May 15th, 2018 by Chris Chapman

Part 1 – Maintaining Your Sports Pitch in Summer

Sports pitches are great for the whole community For many of us, sports are a great way to bring our communities together. While they have obvious benefits for health and fitness, it’s hard to understate the social impact sports can have on children and adults alike. Community sports pitches for schools, children’s sports camps, and Sunday league teams are an opportunity for people of all backgrounds to come together. If you’re a groundsman or woman who works on one of these pitches, you should be proud of your pitch and all the good work you do for the community. That means you want your pitch to be great to look at and safe to play on all year round. As we’re sure you know, there’s a little more to it than simply breaking out the lawnmower every few weeks! If you want to know how you can save time and money and still make your pitch look better than ever, read on. We’ve put together a simple month-by-month guide that you can follow to care for your sports pitch all year round, starting with the summer months.

Artificial Grass and Astroturf

Artificial grass is low maintenance, not no maintenance! Before we start on the month-by-month breakdown, we need to include a quick word about artificial grass. Astroturf is becoming increasingly common in sports pitches across the country as it’s just so low maintenance. Note that we said low maintenance, not no maintenance! If you’re thinking of switching to a full or partial artificial grass pitch, there are a few different things you should know. As maintaining an artificial pitch isn’t dictated by what time of year it is, we’ll put all that in a separate article, but the short version is you’ll need some artificial grass cleaner and a decent leaf blower for basic everyday maintenance. There is a whole other debate currently raging on about whether artificial grass causes more or less injuries than the real thing, but we’re staying out of that one! With that in mind, continue reading for a month-by-month breakdown on caring for real turf sports pitches.

Caring for Turf in May

Ok, so May isn’t technically summer. However, if you want to properly maintain your pitch through summer, you’ll need to start preparing for it before then! May is when the football and rugby seasons wind down, but it’s before the kids break up for summer, so if you’ve got an all-purpose community pitch May is the best time to start preparing.

Step 1: Scarifying and Spiking

Scarifying stops grass roots from becoming compacted Spike your turf with a garden fork to relieve compaction in the soil. This will help make sure you get a much fuller coverage of grass as it gives the roots room to grow. You should also scarify your turf after you mow it to get rid of any old, dead grass and assorted debris that’ll be covering it.

Step 2: Sow New Seeds

You can be the best groundsman or woman in the world, but if your pitch sees a lot of use you’ll eventually need to sow some new seeds to fill bare patches! Touchlines, penalty spots, and try lines often get the most abuse on football and rugby pitches, and as May tends to be a little quieter for those sports, you can give any new seeds on your pitch some time to grow. Use new seeds rather than older seeds, as new seeds will grow a little quicker. Make sure you feed the new grass with iron sulphate to help it grow into soft, lush, green blades, and water it regularly. Iron sulphate will also help deter the pests and diseases that spread around turf at this time of year.

Step 3: Topdressing

If topdressing is too expensive, you can always use soil from your hollow-coring and scarifying To turn your playing surface into a smooth, green carpet, you may want to topdress your lawn. Topdressing is adding a mixture of organic material, sand, and soil to the surface of your lawn after you’ve aerated it, which will help reduce the buildup of thatch and old grass, keep your pitch smooth, and protect any new grass you’ve sown. It’ll increase the quality of your soil and give you healthier grass! Topdressing is more complicated than it sounds because you need to make sure you have the right mixture to suit your soil. If you’ve got very sandy soil, then you’ll want a topdressing mixture with less sand in it. If you’ve got clay-heavy soil, add a little more sand. Spread about a quarter of an inch of topdressing across your whole pitch. The downside of topdressing is that it gets very expensive when you’re covering a whole pitch. Luckily, you only really need to do it about once a year, but if it’s still too much for your budget, you can hollow-core your turf (like scarifying, except you cut out slightly larger cylindrical “cores” from your turf) and spread that soil over your pitch instead.

Caring for Turf in June

After putting in all that effort to prepare your pitch in May, June is a little easier. You should really start to see some results around this time!

Step 1: Mow it Regularly

Keep your grass regularly mowed, but don’t have the blades too low. It’s better to leave the grass slightly longer and mow it more regularly than to cut it too low and end up with bare patches! Mowing helps promote grass growth and improves airflow around the turf, so regularly mowing is always a good idea.

Step 2: Fertilise

Iron sulphate kills moss, deters pests and gives you greener grass! Help your grass grow lush and green with some more iron sulphate. You can combine this with phosphorous, nitrogen, and potassium (but not too much!) to really help keep your grass fighting fit. This will help ward off the pests that like to make a home in your pitch around this time of year. Make sure you’re watering all your fertiliser down into the soil properly, and generally keep your grass well-watered to avoid drought.

Caring for Turf in July

July is when the schools break up for summer, so even though the football season is over, sports camps, summer schools, and children’s teams might well be making use of your pitch! It’s also the month when people really start longing to get outdoors and play some sport, so if you hire out your pitches for casual use you might well see your business picking up.

Step 1: Careful Inspection

Your grass is always at risk from pests and diseases, but that risk is at its highest in July. It’s the height of summer, when a lot of pests are out laying eggs, and when higher temperatures make it harder to keep grass hydrated. Regular checking for pests, diseases, and weeds is always important, but even more so in July! Make a point of thoroughly checking grass while you’re out mowing, scarifying, and spiking it.

Step 2: Check Your Irrigation

Making sure your watering systems work properly is especially vital in the hot summer months. Try and water half of your pitch every night, and alternate between halves. Once a patch of turf dries out, it can be really difficult to get your grass to absorb the water again, so it’s best to make sure it’s constantly wet enough.

Step 3: Apply Fungicide

Fungal infections can lead to blotchy patches of dead grass Hot and humid weather means that July is, unfortunately, fungal season! Apply a good fungicide if you think there’s even a chance your pitch shows symptoms of a fungal infection. It’s always best to apply a fungicide as soon as possible, or even before the symptoms start to show if you’re really concerned, as a full-blown fungal outbreak on your pitch can be a nightmare to get rid of. Symptoms to look out for are yellow, orange, or brown blotches appearing on your turf. This may be a symptom of Red Thread, one of the most common fungal grass infections. Look closely at any unusual patches of your turf to see if you can get a better idea of the problem. Red Thread often results in stringy, sticky, red structures that grow on your grass (hence the name), so be sure to apply some fungicide and nitrogen right away to kill the spores off. You might also notice stringy white spores that look like cotton wool gathering on your pitch. Again, a good fungicide will sort this out if you catch it early enough.

Caring for Turf in August

August is one of the busiest times of year for your pitch. Not only are the kids still off school, but also the football and rugby seasons will kick off again! This means the work you’ve put in over the summer will really start to pay off now.

Step 1: All of the Above!

Football and rugby season kicks off in August, so be ready! The only step you have to follow in August is to repeat the steps you’ve been taking all summer, only do them even more regularly! Spike and scarify your grass you keep it aerated, mow it a little more regularly to promote healthy growth and ensure you get a good flow of air around your pitch and keep it watered so you have a smooth, slick playing surface. August is all about the basics; get those right, and your pitch will be able to cope with the use it gets. While summer technically does continue into September, this period is more about preparing your pitch for autumn rather than maintaining it for the summer. This means we’ll put our guide for September into our autumnal guide to caring for your sports pitch!