1. What Types of Sporting Pitches Do We Maintain?
Adrian Smith Grass Services maintain and renovate a full range of sports fields and pitches including football pitches, rugby pitches, cricket pitches, hockey pitches and golf course greens.
2. What Does End of Season Pitch Renovation Involve and Why is it Important?
We recommend a full pitch renovation programme at the end of each playing season to keep your playing surface in tip top condition. This has many benefits; it keeps the pitch level to ensure consistency of play, provides adequate drainage, restores worn out areas and encourages healthy grass growth.
The right use of good quality seed fertiliser along with the correct aeration programme gives a healthy solution to the perfect surface.
3. Why is Scarification Needed?
Scarification is one of the many important processes carried out by our contractors to grass sport playing surfaces at the end of season. It is the process of clearing away dead leaves, grass and other pitch debris to prepare the ground for seeding.
4. What is Top Dressing?
This is another vital part of our end of season pitch renovation service and involves applying the correct mix of sand, soil or other material after scarifying. Top dressing helps maintain a level playing surface and can assist in drainage. It also helps create a good seeding bed.
5. What is Verti-Draining/Aeration and Why is it important?
Again, this is another core part of our service. Verti-draining punches holes into the ground to help relieve compaction of soil and to allow the air to penetrate. It assists new growth, helps with root development and improves drainage.
6. What is Hollow Core?
This involves different sized cores which are removed from the ground for soil exchange and to improve aeration.
7. How Does Seeding and fertilizing improve the Pitch Quality?
Seeding ensures new growth and helps reinstate worn out areas. We use a 30 mm width spacing seeder, which is PTO driven and creates very close spacing. Feeding and fertilising is carried out if needed, after the soil has been analysed, and promotes better grass thickness.
8. What is Sand Banding and When is it Required?
Sand banding improves your surface drainage by creating an additional drainage system but should only be used if you have an existing pitch drainage system.
This service improves the quality of your pitch, promotes root growth and means your pitch will be used more frequently.
9. Do You Offer Ongoing Sports Pitch Maintenance Services?
Yes. During the playing season grounds require regular maintenance to keep a healthy playing surface. We recommend a programme of works including regular grass cutting, verti-cutting, top dressing, verti-draining, fertilizing, matt in dressing, over-seeding, brushing and collecting.
10. In What Circumstances Do You Not Provide Ongoing Pitch Maintenance?
We only provide cricket pitch maintenance after the playing season.
11. Do Adrian Smith Grass Services Also Maintain Golf Courses?
Yes, we provide year round golf course maintenance.
12. How often Does a Golf Course Need to be Maintained?
As this varies from club to club, we create a bespoke programme of works to suit individual club requirements.
13. What Does an Ongoing Golf Course Maintenance Service Involve?
The teas and the greens, which see the heaviest traffic, require cutting and maintenance at least three times a week during the growing season. For some of the most exclusive golf courses, this can increase to anything up to a seven day week maintenance programme.
Golfing fairways need cutting twice a week throughout the year, although this can usually be reduced to a once weekly maintenance programme between November and March.
We also recommend a twice yearly programme of works which includes aeration, brushing, verti-cutting, fertilising and top dressing. This helps relieve compaction in heavy traffic areas, improves drainage on the greens and aids root growth.
14. Why Do Golf Courses Need to Be Maintained so Often?
Ongoing golf course maintenance is vital to maintain the smoothness and uniformity of the greens and provide optimum conditions for play.
15. Is Ongoing Golf Course Maintenance Disruptive to the Game?
No, our golf course maintenance programme is geared to regular light maintenance to ensure consistent green quality throughout the year and to ensure minimal disruption of play.
16. What Does Cricket Pitch Maintenance Involve?
This involves scarification, deep scarification, seeding, top dressing and feeding. These processes, when carried out correctly, will repair the wear and tear incurred from playing and remove any debris from the turf. It firms the surface for excellent bounce and ensures healthy new growth to maintain excellent coverage.
17. Why is it Needed?
The cricket season wrecks havoc on playing surfaces up and down the country on a yearly basis. Renovations renew the quality of the pitch and ensure optimum playing conditions for the following season.
18. When is the Best Time to Maintain Your Cricket Pitch?
Most of the work should be completed in the autumn. In November and December the grounds should be verti-drained to complete the renovation.
19. Can You Give Examples of Some of Your Clients?
Clients we have worked for include Ipswich Town Football Club, Colchester United Football Club, Oxford United Football Club, Dartford County Council, Five Lakes Golf Course Essex, Dartford Golf Course, Support in Sport. We also maintained the pitches to international standards throughout the 2010 African Nations Club Competition.
20. Which Areas do you Cover in the UK?
Adrian Smith Grass Services specialise in sports pitch renovation and grass refurbishment locally for Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hampshire, Hertfordshire and throughout the UK.
