30 SportsTurf | October 2014 www.sportsturfonline.com
Facility & Operations | By Stacie Zinn Roberts
I
t's late November 2013 in Fort Morgan, CO and
the crew at Graff 's Turf Farms stands in a field of
HGT Bluegrass waiting for the frost to melt away
from the tips of the grass blades. Once the shiny
layer of white frost, the telltale signs of morning cold,
have disappeared, the crew jumps on their harvester to
peel ¾-inch of sod and soil from the sandy surface of
the farm field. The 4-foot-wide strip of turf runs up a
conveyor belt and rolls around and around and around,
until a 75-foot-long strip of sod is tightly wound into
what is known in the sod production industry as a
big roll.
From there, the big rolls of turf are packaged onto a
climate-controlled truck so that they won't freeze during
the trek from Colorado to St. Louis, MO. A short 36
Sodding a Seeded variety
gets MLB teams up & running quickly
Busch Stadium,
home of the St. Louis
Cardinals
Graff's Turf Farms
during the harvest of the
HGT Bluegrass.
