Returfing isn't always successful either depending how far down the seedbank is.Originally Posted by Wandering
The process started a few years back with regular soil testing and amendments to the ground to get the soil to a reasonable level and break up the clay. Without that prep work the grass would have struggled.
This off season we (working with Council) essentially killed both fields at the end of the season. It was a process of spraying (I cant remember off hand the name of the chemicals we used but it was a cocktail) every second week for about two months. It is brutal on everything, but the couch comes back first, the kikuyu takes a bit longer to recover. The parramatta grass just died off at the end and the occasional bit that shows up we pull out by hand, but there isn't much left. After the spraying was done, the pitches were sprayed with pre-emergence to stop new stuff coming through (and weeds in the bare spots), and from there its been fertiliser and water.
It was all looking awesome until the Christmas break when Council don't mow and no one from the club was around to drive the ride on. So it grew quite long over a three week period and is now recovering from the scalping. The heat isn't helping, but it still looks good.
When spraying, we were selective in on the main ground as the parramatta grass was mainly confined to the middle of the pitch, which is why at the moment it is couch through the middle, but the kikuyu will come back everywhere it was. The top ground was a complete eradication and nuking of everything, it is now fully couch.
Essentially its been a crap load of work but its worked so well, next off season we are doing all the areas around the playing area on the top field which should give us a lot of extra training space to save the fields from too much wear.
I can dig up and post some progress photos if people want, or just drop in if you drive past.
The unknown now, particularly with the top pitch is what sort of couch we have and how it will hold up. At $3500 to have it DNA tested, we will just suck it up and see. Id say up to June at least (wet weather permitting) the pitches will be sweet, the couch will go dormant before the kikuyu. Hopefully now though, as it wears it should be even without the lumpy parramatta grass causing everyone grief.
