Fertiliser Purpose

There can be many reasons for applying a fertiliser to a turfgrass surface, but the main reasons for this can include: • Maintaining and encourage a healthy sward. • Producing a hard wearing and resilient surface. • Aiding speed of recovery from wear. • Reducing susceptibility to disease attack. • Creating a relatively dense sward which makes it more difficult for weeds to invade and colonise. • Provide a uniform and pleasing visual appearance. • Provide for a steady development of the grass plant, rather than a flush of lush growth if too much is applied at any one time.

  Fertiliser Scorch

A burning of grass leaves, or the grass crown if severely scorched, due to a spillage of fertiliser or over application during distribution. Spilt fertiliser should be swept up as soon as possible and then the area where the spillage occurred should be thoroughly watered and soaked to help wash in any fertiliser and to remove any dusting from the material off the grass leaves. If spilt fertiliser is left on a sward, then it will most likely kill it. Where an overapplication has occurred and the scorching effect is only just being noticed then a thorough watering of the sward should be carried

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  Finishing Mower

A rotary mower, typically tractor powered (by PTO) and connected to the 3-point linkage. It will often have 3 blades in a single deck, with typical cutting widths of 1.5m-2.1m. The height of cut adjustments might range from about 20mm – 110mm, depending on the make and model. It is also called a Grooming Mower.

  Forking

The action of using a hand fork to penetrate the turf surface and into the soil profile. Walking, playing or maintenance activities can all contribute to compaction occurring, especially in the top layer of a soil, and particularly if soil conditions are unsuitable for activities to take place on them.

  Forking Up

The use of a small border fork, or similar, to carefully raise up, or prise up, indentations that have been made in a sward. Once an area has been forked-up then it is often lightly firmed by applying foot pressure to gently tamp the area down to ensure an even finish is produced.

  Fracture Tine

A solid, heavy duty, rectangular slit-chisel type tine, with one side angled at about 45 degree towards the lower part of the blade. These tines might have a thickness of about 12mm and be slightly offset from a central line to encourage a disturbance of the soil, or a ‘fracturing’, when penetrating the soil. The thickness of the tines enables them to be used on more compacted surfaces, at renovation time to aid better incorporation of top-dressing, in contrast to when using slit tines, and without removing soil cores as when using hollow tines. Surface disturbance will, however, be greater th

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  Fraise Activities

A natural turf surface renovation practice with differing degrees of impact, from a medium-severe scarification through to stripping off a layer of soil and vegetation. It is sometimes also spelt as Frase, Fraze or Fraize. The Fraise activities can also be considered as just fraise mowing but with different degrees of severity.

  Fraise Mowing

A medium-severe scarification, or scouring, activity which removes weakly rooted vegetation, especially annual meadow grass, but leaves the crowns of the more desirable turfgrasses such as perennial ryegrass, where they are well-established with good root strength. This activity is suitable where there are low amounts of surface organic matter. Two passes might be carried out to ensure a clean layer is left prior to cultivation.

  Fraise Planing

The complete stripping off of the vegetation layer, any organic layer along with a certain depth of rootzone, which can be up to 50mm, and which may be contaminated or with a poor infiltration rate. A new layer of rootzone would need to be added and well-mixed into the existing rootzone to ensure a root break layer is not produced. An example of a type of specialist equipment capable of this action is the Terraplane.

  Fraise Top-Off

This will strip off the surface vegetation, with a shallow rootzone layer including and any underlying organic layer. This will leave the underlying rootzone layer ready to be cultivated prior to seeding, with two passes being carried out to ensure a clean layer is left prior to cultivation.