Message Board - Natural Turf: Personal Choice i suppose?
24 Aug 2009 by Mark Jones
it cost us about 250 to get pitch vertidrained. and i have a contact now to slit pitch for about 80quid.
I have about 500 quid budget left for aeration until April next year. Then sponsorship will be renewed with a verti drain in May 2010.
I know any type of aeration is benificial and it may not make a difference which way i do it. but i want to try and get the best out of the budget for aeration as our pitch does get very wet in the wintertime.
I could: vertidrain september/october just before bad winter weather. Then vertidrain in January to take us through to end of season. but no money for slitting in between.
Or
I could - Veridrain september/october. then get pitch slitted 2/3 times throughout playing season! but no money for vertidrain january.
I dont know how you guys would do it?
24 Aug 2009 by Neil Dixon
In January the soil will be quite wet for verti draining, so i would slit / solid tine through October / November before the ground gets saturated, concentrate on keeping a channel between the surface and the deeper verti drain holes.
24 Aug 2009 by Mark Jones
Ok thanx mate
24 Aug 2009 by Aladdin
If it can be afforded then top dress with a suitable sand after your Sept/Oct vertidrain. This should help to keep the surface free draining but it's not cheap I'm afraid.
From the posh end of the room!!
24 Aug 2009 by Mark Jones
Thank you for reply. What is the process of applying the sand into the soil profile? Do contractors apply the sand first then punch sand down with machine. or is sand applied after and brushed down verti drain holes?
I know top dressing the whole pitch is really a end of season renovation job. but if funds assisted would we be able to apply say 30-60 tons to the whole pitch during playing season? September/october!
24 Aug 2009 by Charles Johnson
You can spike after dressing, but either way there is a couple of weeks of harrowing, drag matting, brushing etc to make the sand fully disappear.
Dumped loose you are looking at £20-25 per tonne. How are you going to spread it ?
Bone dry sand and good weather makes a huge difference - even a heavy dew can mess up your efforts to disperse the material quickly and evenly.
I would only risk a light dressing eg about 20 tonnes while in play.
24 Aug 2009 by Aladdin
Mr. Johnson makes some valid points. I'm not sure I'm in total agreement but he will have far more experience than I.
Maybe seek some advice from your contractor being aware of the obvious dangers of that. Or, perhaps, a chat with the Groundsman of your nearest Pro Club?
It does occur to me that, maybe, we are getting ahead of ourselves.
In your opening post, Mr. Grass Man, you state that your pitch gets very wet in the wintertime.
Why?
I assume there is a reasonable drainage system in place.
Do you, perhaps, have a hydrophobic soil?
If, as appears to be the case, it is regularly vertidrained then compaction seems unlikely.
You could try a Water Drop Penetration Test whereby you take a core and allow it to dry naturally for 1 - 2 weeks, then place a droplet of water on the core at various depths and time how long it takes the droplet to soak in. It shouldn't take much longer than 5 seconds. Hopefully there'll be a table with this post to show the time limits.
Hope this is of help.
From the posh end of the room!!
24 Aug 2009 by shams
hi aladdin, could you please forward me in the complete procedure for the water drop penetration test if you have one??sounds interesting...thanks
25 Aug 2009 by Aladdin
Mr. Shams,
My previous computer died and thus I lost the bookmark to the site from which I obtained the table above. I am now unable to find that same site but a quick Google found this:
http://www.golf-developmentclub.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=44:irrigation-issues&catid=29:the-cms&Itemid=53
Hope it is of help.
From the posh end of the room!!
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