Tackling a Re-Seed – Then Don’t Side-Step on the Quality!

Gloucester rugby club are currently preparing for the new Guinness premiership season. These preparations follow last seasons successes in which they finished a well-deserved top of the Guinness Premiership.

Their success over recent seasons has been aided by having an excellent surface at Kingsholm where Gloucester have played their home games since as far back as 1891. The pitch is made from the natural land with a gravel layer over clinker, there is no artificial drainage system or rootzone. The natural soil, which was placed over the gravel layer, is silty loam.

At the end of last season Dave Balmer, Stadium manager and head Groundsman, called in Simon Hutton from Fineturf to carry out the end of season renovation.

The pitch received considerable wear during last season from the first and second team games plus hosting the EDF challenge cup final and also the Ireland against Barbarians game. To this prestigious list one then has to add the punishment from the regular training sessions which are such an important part of today’s game. The pitch came through the season very well but as Dave is always striving to improve the surface he was keen to put Fineturf through their paces.

The renovation of the pitch didn’t start till the end of May and obviously such a short close season increased the pressure on Dave to produce a quality sward.

The first job for Fineturf to tackle was the installation of two 80mm lateral drains up one wing. The surface was then fraise mowed with a Blec Combinator and following that any remaining debris was removed by means of their Trilo Vac.

Obviously, the application of sand is a fundamental operation in any pitch renovation project. Simon Hutton takes up the story.

“We supplied and applied 90 tons of Lieghton Buzzard sand and then Earthquaked the pitch. After this we sowed MM60 @ 70gm per square metre in four directions.”

This particular mixture is based around a top quality formulation and its performance is now legendary having been used in a number of major re-seeding programmes at household-name venues throughout the UK.

Simon explained that Scotts 8.12.8 pre-seeder fertiliser was then applied at 50gm/sq metre.

“We also left Dave 80 bags of Sheppy 14.6.8 growing in fertiliser for him to apply weekly following the germination of the grass seed as part of his after maintenance program,” explained Simon.

It was important to get quick, strong germination and establishment from his overseeding. The seed was germinating within 5 days of sowing and there is no doubt that this is partly down to the use of the Headstart seed treatment which is applied to the MM branded grass seed. Simon stresses that the Headstart provides a valuable ‘guarantee’ in any seeding programme.

“The beauty of Headstart is that it is a safe, user-friendly product which actually ‘does what it says on the tin’! In an ideal situation you can get, on average, an extra 20% of grass plants. When the conditions are less than favourable that percentage can be as high as 70% more germinated plants. For companies like ours this is very important because at the end of the day we will be judged by how well the grass has germinated and established.”

With the Headstart treated grass romping away it is not surprising that Dave soon had to cut the pitch daily to keep on top of the new growth. The pitch is now looking superb for the pre season friendly matches which start in mid August.