A Long Winter

February 2018

A Long Winter

Just when I thought things were loking up and we were possibly heading into an early spring , the “Beast from the east” struck bringing snow and -7 temperatures to East Anglia.

When snow is forecast, it fills most Groundsmen with dread because of the uncertainty of being able to fulfill training sessions and even match fixtures if the snow falls at the wrong time. 
A bit of planning helps, putting out covers ahead of time so at least there is a chance of getting a pitch cleared for the mornings training session. If snow falls on the grass, it is difficult to clear satisfactorily as it will clog up around the footballers studs and make traction difficult. How we envy the Greenkeeper who goes home early on a snow day - course closed! Football pitches don’t close you just need to find a way around the problem.

Under soil heating is a great benefit, but it isn't available to everyone, including us at ITFC. For the training ground, black frost sheets are used and are ok to about -4. If there are a run of consecutive nights of below freezing temperatures, they will start to struggle.
Towards the end of Feburary, with minus temperatures for about 8 days, they froze through on the 7th day. although this did include a minus 6 a couple of days before. With snow on and off all week, it does help to insulate the ground by leaving the snow on the covers until you have to take them off.

For the stadium, we are lucky to have the very effective Macleod cover system. With hot air blowing underneath, it is excellent at keeping heat in the pitch when it is blown up and even germinating seed if it is left over the pitch long enough.
The club have used this type of cover for about 18 years now and it is used not only for protecting against the cold, we cover the pitch when we have heavy or prolonged rain forecast. As we still have a soil pitch, a big part of pitch management is not letting too much rain fall in the build up to a game.
15mm of rain can be managed in the summer/early autumn but 5mm over the winter is a worry.

Removing the cover before the game can be done in 1h-1.5h if the cover is dry. When it has had to be laid flat and there is water on it, it takes longer to remover as the water has to be pushed off as much as possible, then wound in on the reels whilst removing the water that gathers as this happens. If the cover is too heavy then the reels/trailer starts to tip under the weight.

Despite our home fixture being called off on 3rd March, The pitch remained playable and was used on what would have been match day. Conditions outside the ground were difficult and travelling was an issue. Safety must come first.

The first 2 week gap with no football at the stadium since the beginning of December will be in the last two weeks of March. Therefore, a full reseed of the pitch will take place and fleeced over the top to raise the soil temperature to allow germination.

At the training ground, the pitches are doing remarkably well considering the poor weather we have had since November.
Our U18/23 match pitch was Koro'd off for the first time last Summer and I know it wouldn't have survived as well as it has if the work hadn't been done. Due to the upgrade in irrigation, this allowed us to grow back in adequately. Before hand, I wouldn't have risked it with only travelling sprinklers to irrigate.
The few wet games we have had recently caused some damage but it has bounced back quickly. I am Impressed with the Barenbrug RPR Stadium which are trying out and I'm planning to try it out on at least one training pitch next season to see the wear/recovery performs.

Even though snow is still hanging around, orders are starting to be placed for the start of the renovations. We start renovations around the second week of April. we have to do this to get around all the pitches in time, allowing about 5-6 weeks to grow in, so we are calculating and working backwards from the date they need to use them. I allow one week per pitch for renovations and with approximately 10 pitches to do, I hope to be done by the end of June with the last pitches coming into play in Late July/early august.

It has once again been a hard month and everyone in the grounds team has worked very hard and I'm proud of all their efforts, but I'm sure in the next 4 weeks things will pick up and we might even be cutting grass!