Surface Cracking
What is it?
Soil cracks are normally a line of weakness in the soil that open up when the soils shrink due to lack of moisture
What are the symptoms?
Typically, cracks may appear on areas of bare ground where there is no structure to hold the soil together or where grass coverage is poor. A good example of this would be a touchline that had been burnt in with herbicide. They can also open up where there is a line of weakness such as where a pitch has been deep slitted in the spring prior to a dry spell.
What soils are susceptible to cracking?
Higher clay content soils are the most likely to crack as they shrink the most when ground dries out. Its unlikely you would experience cracking on sandy soils as there is minimal or no shrinkage by comparison. As you would expect cracks are associated with dry spells and a most commonly seen in the summer.
☑️ Top tips to avoid cracking…
💡 The most obvious way if you have access to irrigation is to maintain adequate soil moisture and watering to depth to encourage good root development which will increase drought resistance.
💡 Maintain good grass cover and root structure through sound routine maintenance and appropriately timed pitch renovations.
💡 Never use herbicide to burn in pitch markings, this practice is no longer permitted and the bare soil is susceptible to cracking.
💡 In periods of drought increase height of cut, again this will improve the turfs’ chance of withstanding drought conditions and reduce the likelihood of bare areas.
💡 Deep slitting in particular in clay soils should be carefully timed, generally early autumn is the best time for this as there should be adequate natural rainfall to minimise the risk of soil shrinkage but also the soils should be dry enough for the slitting to be effective.
💡 Linear aeration with rotary decompactors creates a continuous slit and a line of weakness however if more traditional slitting coincides with this at slight angles this will help to create lots of smaller fissures which are less susceptible to opening up as seen in the top image.
💡 If slitting in 2 or more directions never run at 90 degrees to the previous directional pass.
💡 If you do choose to carry out decompaction in the spring look at alternative methods such as deep spiking.
☑️ Repairing cracks
- Encourage the soil to swell by watering if this is available to you.
- If a crack is wide and deep, back filling with an appropriate sports sand and then over-seeding is the most effective way to carry out repairs but be conscious not to overfill as the sand may be pushed up when the soils swell.
- Small cracks may be dealt with by a light topdressing of sand that can be worked into the surface and in turn the cracks.
