Maxwell Amenity's Dave Saltman gives his monthly update on the pitch
Shrewsbury Town’s Greenhous Meadow surface is almost back to its best after a difficult winter period.High levels of rainfall meant that the players were forced to train on the stadium pitch more than they would have liked over the last few months, but with the better weather on the way, the surface is looking good for the run in.
With the Spring weather now flourishing the grass is growing quickly once again and Dave Saltman is pleased with how the pitch is looking at this time of the season.
“The pitch has come back really well”,
“There’s lots of growth and recovery now. We are cutting plenty of grass off every time we go on. Any worn areas through the middle of the park where we had the heavy use in January and February has closed up again, so we are really pleased with it.
“We are probably taking off three or four boxes of grass now when we mow, which is quite impressive and we are doing that every day we cut. We’re still keeping up with the aeration, lots of verti-draining to keep the roots down and the games are starting to come thick and fast as well.”
Up at the Sundorne Castle Training Ground work continues to take place to keep the pitches in good working order ahead of the players moving to the facility.
“We’ve been fertilising every month”, Saltman said.
“We just keep topping up the nutrition through the winter months. We use a low nitrogen feed with higher potassium to try and bolster then plant to get it through the winter.
“Obviously we haven’t got any playing wear so that has been a bit of a bonus, but we are just starting to increase the nitrogen levels, so it will become a lot more intensive in terms of mowing.
“It’s still wet, particularly around the outside of the areas that we worked on, so we’ve still got to hold fire on the sand banding.
“But, as the weather continues to get better the ground will continue to get better and once it’s dry enough we will sand band it and hopefully the whole area will dry up much better.”
Meanwhile, the players continue to train at the back of the Salop Leisure Stand and Dave is impressed by how the pitch has coped with a difficult winter.
“It’s done really well”, said Dave.
“They have probably been back out on the training pitch for the last three or four weeks, so we really pleased that they can use it. Even when we have had rain it seems to have gone through much better, but we have been verti-draining a lot.
“It’s key to the maintenance regime that we’ve had to put in place. I like aeration because I think it’s key to getting everything in the ground, but we’ve done probably more than we would normally do.”