Overseeding a Soccer Field

Today, I went with Guillerme to fertilize over seed and spray broad leaf weeds at college we take care of.

Guillerme was going to go and re-visit areas that we had just sprayed for broad leaf weeds a week ago and spray again. Sometimes the broad leaf, especially the ground ivy and clover need a couple of applications to knock them out. He went around on foot with a back pack sprayer and re-sprayed. There are 2 soccer fields, covering one large playing area and while Guillerme was off doing his spraying I used the Permagreen power spreader. It is a lot easier to use the power spreader when you have a large area to cover. I have to apply 500 pounds of fertilizer to both soccer fields and after that over seed 350 pounds of Lesco "Park and Athletic" grass seed.

The year is winding down, as far as growing grass from seed and this was the last chance to get some grass up and going before the cold weather sets in. The Park and Athletic has a good mix of 33% Perennial Rye grass, 33% Kentucky Bluegrass and 33% Red Fescue. Its a little chilly for the bluegrass, so we are hoping for some warm sunny days to heat up the turf area. The Rye grass and Fescue like the cooler weather so there will be no problem with them. the blue grass will come up and the rest will be in the ground ready to go come those warm spring days next year.

Repairing Winter Plow Damage

I am going to be repairing, more properties, that have had damage done to them by the snowplows during the winter. Two of the properties belong to Babson College, they are homes owned by the college, and we are hired to do the landscape maintenance on them. Rich, will be helping me with this chore today.

We do this early in the season to take advantage of the spring rains, and of course to make the properties look better. However, the ground is not warm enough for the seed to germinate quickly and this year we are having a very cool spring. The seed will not germinate until the ground temperature is around 55 degrees, so we have a few weeks to go before we will see any growth. We are using Lovell's New England seed, (34.3% Creeping Red Fescue, 29.4% Laredo Perenial Rye, 24.5% AllaireII Perenial Rye and 9.8% Ken-Blue Kentucky Bluegrass) which is a very good seed and we have a lot of success using it.