Sports pitches
Maintaining a sports pitch for football, cricket, rugby or recreational purposes requires an all-year-round programme of professional care and treatment.
Keeping a grass playing surface in good condition is very important:
- To enable unhindered participation in the sport
- To ensure sports regulations and health and safety measures are met
- To ensure the reputation of the organisation, local authority, sports club or leisure centre is upheld, as a professionally-run, grass-based playing pitch
Sports turf needs to be prepared – especially when soil management is a priority – and nourished, fertilised and maintained, so that it can be used competitively or just for fun.
Sports pitch nourishment and nutrition for your grass
Like all plants, your playing surface or pitch needs a carefully-selected programme of nutrients for it to thrive, throughout the Spring, Summer and Autumn months. This is due to the effect that regular heavy-demand competitive playing or recreational use has on the growth and development of strong grass – the foundation of your surface depends on it. Also, most grass-based surfaces suffer from adverse conditions during the Autumn and Winter, when water-logging occurs and mud-baths appear, when teams compete against each other.
As there’s so many nutritional lawn feeds and fertilisers to choose from, a sports pitch expert – who has worked with many different types of conditions, soils and grasses – is needed, who knows what to feed your surface, the correct consistency and ratio needed and when it should be fed at the right time of the year.
Customised playing surface maintenance programmes
In the spring, our programme builds on this by:
- Promoting fresh leaf growth, that results in a strong green colour
- Helping the plant replace vital reserves that are lost over the winter
- Scarifying – if necessary – during the Spring and Autumn
In the autumn, our playing pitch management programme:
- Builds on grass-root growth
- Thickens the cell walls on grass-leaves
- Helps protect potential Winter damage to playing grass
- Helps maintain a deep, healthy, strong-green colour
- Depending on conditions, Aerates the ground between August and October
Based on any dry patches or dead grass areas present on your pitches, the reputable suppliers and contacts we have within the sports surface turfing and grass-seed industries, can help us guide you in purchasing the correct specification and type of seed you need.
Sports playing grass treatment – additional services
Moss should be properly treated so that, over time, it’s removed and replaced with new grass as it’s seeded and grown. Correctly maintained sports surfaces are more robust and safer to play on and will be available for all-year-round use.
Sports turf renovation can involve a wide range of cultural and chemical applications to the turf, throughout the year or occasional applications to control weeds and eradicate grass-based diseases, worm casts or to apply some fertiliser or nutrition.
Our lawn treatment service can help with planned applications of the latest turf-control products, throughout the year, or to help with emergency applications when pest problems, such as chafer grubs or leather jackets, occur in sports venues. We manage and treat sports pitches throughout Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Essex and surrounding counties in the South East.
Applications to sports pitches are sometimes required when pitch conditions are soft, using pedestrian, electric, self-propelled sprayers – when this is the case, we can carry out spray applications with a very light footprint, reducing compaction and damage.
Sports Turf Management Services
Many leisure and commercial clients find the complication of licensing and purchasing a difficult issue. As sprayer application specialists, we can remove these challenges, ensuring that all required treatments to your sports pitches are carried out, in an accurate, methodical and timely fashion.
Sports turf and pitch management need not be an expensive process; we provide help and assistance on a flexible, phased basis, allowing you to get on with your task of running your sports club or complex.
