Football Pitch Maintenance: 45. Preparing for a Dry Spell and Drought

Climate change is having an increasingly negative impact on the consistency of the quality of football provision and maintenance efforts, especially between May and August, with extended dry periods and drought resulting from climate change.

We will reflect on two key activities: renovation and mowing.

Renovation
A review and reconsideration of the end of season renovation practices for many football pitches, especially those maintained by grassroots clubs, should be carried out. Valuable and increasingly scarce water sources during the summer months will impact on how renovation work is adapted to ensure adequate recovery from wear and subsequent preparation for the coming season is achieved.

Building on mature grasses that are present within a pitch rather than cutting them down and excessively thinning them out, or stripping off the surface layer, ready for the introduction of new seed cultivars will need to be considered as potentially being one way forward. Well, this is not so much a way forward but rather a revisiting of earlier historical practices where cost-effectiveness of provision was a primary factor in deciding what was needed at the end of the playing season rather than following developments and trends. The mature grasses have had time to develop strong and extensive root systems, so why not take advantage of these and build-on the existing status?

The urge to provide a clean surface and bed for new seeds, which then require careful nurturing to become well-established before the start of the new playing season, which is typically sometime in August, appears to be a priority for many clubs, and this is quite understandable as being a way to improve the overall quality of the sward. This may not, however, be appropriate from a cost-effective or fit-for-purpose requirement for many clubs and for many the technical quality of the pitch may end up being very similar part way throughout the following season irrespective of the renovation programme undertaken.

Consider working with and enhancing an existing sward rather than effectively keep starting from scratch at the end of the playing season. Once a pitch has been stripped off during one renovation time, there shouldn’t be the need to routinely do the same thing at each renovation time, especially for grassroots clubs. For renovation requirements always have a key focus on the availability, or not, or water for the planned growing. In period. If this is going to be limited or not available, then question the rationale for an excessive renovation practice.

Mowing
To build summer drought resilience and improve recovery potential into a pitch the importance of a good root system, and depth of rooting, cannot be emphasised enough. Keeping the grass on the longer side, within reason, helps to encourage deeper and more extensive rooting whilst also maintaining adequate sward density for the majority of pitches.

Ensuring the grass is cut at appropriate intervals is the major factor in influencing good root growth and root spread within the soil. Making sure that not too much leaf height is removed at any one time will help contribute to continued strong root growth.

Removing too much leaf growth during a mowing session will result in root growth ceasing and it will also start to be reduced in size as more food from the root system is pushed upwards to help leaf growth.

Removing an appropriate amount is known as the one-third rule but going slightly over this fraction will not have a fatal effect on the roots, but it will start to reduce the amount of root growth that takes place. Cutting more than 50% off per cut will often see root growth cease, so it is inadvisable to carry out this practice, let alone do it as a matter of routine.

If, for example, a pitch is let to grow up to 60mm in-between games, then up to 20mm could be removed per cut to stay within the one-third rule.