Message Board - Cricket: Repair work dry & hard rest of square soft and damp.
2 Jun 2011 by Greg Spence
In view of the little amount of rain we have had I cannot understand why all of the repair work I have done with surrey loam is really hard when pretty much the rest of our square is so soft and a bit damp.( Checked with key test)
We have now been using surrey loam to top soil the whole square for the last 5 years.
I realise having some grass on the square will limit it's drying compared to bare repaired areas but not to this extreme.
Any thoughts would be very welcome especially as this may well have some baring on the amount of moss we are faced with each season and the fact that our wickets are slow.
Greg
2 Jun 2011 by Ryan
do you have large saddles ?
2 Jun 2011 by Greg Spence
Do you mean is the square higher than the outfield.
If you do the answer is no the square is at the same level.
Greg
2 Jun 2011 by Grassman2011
Probably thatch. Take a core out, photo it and post it on here.
3 Jun 2011 by Willard
Take out a core and have a look. Get several cores mixed together & send away for a soil test: sand, silt, clay.
Why guess? When you actually need facts.
Always Looking For New Ideas
3 Jun 2011 by Greg Spence
I can understand why thatch could be the problem but you need rain and we've only had a days worth at most in the last 6 weeks.
3 Jun 2011 by jlawrence
a soft square ? With the weather we 'ce had recently I can get enoguh water on to keep my square soft for about 30 minutes and that's it.
If you've had next to no rain in the last 6 weeks how much water are you managing to get on the surface ?
Of course there's no bounce, bend your back and put some bloody effort in.
3 Jun 2011 by Greg Spence
I've fully watered the square once this season and that was done because I put fertiliser down based on a forecast of rain which never happened.
I hold my hands up and accept that I'm not looking after the square as I should but it takes a good 1.5 hours to effectively water a strip and any less time in this weather would be an absolute waste of time.
I'm a volunteer and am self employed and have made it perfectly clear to everyone in our club, we don't play league cricket, that I'm not prepared to spend 9 hours a week watering the square and not surprisingly no one else appears to want to either.
Our strip actually plays very well and we regularly score around 200 runs but it's slow and hard work so any improvements I can make I will if possible.
Greg
4 Jun 2011 by barry glynn
If it plays ok and you cant spend anymore time on it, why worry?
Mind you if youve only watered it once, i dont know how its playing well!
What do I do? I just cut the grass.
4 Jun 2011 by Greg Spence
I guess it depends on your definition of playing well.It isn't dangerous, there are very few if any shooters, even see these on top grounds, and there's a reasonable bounce.It's just slow compared to some other local tracks. We are a village side in North Devon and only a few years ago didn't have any junior teams but we now have 3. We don't play league cricket at the moment but this is our plan.We currently only have 6 strips but may be able to extend our ground.
I'm looking forward to a time when maybe there will be more resource available to do more work on the ground especially once we are in a league.
I really would appreciate some ideas as to why our track is still soft in view of above situation.
Thanks to everyone so far for their inputs
Greg
5 Jun 2011 by jlawrence
My bet (as Grassman's) would be thatch. However, without water (either hose or rain) there's no way anything can be damp - unless of course you've got a leak in something under the square.
I think you need to get a core taken out and see what's what.
Of course there's no bounce, bend your back and put some bloody effort in.
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