First how do people maximise the growth of grass at the ends? How much rolling should a strip get before a game? How often should a strip get watered? Finally what's the order of work during the week prior to a game on the Saturday?
All your suggestions would be greatly appreciated and will help towards hopefully improving our square.
1. Germination Sheet does a good job
2. Couple of hours max, normally during the week or when the wicket is soft enough to press your thumb in and leave a mark. Most of the rolling should be pre-season. Rolling a hard wicket is pointless, that's why groundsman don't tend to roll it on match days - it should already be hard by then. Alot of them use to park the roller up by the wicket on a match day just to impress the captains!
3. Watering is a tricky one as it could depend on the soil content, water table, weather conditions. I don't think any one rule applies but once you have finished with a strip a good soak is required (unless it's already raining).
4. My old man who was a groundsman - cut and roll it on a tuesday for a couple of hours and then maybe cut it once or twice more before the weekend. I think most of his time was spent filling in footholes! Another groundsman use to cut the wicket 3 times in the week before the match, the idea being to bleach the grass and reduce the grass coverage - in turn drying the soil underneath quicker. If you have a rake/broom attachment then it's a good idea to do it prior to cutting to get as much moss/weed out of the deck as possible and make the grass stand up for cutting.
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Topic: Square maintenance (Read 26200 times)