After two games at the weekend parts of our pitch had some deep ruts.Should we use a roller to flatten them or just harrow them and maybe use a sisis slitter which has a light roller on the back of it.
The reason why I am asking, is because we were told by the contractor who did our end of season renovations to not use the roller at all on the pitch.
dont roll, harrow !
4 wheels are better than none
Is rolling a quick and easy option?
What made these ruts?
If the ground was so sloppy that sliding tackles dug deep ruts, then whatever machinery you try to get on may just dig itself in a make matters worse.
Rolling compacts soil, making drainage worse. Great if what you want is compact soil - but I doubt that you do. Rollers are rubbish in mud - don't go there.
Harrows move soil around - scraping it from high spots and then dropping it in lower spots. For best results you need to work in different directions, crossing the affected area several times. But if the ground is sloppy then whatever you use to drag the harrows can cut ruts - and the multiple passes will mean that you put ruts in ruts. Harrows are no good in mud.
My advice (without seeing the damage) - repair by hand with a fork and spade.
The ciderman rolls
Last season the previous groundsman rolled the pitch every week through the winter, he has gone now and I am paying the price for it!
My football pitch is on clay and after the recent weather has cut up pretty bad after saturdays game, what i do to repair is walk the pitch replacing the divots then if possible use my 36" mower to consolidate the pitch which i find does a good job, verti draining 3 times a season prevents against compaction and helps drainage, any thing heavier than this will firstly slip and get stuck and will compact your pitch causing more problems.
The groundsman told me he had to use the roller to flatten the ruts.I saw the pitch after the sunday game and there was one rutted area 10ydsx10yds near the centre circle. The pitch was tacky we do have a very fast draining pitch.
When I use ruts I mean more deep boot holes in the bad area.
Would you expect your full time groundsman to repair the divots by hand on his own.Our groundsman has never done this in 35 years should he be doing this?
21 Jan 2010 by panch
As a one off it wont be a problem rolling your pitch. You cant compact saturated soil as the recent cranfield rolling report will tell you. You may cause a problem at the surface by smearing the muddy areas and so causing a capping effect but you have a slitter so this shouldn't be a problem. For me the match officials should be questioned as to why they let games go on if conditions were so bad. We had an inch of rain on saturday coupled with a thaw of three weeks of ice and snow. Of the twenty pitches we look after only one pitch was fit for play.
Good point made about the officals panch, the one i had at our ground last weekend did'nt want the game to go ahead, but due to lack of funds in the club after a quiet start to the year, fixture backlog which would cause problems on the cricket switch over and the players desperate to play i managed to convince him it would be ok. After removing some 600 litres of water over 2 days from the pitch it was heavy to say the least but played well and did'nt cut up anyway near what i thought, after the usual post match repairs and a run over with the mower the pitch is ready to go again, mine might be a unique case but sometimes games can be called a little to soon and credit must go in this case to the ref who was of the old school may i add but wanted a game as much as anybody else the game finished 6 - 3. Obviously it will vary from venue to venue but we have to give grass a little more respect and trust it a little more than we often do, it imo is a hardy specie that will tolerate heavy wear with the correct management and specific times.
The pitch was playable maybe my view of the pitch on sunday was not as bad as it looked,even more reason not to roll it .How do we educate the groundsman into divoting and not using the roller.
light rolling can be part of a good management programme, as long as you counter balance the rolling with aeration.
It is getting this balance and the timing of the operation right that is key.
Rolling is used for adding compaction - which you might want after heavy frost heave for example.
If the ground is badly rutted then it was wet, you won't get it level using a roller unless it is still in a saturate state in which case I think it likely you'll cause yourself more headache for the future by rolling.
Of course there's no bounce, bend your back and put some bloody effort in.
Amateur,
None of us has asked you what type of roller you planned to use.
Is it a light hand roller or a 1 ton plus cricket type roller?
The ciderman rolls
22 Jan 2010 by panch
amateur, I always roll. I have rollers on my slitter, rollers on my mower, roller on the quadraplay and on my vertidrain.I also use a small sisis roller which weighs about 400kg and is six foot wide. I personaly don't like chain harrows for my pitches apart from using them for end of season renovation although many others use nothing else. Every pitch is different and so what works well for one may not work for others, just keep the bomag120 away.
have i missed a page somewhere....??....how does "rolling" fill in the "deep ruts"...???......ive always been led to believe that rollers are compacting tools and thats it...there is no way you are going to remove a rut just by rolling... 
Ticky supports British farmers...!!
27 Jan 2010 by Mike
Ticky - I had this exact scenario yesterday!
