A New Season

August 2018

A New Season

 

As the new football season begins, the hot summer starts to cool and gives some rest bite from heavy watering. Although keeping the turf watered is essential, by doing this can also cause some side effects...

 

 Now the renovated pitches are approximately three months old and doing well after the grow in, some of the consequences of heavy watering are beginning to show. We are seeing a little more Poa Annua grass species among the ryegrass than usual. It's no surprise and something we have to battle to some extent every year.

Annual Meadow Grass (Poa Annua) in some training pitches

We are now verti cutting every couple of weeks to clean any seed heads out and applying a silicon based product to the turf to also help to stand the leaf and seed head up so the mowers can remove the seed. Having poor characteristics and performance for sport, it is important to control The Poa from spreading.

We have also seen an increase in Knotgrass weed, which I expect is due to the unusual weather we have had this summer. As a rule, we don't spray selective weedkillers, but as we walk over the pitches so much knocking back after training, we can hand weed them before they become too much of a problem. Notice the large tap root on the photo. We have had some reaching 10 inches down!

Knotgrass weed

Another consequence of heavy watering is black layer. Water fills the pore spaces instead of air and anaerobic conditions are present producing hydrogen sulphide gas, which is poisonous to the roots. Smelling the soil can detect anaerobic activity which will give an eggy smell, rather than a clean soil which will smell sweeter. Increased aeration and back to a normal watering regime will likely solve this. We tend to aerate approximately every 14 days alternating between 12mm tines at 7-9 inches and 20mm tines to 10-13 inches.

Soil Profile of Pitch 6 (training ground match pitch) showing a little blacklayer

During the very hot weather we held off applying the Primo Maxx growth retardant as it can stress the turf more if it is under some sort of other stress. This year our first applications were at the end of July and we shall carry this on until the temperatures drop below double figure, usually sometime in October.
Our Primo Maxx programme has slightly changed from one monthly application of 0.8 l/h to fortnightly applications of 0.6 l/h. This is with a view of keeping the product consistently active in the plant instead of it wearing off after about 3 weeks the giving it another hit on the fourth week. Although we have increased the monthly amount by a third, we haven't noticed any major reduction in growth, but certainly a more consistent growth.

First league game versus Blackburn Rovers

We are currently playing U23's fixtures at Portman Rd, with the plan of getting our 5 compulsory stadium matches played during the growing season so we can gain some natural recovery. This year we have not entered the U23 cup, which is in a mini league format and games must be played at the stadium. We don't have any choice over the dates they are played and last year left a problem when the home fixtures were scheduled in January and February. Along with other fixtures falling awkwardly, this left us with more games than the stadium pitch can cope with at that time of year, mixed in with poor weather.
We could play the U23 games at another stadium to spread the usage, but given the remote location of Ipswich, There isn't a non league stadium within a 25 mile radius, as per league/cup rules, which has the required facilities to host the fixtures.


We continue to work on the pitches to make them as strong as we can going into the Autumn and Winter, we appreciate the good times and plan as well as we can for the more challenging times ahead.