The Isolated Grassroots Groundsman Part 3

Chris Johnson Groundsman blog

Wow that was a full-on day yesterday for the Isolated groundsman covering over 25k steps in a push to cram in key tasks ahead of the anticipated much needed rain.

Both squares were verticut and mowed, filling more wheelie bins than I care to remember. Sadly, we don’t have the luxury of a tractor and trailer.

I also added a feed to our second square, the end result was both squares look good, ready for a decent downpour.

 As the weeks go by, I continue to learn lessons and gather useful advice, I spent too much time last week watering the main square to dampen it to receive the fertiliser. That was totally futile as it dried too quickly.

Fertilising

The problem was I couldn’t fertilise because of the high wind so I thought getting water out there was the best option.

The lesson after eventually fertilising last week is the extremities at each end of the square need watering much more because the feed hadn’t soaked in there, not helped by the saddles.

We have 16 strips on the main square which is hard to water entirely with such low pressure using our perforated hose.

Normally I would fertilise before rain, but no rain seemed on the horizon this time last week, perhaps I should have waited!

Verticutting the Square

While I’ve already verticut twice before in April it’s clear the weed growth this year seems worse and almost calls for a weekly verticut.

To think the heaps that’s come off the squares would have been there in past years, just vegetating to accumulate thatch.

Up to last June we’d hardly ever used the verticutter and its subsequent use seemed to improve the pitch performance.

Another learning point is the mowing height, in the past one of my colleagues cut the square with the rotary, but by trimming to 18 mm with our Dennis FT610 it looks so much better.

The fact the leaf of the grass absorbs most moisture is something I just didn’t realise before.

Both squares look fabulous, but we should have been close to the tenth game of the season by now.

Keeping up motivation is tough.

Chris

If you missed my last blog check it out – https://turfcareblog.com/the-isolated-groundsman-part-two-chris-johnson/