A local club asked me to roll their pitch, which I politely refused to commit to without seeing the pitch. Upon inspecting the pitch, I had to further my concerns regarding rolling it as it was basically a quagmire... and that's putting it kindly. Some ruts were getting on for 5 inches deep. The chap who wanted me to roll the pitch was adamant that the pitch needed rolling to fill in the ruts - I only managed to get my message across to him by explaining that it would be impossible to consolidate his pitch down 5 inches. I am genuinely amazed at some people's reasoning - even some of my bosses think we only roll the pitches in the winter, and we haven't even got a pitch roller!!
Mike
Our groundmans harrows the pitches every week sometimes twice on the rugby pitch ,after three nights of training. He also slits the the pitches once a week.We have a 33hp tractor, does the tractor compact the ground with that amount of use?
Divoting is the heart and soul of the groundsmans job on the soil based pitch, sounds like this chap just wanted an easy life and a striped pitch without the most important aspect included, a bit of hard graft.
Divoting can never be understimated, it gives a groundsman a good close look at the whole surface of the pitch, puts the grass back on top facing the sky :-). And ensures when a cut or roll is to follow, and when the lines are marked, a pitch is again in a1 condition. ( well this is half the story but sure you know the rest)
In all honesty though Paul, how many recreational soccer groundsman have the time to divot ?
amateur, of course using the tractor helps to create compaction, but probably not as much as your players create training three times a week and know doubt playing matches on it at week ends.
He is trying to undo the damage that you have caused by playing on it, that is why he is the groundsman.
Our groundsman is full time 38hours per week so I feel he should have time to divot.
My point on the use of the tractor is that if he using the tractor so much maybe he does not need to use the roller.
We have to train on pitch because we have no other areas to use
38 hours is helpful, but to divot after every training session and match is asking an awful lot on your own. What other duties does he have to carry out ?
We a rugby pitch and football pitch, the rugby pitch is the one we train on ( due to the floodlights) .Half the rugby pitch becomes the cricket outfield.
The football pitch is not trained on and I would like our groundsman to divot that pitch, the whole of the football pitch is part of the cricket outfield
His other duties are sweeping the changing rooms, and maintaining the cricket square.
31 Jan 2010 by Mike
38 hours to maintain a rugby pitch, a football pitch and a cricket square is no joke. Much of your groundsman's productivity will be dependent on what equipment is available to him, the nature of the soil, the amount of use, and perhaps most critically, the weather. In circumstances such as yours, divoting is very uncommon, simply because it is such a time consuming exercise.
I recently gave some advice to a local club regarding divots on their football pitch. My advice was simple - find the cause of the excessive amount of divots, and look to remedy that. Once you have tackled that area, which might be as simple as adjusting some maintenance practices here and there, then you should see a reduction in the amount of divots in the first place. Be proactive in your maintenance by aiming to improve drainage, root growth, sward density, soil profile and such like. If your groundsman doesn't know how to do this, send him on some courses (pitchcare and the iog both run very good courses). Once you have improved the general quality of the pitch, you may find that a great deal of divoting won't be needed.
If this approach still doesn't deliver the results that you are aiming for, you will have to look at ways to increase your groundsman's productivity. Assuming that he is maximizing the time he has available to him, and he is a diligent worker, you could look to give him overtime for divoting, look to your junior section to see if you can give the responsibility of divoting to the juniors as part of their club duties, you can look for more productive machines which will free up your groundsman's time etc.
My advice in the first instance would be to sit down with your groundsman, and explain your feelings, ask him what support he needs to meet the criteria which you set out, and then set about helping him to achieve the said criteria. With all due respect to you, many of the groundsmen at small clubs have a very difficult time, and don't get enough support from the clubs - i'm not saying that this is the case with you, but sometimes a helping hand and a sympathetic ear will go a long way towards achieving your goals. As an example, if your groundsman come to you and said "I can't keep up with the workload on our cricket square because the nature of our loam is very labour intensive", what would you say? Would you consider that a 5 track square based on Surrey 125 loam could take up to 50 hours per week to maintain properly? Given these circumstances, would you say that it is a fair request to ask your groundsman to divot for x amount of hours per week when he is only employed for 38 hours per week? You need to establish what your requirements are regarding pitch performance, and then you need to put the infrastructure in place to deliver the results you crave, and your groundsman will be the best person to advise you as to what is needed at your club... after all, he is the guy that works on the ground, so he will be far better placed than anyone on a message board to give advice based on his experience of the specifics of your ground.
Mike
2 Feb 2010 by Maesglas Football Club.
Not that I am expert but to harrow pitch could possibly make more of a mess ..possibly dig up the worse divots,
2 Feb 2010 by Mike
Maesglas - harrowing can be a very effective practice in circumstances such as these. The trick is to use the smooth side of the harrow i.e. tines pointing upwards.
Mike
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