Summer Sports - Cricket
• Start planning for renovations by identifying what is wrong with your square or what could be better or how you would like it to be for the future. Identify your aims for renovating. Do not simply try to emulate someone else. There is no right or wrong way to renovate since everyone has different conditions, different equipment available and different budgets. So long as you get to where you want to go, it doesn’t matter how you travel
• Take some cores and see what’s going on underneath. (If you do not have access to a corer then a ‘v-shaped’ piece of turf can be taken with a knife, although this will really only allow you to examine the top inch or two and may not reveal the true problems within a square)
• If there is a problem then ask yourself why. Educate yourself
• List your aims. Only then can you decide how you are going to tackle it
• Devise an action plan (this will be limited by your resources)
• Order materials in good time - and DON’T ever compromise on quality - it will be a false economy.
• Monitor progress (i.e. have you scarified enough or do you need another 3, 5, 7 or more passes?)
• Be BOLD! You can kill a square with kindness (especially by not scarifying enough or deep enough)
• …but be realistic (you can only do so much in one season). A three or even a five year plan is always a good idea
• DON'T RUSH!!!! Making sure you have cleaned the surface up properly by taking an extra day to scarify or spending a couple of days watering prior to spiking is time well spent, and time that will pay dividends next season. If you have a weak scarifier that means that scarification takes a week to complete satisfactorily, then either find a better machine or accept what you have and take longer to do a good job. (Easy to say, but if you are using borrowed equipment or have many squares to renovate, this is tricky)
• Seed needs to be in contact with the soil or it will not grow - so make sure you get it in there if you can!
• Don’t scrimp on seed. The seed these days is much finer than it used to be. Really, 50g/m2 is the minimum for ryegrass if you have anything other than a good thick sward and, often, 100g/m2
may be more appropriate if
the sward is thin or there is a lot of bare ground
• Don't neglect your square over winter! It will need spiking, regular mowing, occasional application of low nitrogen fertiliser, moss may need keeping at bay, weeds may need controlling etc. etc. etc. If the square is not properly maintained after renovations, then all your hard work will be wasted
52 I PC AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2014 Topdressed outfield
six passes, using a Sisis TM1000 fitted with 3mm tungsten tipped blades. Most passes will be carried out at 3 to 4mm deep to clean the surface up as we don’t have any thatch or fibre to contend with, but the last pass or two will be at 10mm in order to root out any annual meadow grass and to prevent any fibre accumulating in the future. This also offers an excellent opportunity to provide grooves for seed to sit in. The whole surface will be mown down to 5mm and cleaned up using blowers. Meanwhile, the wickets that are to be reconstructed will be carefully marked by spraying over a string line before a petrol driven floor saw is used to cut a neat edge to a depth of approximately 150mm. This will take approximately two days all in. Then watering to ensure that there is
moisture to several inches depth. Two days is set aside for this. Any low ends or footholes will be
repaired, the levels brought up and heeled in.
This is followed by a thorough dimple
seeding using a Blec Mutiseeder. 100g/m2 of Bar Extreme seed will be applied over approximately ten passes with the seeder, watering any dry spots in between as necessary to ensure good penetration with the seeder tines to between 5mm and 10mm but, prior to this, 20g/m2
of
seed will have been spread through a cyclone spreader and brushed into the scarifying lines. A five tonne excavator is then tracked out along old ad-boards to the wickets to be relaid and the wickets excavated. This will commence whilst the other renovations continue. The whole square will then be spiked using a tractor mounted 12180 Groundsman spiker set at 3 inches deep, fitted with ½ inch solid tines in twin tine holders and the relaid wickets will then be watered again. All this takes approximately a further day. The younger of the relaid wickets will then be deep spiked to the full depth of construction using 25mm tines fitted on a Wiedenmann Terraspike set to 5% heave and loam spread, allowed to dry and then carefully worked into the holes. We will then topdress with GOSTD Supernatural using our ancient Sisis Powerspread at a rate of 200kg per wicket,
Growing in
before being worked in and levelled using a 10ft wide drag lute, avoiding any wickets immediately either side of one that is being constructed. Finally, Everris Pre- seeder fertiliser (8:12:8) is applied at a rate of 35g/m2
. This takes a further two
days - or less if the weather is warm and dries the surface quickly. As soon as the relaying of a wicket has
been completed, then the wickets either side will be brushed off, topdressed, fertilised and absorbed into the watering programme. Light watering will take place every day as necessary until the seed is established. Following the second cut, we will apply a chemical called Ethosat500 to control any annual meadowgrass. Regular, light fertiliser applications to maintain plant health continue, as conditions demand, through the autumn and winter.
What work do you carry out on the outfield?
Our usual outfield renovations would consist of deep scarification to approximately 25mm using a Koro Field Topmaker fitted with scarifying blades, mowing down to around 8mm, seeding with 100% dwarf perennial ryegrass at a rate of 40g/m2
, topdressing with 100
tonnes of a straight sand, spiking to as deep as conditions allow with the Wiedenmann, dragmatting and the application of a pre-seeder fertiliser. This has been aimed at reducing the high thatch levels that I inherited, cutting through the thatch and diluting it with sand and improving and reinstating the sward. This year, however, now that we have an irrigation system installed, more invasive renovations become less risky - it’s been a long old wait to get that in! I plan to Koro off all of the organic matter, regrade the whole surface as far as possible working with just the top 100mm of soil (which contains no stones), import an inch or so of free draining material, add to the drainage up the slope to the north of the square, sand groove areas which have pipe drainage and reset the irrigation heads which have been buried just prior to the work starting. Finally, we will re-seed using 100% rye
before fertilising using Headland C- Complex 4:3:4 at a rate of 55g/m2
. Once
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