SportsTurf

October 2011

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.

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FieldScience | Dr. Dave Minner Athletic field cultivation & topdressing: How much field area does your program actually impact? >> Amount of sand required and area impacted for various coring and topdressing programs. your coring program. Did you realize that using a 3/4-inch hollow tine more than doubles the area of the field that is impacted compared to a 1/2-inch tine? Let's suppose that your goal is to U *sand needed to fill holes + leave some on surface (ton/1000sqft) % area removed each pass Number of passes with aerifier to impact a given area of the field *Assume sand weighs 1.45 ton/cu. yd. and there is 100% efficiency on subsequent passes with aerifier. >> Topdressing and amending sands for "native soil" athletic fields. Size Sieve Size (mesh) Particle Diameter (mm) Ideal % by wt. Acceptable %by wt. remove 50% of the field area to a depth of your aerifier tine. The field is predominately clay that you want re- moved from the field and replaced with sand. Removing cores on 3-inch centers will require 22 passes over the field using 1/2-inch hollow tines in order to meet your goal of removing 50% of the clay soil. At two corings per year this would require 11 years and that might be too long to wait. By using 3/4-inch tines you can achieve the same goal in 10 passes over the field. If you increase your aerification and topdressing to three times per year you can achieve your goal of replacing 50% of the surface in nearly 3 years. In the case of soil modification, the most effective modification, greatest change in physical properties with the least amount of added sand, has been obtained from sands in the very coarse to coarse size range. Rounded sands that are narrowly graded and have a co- efficient of uniformity less than two are preferred. Select uniform coarse sand (80% of the particles between 1.0 and 0.5 mm and 90% between 2.0 and 0.5 mm) to maximize large pore space when modifying native soil fields high in silt and clay. Mixtures of predomi- nately coarse and medium sand, with minimal fine sand, are best for amend- ing native soils. Adding very fine sand or silt and clay does little to improve soils already high in silt, clay, and very fine sand. Golf course topdressing sands containing at least 60% in the Mixtures of predominately coarse and medium sand, with minimal fine sand, are best for amending native soils. 20 SportsTurf | October 2011 www.sportsturfonline.com SE THE FOLLOWING tables to determine how much of the field area is ac- tually being impacted by By Core space in. Holes per sq. ft Tine dia. in. Tine depth in.

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