Winter Fertilising

A practice which is routinely carried out on high class, sand-based, stadia pitches which also have undersoil heating and supplementary lighting to encourage growth over the typical dormant grass growth period. Great care needs to be exercised with winter fertiliser applications as these practices are forcing grass to grow, making them more susceptible to physical abrasive damage, as well as disease and nematode attack. Root growth becomes weakened and this is visibly evidenced in televised games by often considerable divoting, even on reinforced pitches. The requirement to create an ideal playing surface in which elite players can perform to their best during the normal low to dormant growth season for football and rugby surfaces is a considerable challenge for ground staff. The fertilising of the majority of normal, non-stadia, mostly soil-based (including secondary drained) pitches during the winter should not be carried out in a mistaken assumption that these pitches might look and perform in some way similar to high class pitches.