’re asked to deal with from a technical point of view are concerned with these very important areas of turf science in one way or another.
I think this lack of recent research is because the kinds of investigation these subjects require are, by their nature, slow to generate data. They also require a good deal of specialist and expensive scientific equipment and a lot of understanding on the part of the researchers. Trials and investigations are, therefore, costly to undertake.
What seems to happen is that research money follows those lines of enquiry that are most likely to generate sales of ‘stuff’ in a relatively short timeframe. Stuff like pesticides, fertiliser supplements, soil microbial products; investigations in these areas are able to generate data quickly on the basis of ‘spray it and see’. However, it seems to me that this work is not
146 PC DECEMBER/JANUARY 2014
advancing the science of sports surfaces as rapidly as research in other areas once did.
Some months ago, I wrote in these pages about the possibility of developing a ‘grand unifying theory’ covering the key questions surrounding drainage, moisture retention, attenuation etc., and relating to both natural and artificial surfaces. Since then, we’ve continued to look at this in great detail and are currently concerned with the relationship between particle size distribution in growing media, porosity and hydraulic conductivity - seemingly very old and unfashionable subject areas.
We’re using client materials to look at these things in much greater detail than we would normally do in order to answer questions to their satisfaction. The connections we are making between people’s actual experiences of natural turf surfaces and the technical data pertaining to those situations is proving to be enormously interesting and informative.
On looking through the literature, what has been a revelation is the amount of perfectly relevant information that has already been published, much of it many years ago. To discover this, one often has to look outside of the turf industry, for example in the areas of tropical agriculture or filtration, obscure and esoteric areas that never mention sports turf.
The Hooghoudt equation is famous to many people and it has been around for a long time. It determines the separation at which lateral pipe
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