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/251524
February 2014 | SportsTurf 29 www.stma.org on plastic for golf greens. The product was about ½-inch thick and basically looked like a grass floor mat. From there I heard of ver- sions of sod grown on plastic being used for some NFL teams as op- posed to traditional thick cut, but supplies were scarce, if non-existent. In 2009 my athletic field construction company, Carolina Green Corp., was asked by The University of Virginia to provide a full field replacement following an in-season U2 concert. The damaged stadium field was replaced following the concert and ready for im- mediate play (to view time-lapse video of field replacement log into http://www.cgcfields.com/CarolinaGreenWebcam.asp and click on UVA Stadium Turf Replacement). We opted to partner with a sod farm to produce that field, and from there developed Game-On! Grass, a sand-base bermuda sod system designed for immediate play situations. Since then the prod- uct, grown at our farm in NC, has been used for in-season turf re- placements by Philadelphia Eagles, Washington Redskins, Tennessee Titans, University of Tennessee, University of Kentucky, University of South Carolina, Florida State University, and the Uni- versity of North Carolina. Most of these clients are able to plan for their sod needs months in advance, therefore much of the Game-On! Grass is reserved and grown under contract. In addition to those orders, we try to specu- late on emergency needs and keep product on hand for smaller or- ders that pop up such as soccer goal mouths, position areas and in front of mound on baseball, lacrosse creases, and anywhere there is need to keep the games going. So the market is growing, and the re- sult is that much more product is available for venues other than the NFL stadiums. THE ROOT BOUND EFFECT The basic principal in sod grown on plastic is exhibited in a pot- bound plant. When you pull the plant out of a container after it has been there too long, all you see is a mass of roots that can hardly be broken. The same thing happens with mature sod grown on plastic. The roots have nowhere to go and as a result form a dense mat. Topdressing is used to build the sod layer up to desired thickness. With our product we aim for 1.5-inch thickness which provides ap- proximately 17 pounds per square foot total weight. One impor- tant characteristic of is that we use sand-base sod as an initial base, and then add topdressing sand typical for sand-base construction, therefore producing a sod that vertically drains and can be left in the field profile without impeding vertical drainage or contaminat- ing the profile. In growing this market we have had to overcome the perception that sod on plastic was a product that would have to be removed and replaced with regular cut sod after the "emergency" was over. Since most installations were in the fall/winter months, questions were raised if the grass would survive and root into the field the fol- lowing year once the bermuda breaks dormancy. This was probably the experience with early thick cut products with heavy soils and much less total root mass. What we have found in all cases is that Game-On! Grass is the best grass on campus the following spring. It is thicker, greener, and quicker to break dormancy, and usually makes the grass beside it look inferior. The ability to control the rootzone profile of seems to be the difference both short term and long term with performance and survivability. In fact, a mid-field replacement in football practice field situation can usually be effec- tive for an entire year cycle, making the additional cost more justifi- able. We also have license agreements with patented protected grasses so we can provide a specific bermuda variety of Game-On! Grass to customers if requested. COMPARE COSTS No doubt SOP is more expensive than regular cut or thick cut sod, possibly anywhere from 2 to three times the cost. Freight costs are three times that of traditional sod due to SOP weighing at least three times that of traditional sod. The material and labor inputs at the farm are intense. Imagine growing anything on plastic in the summer with 1.5" soil layer. Not much margin for error, and no holiday time. So does that make it just an NFL product? Here are some cost justifications I hear from customers. It keeps the field open year round for practice and play. In a situation where there is no additional space or no down time in the program, they can remain open with a few hour delay with SOP. They already