January top tips
These winter top tips will largely be applicable between November – February
- Weather monitoring
Understanding what’s going on with the weather allows you to plan maintenance activities so keep a close eye on weather forecasts in your local area. Extreme weather, such as heavy rain, snow, or freezing temperatures, can impact the pitch. To help mitigate potential issues, adjust your maintenance schedule and let people who plan to use the pitch know in advance, if it’s unplayable. You should also carry out tasks that will help with managing poor weather in advance of the bad weather arriving as prevention is better than cure.
- Protect and repair high-traffic areas
The most used and important area of the pitch is straight down the middle. It’s the most common area we see heavy wear and standing water during the winter months. Focus your time and attention on keeping these areas in as good a condition as possible by fixing divots, hand forking to aid surface drainage, applying sports sand and focusing aeration and decompaction in these areas if time and/or budgets are limited. If your site allows, consider using temporary covers to protect these areas from adverse weather.
- Brush your pitch to keep the grass upright
If you have access to a pedestrian or tractor mounted brush, use them to help stand the grass back up after play and avoid it getting trodden or rolled into the playing surface as this will thin the grass coverage. Brushing is also useful to help disperse worm casts, surface debris (in dry conditions), remove dew, and encourage airflow around the base of the grass helping to reduce the likelihood of disease outbreaks. Handheld rubber rakes can be useful to stand the grass up in localised areas like goal mouths.
- Plan your spring renovations early
Plan early for your spring renovations. Create a plan of what you want to do and when, think about what you’re trying to achieve with your pitch renovations. Are you looking to improve grass cover, drainage or surface evenness? Most clubs and organisations will be looking to carry out these works at similar times so book your contractor, materials or equipment hire early to avoid disappointment.
- Get ahead by sorting out your club’s admin
With the weather and short daylight hours limiting time that can be spent on pitches, January is an ideal month to catch up on important admin. Does your organisation have a health and safety policy? If not, it should. All organisations are required to have relevant risk assessments and safe systems of work in place for the variety of tasks undertaken by a club volunteer, employee or contractor. Here are some questions to think about – do you have the appropriate signage around your garage, container or shed? Have you got a properly stocked first aid box? Have you got the necessary Personal Protective Equipment on site? Do you have an accident book? Are fuels and oils appropriately stored? What’s the status of your club insurances? The Grounds Management Association have a library of over 130 risk assessments and safe systems of work templates for sale to help you along the way. Visit https://portal.thegma.org.uk/shop/all