Pictures from an athletic field contractor

[Complete Turf Care]

More work with the recycling dresser yesterday.

And more deep tine aeration today

 

[Sportsman762]

Lips are a hump or bump that develops over time in the grass area right next to the skinned area. Sort of like a small levee. This can cause a ground ball to bounce erratically or even cause a twisted ankle.

I worked grounds keeping in college. My group handled all the intramural fields. We would use a ryans sod cutter and go three passes around the outer edge of the field. Then we would dig the hump out with Kubota BX loaders and by shovel then relay the sod. Was crummy work but we could not take the fields out of service long as they were used all year around. What sort of finish does that machine leave on the sod?

 

[Complete Turf Care]

I worked grounds keeping in college. My group handled all the intramural fields. We would use a ryans sod cutter and go three passes around the outer edge of the field. Then we would dig the hump out with Kubota BX loaders and by shovel then relay the sod. Was crummy work but we could not take the fields out of service long as they were used all year around. What sort of finish does that machine leave on the sod?

I've seen it done the way you described. That works really good, but requires lots of labor.

Our method can be done with 2 men in air-conditioned tractors. It takes about an hour to do a field.

If we do it during the summer growing season, the grass will grow back in about 2-3 weeks. It somewhat depends on how much we have to remove. We rarely remove more than about 2", which will leave plenty of roots to grow back quickly.

 

[Sportsman762]

I've seen it done the way you described. That works really good, but requires lots of labor.

Our method can be done with 2 men in air-conditioned tractors. It takes about an hour to do a field.

If we do it during the summer growing season, the grass will grow back in about 2-3 weeks. It somewhat depends on how much we have to remove. We rarely remove more than about 2", which will leave plenty of roots to grow back quickly.

We normally had 2" or less removed too. It was very labor intensive with four or five folks, a Kubota BX, two Kubota RTV's to haul clippings away and a sod cutter taking a day or two per field. But we only did a field every three or so years and had fifteen fields.

 

[Complete Turf Care]

Removing grass so we can till and start laser grading this baseball field.

 

[JethroB]

Removing grass so we can till and start laser grading this baseball field.

Interesting. Can the removed grass be used for sprigging?

 

[Complete Turf Care]

Interesting. Can the removed grass be used for sprigging?

Yes it could be. But in this case we sprayed to kill it. First application was a high rate of Fusilade. The second application 10 days later was a nuclear rate of glyphosate.

We killed it because we need to get all the grass off so we can till and grade it. Also because we will be going back with a different variety of Bermuda grass.

 

[Complete Turf Care]

Finished removing the grass today and got it all tilled. Heading home tomorrow morning and I plan to be back next week to start laser grading it.
This is a time lapse of 3 hours of tilling today.

 

[Complete Turf Care]

Haven't posted here in a few days, because I've been busy on this baseball field. It's getting close to being ready to sprig. It got about 0.75" of rain Friday night, so I could not finish grading it.

 

[Complete Turf Care]

Here is a time lapse video of laser grading. It rained about 3/4" on this field a few hours earlier. I was able to get it close to finished, but it was just a bit too sticky to make it really slick.