If the budget allows for two feeds, August would be a great time to apply Novatec Premium (15-3-20 plus TE). This will slowly release nutrients throughout autumn.
How to Best Maintain Football Fields during and after the Season
Fall in America means football season. Without careful planning and execution, fields can become unsafe for play. Below is a list of “do’s” and “don’ts” that will aid in keeping your football fields safe and playable throughout the season.
Do
Do mow
Continue to mow into the fall season to stimulate plant grow. It encourages recovery from the use and abuse fields take during football season. Mowing will also remind the roots to grow, which makes for healthy grass plants.
Do overseed
Spread seed after games and practices to build the seed bank. By spreading after games in the heavy wear areas (typically between the hashmarks on a field between the 20 yard lines), there will be new plants growing constantly to fill in the void areas left by constant abuse.
Do continue to provide water
Grass plants need water to grow. Many times people try to let football fields dry out so games aren’t played in mud. It’s important to be strategic with irrigation to allow those plants to continue to receive the moisture they need to actively grow throughout the season.
Do control traffic and wear
To make fields safer for play, constantly think about managing the amount of traffic and wear we place on them during a short period of time. The team, band and cheerleaders all want to use the game field for practices. Work with coaches, directors and leaders to move the wear around to different locations on the field so they don’t form unwanted wear on the playing surface.
Do topdress
Light topdressing of sand or topsoil, depending on the root zone make-up, will add protection to the crown of the plant, which will allow that plant to grow through the toughest traffic during the fall football season. Do not add more than an a quarter inch of topdressing on a healthy stand of grass.
Don’t
Do not forget about your fertilization plan
Continue to provide your turf plants with the food they need to stay healthy. Research has shown the most important fertilization of the year is in the late fall. This application provides essential nutrients to help the plant endure during the winter.
Do not stop aerification
While pulling cores isn’t always possible during the football season, there are many other types of aerification that will not disrupt play. Aerification relieves compaction in the soil and allows roots to grow more abundantly, making the turf plants healthier.
Do not worry about weed control in the fall
Fall is a fantastic time to establish new plants. Chemically controlling weeds may limit the growing window for new seedlings. Use the spring timeframe to control those hard-to-get broadleaf weeds.
Do not forget to plan your renovations
Be sure to plan now for in-season and spring renovations. If you are going to be fixing grade or resodding areas, take advantage of the window after the season and before winter.
Do not forget to winterize your irrigation system
Frozen pipes in the winter make for a messy spring. When the time is right in your area to drain and winterize, do it. Don’t create more work for yourself in the spring by not winterizing your irrigation pump and lines.
Selecting football pitch grass seed
As a seed mix, we recommend using 100% Perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne). The off-season window – during which football pitch repairs can be carried out – is often very short. Perennial ryegrass germinates well at the prevailing soil temperatures in late May/early June and establishes quickly, making it the ideal grass for football renovations in the UK.
There are other grass species that offer good wear tolerance, the main candidate being Smooth-stalked meadow grass (Poa pratensis). This species is very hardwearing but requires a higher soil temperature than Perennial ryegrass to germinate and establishes more slowly. Therefore, it is not effective for completing a football pitch renovation within the limited timeframe of 10-12 weeks.
However, Smooth-stalked meadow grass can be a useful option for football pitch repair when bought as turf and is sometimes mixed with Perennial ryegrass for this purpose. It is also sometimes used on new-build pitches where the time constraints of a renovation period do not apply.
The use of modern amenity grasses of high germination and purity is of paramount importance if rapid repair is to be achieved. Seeding should be carried out using a mixture of purpose-bred varieties of perennial ryegrasses which are highly rated in table S1 of the BSPB recommended list. A mixture such as A20 Premier Ryesport is recommended.
The choice of grass mixture is, however, only part of a seasonal football pitch maintenance schedule. The maintenance of good drainage and the relief of surface compaction are equally important.
Creating a new football pitch
Preparation and drainage
A good drainage system is of paramount importance if the pitch is to sustain high usage. Drainage specifications vary widely depending on the individual site conditions. But whatever the design, it should be capable of removing excess water either by natural rainfall or irrigation.
A typical system might have main drains, formed on a grid-type system at a depth of 450-900mm deep. This is to avoid damage from football pitch maintenance machinery. The distance between drains will vary from 2.5 m on heavy soils to 12.5 m on sand. A fall of 100-200 mm is considered ideal.
