We Have Grass!!!
Yesterday, our football and soccer fields were sprigged with Bermuda grass. For the past month, Troy Early and his team have been micrograding and grooming these fields and installing an irrigation system. The fields are soft, smooth and loamy. The team that build them for us specialize in athletic fields and golf courses -- they recently built the NC State practice fields at Carter Finley stadium. We believe that when the grass has a chance to mature, our fields will be as fine a grade as any in our county.
What do these sprigs look like?
Here's a picture of the sprigs on the field, since Bermuda is a creeping grass, it looks like the centipede grass that I find hanging over the curb of my house sometimes.
The sprigs arrived in a large pile on the site on Wednesday morning. When I first drove up, I thought someone had used our site to dump their yard waste!
The sprigs were rolled into the turf and will be watered 4 times a day to keep them constantly moist. Over the next few days, they will turn brown while they concentrate on rooting into the soil, and then they should green and spread over the next several weeks. Bermuda is a creeping grass, so it will quickly grow to fill in spaces and create a consistent green surface. The irrigation system is tied to a pump that is sunk deep in the middle of the pond (where it can't be seen or heard) that will recycle the run-off water on the property back onto the fields. While the irrigation system only services the two soccer fields right now, it has plenty of capacity to service more of the campus in the future.
The growing season for this grass ends when the ground temperature drops below 60 degrees (sometime in September, when the nights get colder). Though we planted a couple weeks later than planned, Troy has successfully sprigged fields as late as August 1 for Wake County schools and had them be playable for the fall. We had him put 50% more sprigs down on one of the two fields to increase the coverage for this season.
Due to financial constraints, we elected to not have Troy condition the baseball field this summer. Trinity has had baseball teams in past years and plans to do so again, but was not fielding a team this year, so we felt this was a good place to save.
We are currently discussing the possibility of allowing other baseball groups to use this field if they are willing to develop it for us, so we may have this field developed soon after all.
Yesterday, our football and soccer fields were sprigged with Bermuda grass. For the past month, Troy Early and his team have been micrograding and grooming these fields and installing an irrigation system. The fields are soft, smooth and loamy. The team that build them for us specialize in athletic fields and golf courses -- they recently built the NC State practice fields at Carter Finley stadium. We believe that when the grass has a chance to mature, our fields will be as fine a grade as any in our county.What do these sprigs look like?
Here's a picture of the sprigs on the field, since Bermuda is a creeping grass, it looks like the centipede grass that I find hanging over the curb of my house sometimes.
The sprigs arrived in a large pile on the site on Wednesday morning. When I first drove up, I thought someone had used our site to dump their yard waste!
The sprigs were rolled into the turf and will be watered 4 times a day to keep them constantly moist. Over the next few days, they will turn brown while they concentrate on rooting into the soil, and then they should green and spread over the next several weeks. Bermuda is a creeping grass, so it will quickly grow to fill in spaces and create a consistent green surface. The irrigation system is tied to a pump that is sunk deep in the middle of the pond (where it can't be seen or heard) that will recycle the run-off water on the property back onto the fields. While the irrigation system only services the two soccer fields right now, it has plenty of capacity to service more of the campus in the future.The growing season for this grass ends when the ground temperature drops below 60 degrees (sometime in September, when the nights get colder). Though we planted a couple weeks later than planned, Troy has successfully sprigged fields as late as August 1 for Wake County schools and had them be playable for the fall. We had him put 50% more sprigs down on one of the two fields to increase the coverage for this season.
Due to financial constraints, we elected to not have Troy condition the baseball field this summer. Trinity has had baseball teams in past years and plans to do so again, but was not fielding a team this year, so we felt this was a good place to save.
We are currently discussing the possibility of allowing other baseball groups to use this field if they are willing to develop it for us, so we may have this field developed soon after all.
posted by cevans at
1:26 PM
1 Comments:
Grow grass grow! I knew we have had the hottest summer on record for a reason! Thanks be to God.
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