Head Groundsman Dave Saltman provides an update on the pitch ahead of pre-season.
Work has gotten underway already as the groundstaff has been busy preparing the pitch at the Montgomery Waters Meadow and the training ground.
Head Groundsman Dave Saltman provided Shrewsweb with an update on what his team had been up to so far and what they plan to do in the up and coming weeks.
“The training ground was renovated two weeks ago,” Said Dave. “The seed is coming through nicely now.
“We’re pleased how it has gone even though it was a fairly basic renovation.
“The stadium pitch was scarified heavily last Monday. We spent all day on it and did about ten passes. We’ve probably taken out 80% of the grass that was in the pitch.
“It was then seeded, drained and then top dressed with about 90 tonnes of sand which was fertilised on Tuesday.”
“This is our 5th renovation here. Three times we’ve stripped the pitch and taken all the vegetation off and then cultivated the grounds to provide ourselves with a brand new seedbed.
“This year we’ve scarified the pitch instead so we’ve just thinned out the sword massively.
“We’re hoping by this week if the temperature stays warm we’ll start to see the grass poke through.
“Once the grass starts to come through we’ll probably start putting some extra nutrition to it, we’ll liquid spray it and we’ll also add some bio stimulants and some sugar which will help with the carbohydrates for the plants to take natural sugar back into the plant and to not just be reliant on sunlight.
“We’ll start light mowing once the grass comes through, then we’ll go onto the cylinder mowers which are the heavier mowers which we’ll do almost daily right through to the first pre-season game.”
For the full interview and a look behind the scenes at what's been going on at the ground visit our IFollow page.