Lull in games at Old Traffords
Lull in games at Old Trafford
We haven't played at home since March 23rd, when we were beaten 1-0 by Middlesbrough.
Since then we have played away through Easter and the first leg of the Champions League.
We have had some beautiful weather up here in Manchester with afternoon temperatures reaching 17 and 18 degrees. The temperatures have fallen to 4 and 5 degrees at night but we have growth and the roots in the new turf have now taken hold in the Strath Ayr root zone system.
My problem is keeping nutrients in the Strath Ayr system, my reasons for using a liquid feed is that I get the food directly into the plant via leaf take up.
We have given the new turf two liquid feeds of low Nitrogen (4:5:20) and trace elements, the first was on March 26th and then again this week on the 3rd.
As we haven't had the games, I have reduced our mowing to every other day, and due to the dry weather I have irrigated the pitch to keep it moist on the days we haven't mowed.
The grass looks healthy and we have a thick sward, every time we cut now, we are taking a lot of clippings off the pitch.
We are marking the pitch today so we don't lose our lines, but we will cut the pitch tomorrow and then again on Monday.
Deportivo will arrive and train on the pitch on Tuesday so we will leave the grass longer for that, and depending on the weather conditions will cut the pitch after their training session on Tuesday evening.
On Wednesday morning we will double cut the pitch in both directions with the Allett Buffalos to get a striking patterned effect. This will be followed with an over mark of the pitch and then irrigation, to get some uniformity of moisture through the profile (top 100mm) and grease up the surface.
Hopefully the pitch will be perfect for the team to progress to the Semi-finals of the Champions League.
I am now looking forward to the end of season renovations. With the root zone I have, it makes it very difficult to retain nutrients in the profile below the root system in the turf. I will be looking at hollow coring and adding some Rigby Taylor 'Profile' to help with the retention of nutrients.
In addition we will also solid spike the pitch and top dress with around fifty tonnes of Rufford root zone mix (a similar mix to the root zone profile I already have).