SportsTurf provides current, practical and technical content on issues relevant to sports turf managers, including facilities managers. Most readers are athletic field managers from the professional level through parks and recreation, universities.
Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/113699
FieldScience Communicating and coordinating with your turfgrass supplier ahead of time can give you the best product when you need it. This may allow for custom applications, and if the scenario is such that the new turfgrass must match up with the existing, this ensures a high success rate. Also, whenever possible, have someone from your organization at the farm, confirming and verifying the thickness of harvest. We know how we define the thickness of the turf at harvest. Make certain that your expectations are being met also. If this is not possible, ask for a sample test cut to be sent ahead of the delivery date so removal, ground prep and grading will precise when the turf arrives. JOHN MARMAN, West Coast Turf, Capistrano Beach, CA "We often try to talk customers out of buying thick-cut sod," says Marman. "If you can stay off a field for 3-4 weeks you can get away without thick-cut. But if you have an application where there's a real need to get on the field right away, for example the area in front of a pitcher's mound or a soccer goalmouth in mid-season, that's a different situation and you need a Band-Aid. "If you are considering thick-cut sod be aware that putting it over a coarse sand base is inviting the creation of a perched water table. At West Coast Turf, in the Coachella Valley, we grow our turf on anywhere from 78-94% sand, so this isn't as big a deal for our customers, since it's a finer material underneath the sod," Marman 16 SportsTurf | March 2013 said. "Of course most sod has more peat or clay, which holds more water, and if you don't work the repaired area by aerifying, you might end up with root rot or black layer in that section of your field. "So while putting down thick-cut will get you through the season, as soon as you have the chance you need to core aerify with ½ inch hollow tines. You want to remove as much material as possible then backfill with sand, to get the sand down into the soil layer and create sand channels," says Marman. "This area must be managed well if you want this 'Band-Aid' to work long term. Many times these areas wear out anyway despite turf managers' best efforts and you will have to totally renovate. You have to get in after the season and harvest out a layer then backfill with native material, and then go to a thin sod to get the roots going, assuming your soil isn't too heavy with clay or silt. "Another application for thick-cut sod is in specific applications such as one-time events on a synthetic turf field, when for example a World Cup or MLS soccer match is scheduled. You put in a barrier and place the sod on top of it. Of course the event must generate enough revenue to cover this cost but the money is well spent in protecting the highly paid athletes," says Marman. For these one-time or several games only situations, you can get away with 1 inch of soil profile; bigger is better, especially for football I recommend 1 ¼ or 1 ½ inch but we've done Fiesta Bowls and Rose Bowls with only 1 inch [soil profile only, not including the thatch layer or the grass itself ]. "Ideally customers will let us know where their fields will be at a certain time in the future so we can have what they want ready but most of the time it's more of a '911 fire drill' where the field was failing on a Sunday and they are calling on Monday asking how fast we can get sod on their field. We are highly reactive to disaster situations," says Marman. "Grant Trenbeath of the Arizona Diamondbacks has the opposite situation. We maintain an entire second field's worth of sod for Chase Field on Grant's spec sand and custom grow it to match perfectly to what's on his field. Mature plants guarantee we will have the product he wants," he says. "After rollout there are air pockets or other incomplete uniformity is most cases. Lots of customers like us to use a solid 42-inch blade on a Bucyrus machine to cut the turf and this length combined with the vibrations from cutting creates a flex in the middle of the blade, and the roll becomes convex or concave," Marman www.sportsturfonline.com