Turf

Science daily: The practice of "topdressing" athletic fields with sand has been used by turfgrass professionals for years. Topdressing is essential to maintaining safe and healthy turf, and using porous sand allows the turfgrass system to retain the necessary pore space for adequate drainage, even in heavy foot traffic.

This image shows sand topdressing being applied to research plots at one-quarter inch topdressing depth. (Credit: Photo by Alec Kowalewski)

By Carole Feldman

That's the way Jane Witmer describes the lawn around her Seattle house. But if you look closely, there's some moss and some clover. "Wildflowers are beginning to bloom pink in the grass," she said.

The small imperfections are the price she pays for keeping her lawn organic.

Artificial threads are driven into the surface to intertwine with the roots of real grass, giving the surface a smooth, robust quality that is hard to undo.

Artificial grass is teaming up with the natural stuff and taking root at the World Cup, blade by blade.

A generation after fully artificial surfaces outraged football fans and players around the world, this year's World Cup in South Africa will debut a surface with millions of synthetic grass fibers woven in between and beneath the natural grass.

NEW GRASS: A generation after fully artificial surfaces outraged soccer fans and players, this year's World Cup in South Africa will debut a surface with 20 million threads of synthetic grass fibers woven in between and beneath natural grass. (Photo: Denis Farrell/AP)

The first World Cup test of the surface, which is already being used at some major stadiums in Europe, will be on June 13 in Polokwane when Algeria plays Slovenia. The stadium in Nelspruit will also use the same type of turf.

By Gavin McEwan

Traditional sports turf management entails largely sterile soils. By one estimate, the soil under a typical golf green will have less than one per cent of the bacteria and fungi found in wild grassland soil.

Mowing the lawn can be a dreaded chore, and a non-eco-friendly one at that. Make your lawn deep-down green with these mowing tips.

It's true that April showers bring mayflowers. But first, there's the lawn.

Spring has arrived in the Northern Hemisphere — and with it, the warm weather ritual of trotting out the mower and getting that yard under control. We all want to present a decent-looking lawn to guests and neighbors. Unfortunately, that raises some questions for wannabe green gardeners.

A selection of Ransomes Jacobsen mowers have been delivered to stadium and training facilities to be used at 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa this summer.

he equipment was supplied by Ransomes South African distributor CSE Equipment, Johannesburg.

Six stadiums have been built for the event which kicks off on 11 June.

Jacobsen mowers will be used to maintain the pitches at three of the new stadiums, as well as one existing stadium and 2 training venues.

By Gavin McEwan, Horticulture Week

Sports turf managers are having to husband all their resources more carefully, for both environmental and economic reasons. Fortunately, smarter application of water and pesticides are now possible thanks to sophisticated computer-based predictive systems that incorporate weather forecasting.

The irrigation market has grown in sophistication in recent years, with both Toro and Rain Bird incorporating weather prediction in their control software.