Brushing
🎯The aim of brushing:
- To remove dew and help loosen surface material on the pitch prior to mowing
- To help reduce incidences of disease by encouraging airflow around the base of the grass plant
- To encourage the grass leaves to stand up before mowing to encourage an even cut
- To work in topdressing or sports sand
- Can help to disperse worm casts providing they are dry
💡 The benefits of brushing:
- Improves the quality and uniformity of the turf
- Disperses dew from the surface reducing the risk of disease and improving mowing conditions
- The scattering of pesky worm casts
- It sits the grass up nicely before mowing
📌 The method:
Brush the pitch surface - daily, if possible! but particularly when there are heavy morning dews or when worms casts are nicely dried and easier to disperse. Brushing also has the benefit of striping the grass improving pitch presentation.
What could go wrong?
If you carry out your brushing incorrectly, two major things can happen:
- There could be a possible occurrence of disease
- The pitch could end up not looking aesthetically pleasing
Timing, equipment, and practical tips:
⏱️ Timing
- All year round, but do not brush your pitch when new grass is establishing or there is frost or turf stress.
🔧 Equipment
- Use a pedestrian drag brush or tractor-mounted brush
- Brushes can have different stiffness of bristles for different purposes
- The brush width should be a minimum of 2 metres although pedestrian brushes are likely to be shorter.
🗝️ Practical tips
- You can also carry out dew removal with a rope or hose pipe held by one person at each end
- You can replace certain aspects of brushing with more aggressive operations such as harrowing, raking or drag matting but these are only recommended when grass growth is vigorous.
- A tractor-mounted drag brush is more appropriate on larger pitches
- The direction of your brushing should change with each operation
👉 Because most of the operations on football pitches are carried out using either tractor mounted or trailed implements, some surface compaction from tractor wheels and implements can occur (particularly at turning points) and must be relieved by frequent surface spiking.
👉Brushing disturbs surface material, which then ideally would get picked up in the grass box.
👉 Scarifying is suitable for the removal of near surface thatch layers without penetrating the underlying soil.
👉 So, it’s pretty essential to incorporate some surface spiking in to your maintenance programme when brushing, dragmatting or harrowing regularly to re-open up the pitch surface.
👉 Brushing, dragmatting and harrowing can also be used to work in top dressings, i.e., sand, into the surface.
