Field Size

I sure don’t want this to come of as sounding like I’m condemning your efforts in any way! I’d give my eye teeth if even one parent here would show that kind of interest and enthusiasm.

However, I feel obligated to point out that what you have done will definitely not work everywhere! It might even be causing you guys problems that won’t show up for some time, but might cause your field to go into distress to the point where its possible you could lose it.

Horticulture novices often make the mistake of forgetting that grass, whether its in a front yard, baseball field, or a golf green is a bunch of individual plants. They also seldom understand that soils are all very different. Depending on a number of factors, how best to take care of that grass can vary vastly.

Living plants like grass need 4 things to grow properly. Food, air, water, and sunlight. The trick about plants is, they are extremely dependent on their root systems. They do have the ability to take in the things they need to live through their foliage, but that is extremely minimal when compared to their roots.

Rolling something heavy over the top of the turf, it will eventually do just as you described, but what its doing is packing the soil. What that’s really doing is removing tiny passages where air, soil, food, and water get to the roots.

Of course a lot depends on the kind of turf you have. If its something like bent grass or Bermuda that has roots literally crawling along the top of the soil, or if its something like a fescue or Kentucky Bluegrass mixture makes a heck of a difference. But in general, there are still things that should be done to help the grass out as much as possible.

Prolly the most ridiculous example of what anyone would want for a ball field is to have it as smooth and flat as what a golf green can be made. Although there are “breaks” on greens, those breaks are put in on purpose. If they wanted to, a green could be made as flat as a table. So let’s take a look at how those things are maintained.

To begin with, a golf green isn’t just what you see. Its “built”, starting sometimes a much as 3’ down. Different gravels, sands, soils, and even pipes are used in layers to give it great drainage. The obvious reason is to get the water off the green, but the reality is, that’s done to provide ways to get the 4 needed things down to the root zones.

Once a green is in and fairly well matured, the maintenance of it is really quite complicated. Just mowing is very much different than mowing the front yard. In order to get the green smooth and the grass short, they don’t just go down to Sears and pick up a rotary mower. They get very high precision reel mowers

One reason for that is that rotary mowers can cut at the 1/8th to ½” heights, but the main reason is that they have rollers on them that constantly are smoothing out the soil, just like the concrete roller does.

But there are some other things that have to be done, sometimes with attachments on the mowers, sometimes with other pieces of equipment. Because the grass normally used on greens is a “crawling” grass, often a “verticutter” is us used. That is a device with a series of blades that run perpendicular to the normal bedknife of the mower and actually cut the shoots of grass that are crawling along the surface. That’s to keep it from getting too “thick”. They also occasionally “dethatch” the greens. That’s to remove any buildup of material on the soil that retards the access of FAWS.

How often those things are done depends on all kinds of things, but trust me, they are done to at least some degree.

Then they also do something that has to be done in order to maintain a healthy green. It may only be once a year, but any decent course will “aerate” and topdress. The better the course, the more often its done.

When they aerate, they don’t just poke holes in the green. They use a device that pulls plugs, and may go as deep as a foot, and are usually at least a half an inch in diameter, or use a water injector to blow holes in the soil. The main purpose is to make holes to the root zone!

Normally, after aerating, a very expensive sand sometimes mixed with some organic materials and/or fertilizers and/or fungicides is spread on the surface and forced into the holes. That will allow FAWS to penetrate into the rootzone.

But it also will smooth out the surface of the green. The continual action of the rollers will continue to compact the soil, but the addition of the sand won’t allow it to pack like concrete.

There’s also something done on golf courses that to most people go unnoticed. Repairing “divots”. All a divot is, is a place where there’s been damage done to the turf. If it’s a divot on a green made by a ball, a tool of some type is used to fill the hole by prying up the area that got compacts and depressed. If you watch them mow the greens at a good course, you’ll see the guy mowing walk around the green before he mows, repairing as many divots as possible.

But out in the fairway where a divot is made by the club ripping out a chunk of turf is a little different. Normally golfer will replace their divots, but even then they don’t’ usually understand what they’re doing. If there isn’t a good chunk of root with the divot, sticking it back in very likely will do nothing but make it look horrible in about 2 days.

So, lots of places encourage golfers to carry a supply of a mixture of sand, seed and organic material to either fill the divot or sprinkle it over one that’s been replaced. What that does is fill the hole, and the grass will usually germinate in just a few days, and in a week or two look like new.

Enough about golf courses, but there’s a lot that can be learned there.

If when a game is over, a couple walk around with a mixture of that same sand/seed/organic material and fill in holes and gouges, it will make the whole field look a lot better.

The other stuff is a bit overkill for an entire baseball field, but you can bet that its done on the best fields. For youth fields, its usually enough to just stay concerned with the IF.

The rolling part is fantastic, but if that’s done without realizing that the soil is getting compacted, sooner or later you’re gonna prolly have problems. No big deal! Preferably a couple weeks before the season starts and a week after the field being used, all ya gotta do is take care of bizness!

Mow the grass shorter than normal, dethatch it, and find an aerator and use it! If ya can’t afford to topdress, no big deal! Just pull the plugs, let them dry out, and then use something that will break them up. its not perfect, but it’s a lot better than nothing.

And don’t be in a big rush to rake up all that thatch and get rid of it! get a drag and drag the grass! Eventually some of that dead and dried grass will get into the holes. That’s like free fertilizer! It will provide needed food for the turf and help keep the hole from pack right back up.

After a day or so, spend a few bucks and pick up a few pounds of grass seed like what’s on the field. That seed will germinate and you’ll have a beautiful field for the next season.