C
an you cut the soccer field
lower for tomorrow's game?
The answer is "it depends."
Mechanically, it is rather
simple to lower the height of cut and
mow the grass lower. However, under
certain situations there can be some
devastating consequences. For exam-
ple, on Friday you lowered the mower
from 2 to 1 inch and cut the Kentucky
bluegrass/perennial ryegrass soccer
field in preparation for a weekend
youth tournament. Daytime tem-
peratures have been consistently in
the 90s, there are signs of drought
stress and it's been a month since the
blades were last sharpened. The play-
ers and coaches that weekend had
great comments about the playability.
Over the next 2 weeks, you notice the
turf is not recovering as you expect.
The stand is thinning and plants are
no longer actively growing. Teams
continue to use the field and plants
in the high use areas become desic-
cated and the leaves pulverized. The
areas become bare. It finally rains,
but it's just before a game, and the
foot traffic turns the bare areas into
a muddy mess.
The purpose of this article is to
explain how mowing affects turf and
22 SportsTurf | April 2015 www.sportsturfonline.com
How mowing affects turf
■ By Dr. Douglas linDe
set the height of cut within the plant's tolerance range.
Field SCienCe
scalping exacerbates the stress created by mowing.