Surface drainage
Open, well-textured topsoil will help to remove surface water. A mixture ratio of three parts sand to one part topsoil is ideal. Slit drains at 300-600 mm centres, back-filled with sand, to a depth to suit underlying soil layers will give rapid movement of surface water. Slit drains should run at right angles to the existing drainage system.
Benefits gained from the above are:
- Better playing conditions
- Improved traction, quality and durability of the turf
- Better aeration
- Quick drying of the soil improves soil temperatures
- Improved root development
- Better soil structure
- Early growth
Sowing football pitch grass seed
The first step is to ensure you are sowing the football pitch at an appropriate time of year when soil temperatures are conducive to rapid uniform germination. It cannot be overstated how important rapid uniform germination is.
A sward that is slow to establish due to either low temperatures or lack of moisture will never be as healthy as a sward that establishes quickly. Plants that struggle during establishment are more prone to disease and the propensity for weed competition is far greater.
If sowing Perennial ryegrass seed, the optimum soil temperature for rapid establishment is 10-20°c, with the warmer end of that scale seeing the most rapid germination. In most years, this makes late April to mid-June the perfect window for establishing a football pitch. If establishing later in the year for use the following spring/early summer, then sowing in mid-August to late September is the window to aim for.
Not all full-size football pitches are the same size. FIFA’s recommendation is 105 m long by 68 m wide and most pitches are approximately those dimensions, meaning a typical pitch is 7,150 m². At a recommended sowing rate of 50 g/m², for new sowing, you will require 360 kg of football grass seed.
When sowing the seed, it must be evenly sown and for this purpose, a specialist seeder should be used. The correct quantity of seed should be sown across the pitch in two or three directions.
There are many effective types of seed drill, including disc seeders that open a slit in the soil, drop the seed in and close the gap behind it and drills that create numerous holes or dimples, drop the seed into those and close those gaps.
They can all work very well as they put the seed into the soil at the correct depth (approximately 10 -15 mm in the case of perennial ryegrass). Plus, they close and firm the soil behind them, thus ensuring good seed-to-soil contact, which is imperative to ensure uniform seed establishment.
When grass seed is sown at the correct depth and the soil is firmed around it in this way, then the two factors that are crucial for germination, moisture and warmth are held around the seed. Emerging seedlings also have a firm anchor point in the soil.
Grow-in (first 12-16 weeks)
Provided the grass is growing strongly, the first cut can take place when the plants are 50-60 mm in height, with the height being taken down to 35-40 mm after two or three cuts. 35-40 mm is a good height to maintain the pitch during the grow-in, with a view to cutting down to a playing height of 25-30 mm when the season starts.
An application of a balanced slow-release fertiliser such as GSR Tri-Phase will act as a base feed for the grow-in with extra applications of liquid or compound granular fertilisers being applied as and when necessary.
Closed season renovations and overseeding existing football pitches
Longer playing seasons and busier fixtures lists mean the renovation period is getting shorter, with a brief, eight-week closed season not uncommon. Therefore, immediately after the last game of the season, renovation work should start with scarification, then spiking or slitting to improve aeration, root development and drainage.
Hollows, damaged areas and goal mouths should be levelled with loam or sand. It may be necessary to topdress the entire pitch with sand, brushed into the surface to restore levels.
Football pitch overseeding should be carried out with a mixture of 100% perennial ryegrass at a recommended rate of 20-25 g m/². A seed drill should be used for this as the seed will be inserted into the soil exactly where it needs to be.
Everyone has their preferences here; dimple-type seed drills can be effective but are more dependent upon soil conditions being favourable. If it’s too dry, seeds may not be sown at the correct depth or ‘tucked’ into the soil adequately. In recent years, disc seeders have come to the fore because they tend to produce more consistent results.
Once new seedlings have established, a slow-release fertiliser with a high nitrogen content such as GSR Tri-Phase 18-3.5-8 should be applied.
If a pitch is in very poor condition and where the budget allows, an option is to ‘Koro off’ the surface of the pitch. This football ground maintenance practice is now widely used on elite-level pitches. Using a machine called a Koro Field top maker, the surface of the pitch is heavily scarified to remove up to 80% of the existing surface.
The pitch can then be aerated, topdressed and resown at a rate of 40-50g/m². This method is great for removing a build-up of thatch and undesirable weeds and grasses while refreshing the surface.
Although not practical on an annual basis on all but elite pitches, it is perhaps an option to re-invigorate a pitch every now and then. This should not be seen as a magic wand, though. Some surface issues like moss and broadleaved weed ingression can be caused by underlying issues such as poor drainage and these would need addressing to solve those issues in the long term.
