After nearly a week of steady rain in West Lafayette and across the region, work was finally able to continue on the Ross-Ade stadium and South football practice field renovations. The existing Kentucky bluegrass/perennial ryegrass turf in Ross-Ade was removed today with a “Koro” machine. The machine is essentially analogous to a milling machine used to remove pavement on roadways. The Koro machine precisely removes the grass layer while leaving most of the rootzone in place and undisturbed. Once the grass is completely removed the rootzone will be laser leveled and thin cut ‘Patriot’ bermudagrass sod will begin being installed as early as next week.
On the South practice field the new grade for what has been transformed into a more or less flat field, compared to the severely crowned previous field. An updated irrigation system will be installed as soon as the ground dries sufficiently to resume trenching. Once the irrigation system is in place 2” perforated tile lines will be installed running East/West and overlain by a sand-trench system running North/South. To duplicate the grass surface in Ross-Ade, ‘Patriot’ bermudagrass will also be installed.
On 4 May the ‘Patriot’ bermudagrass sod was inspected at Oakwood Sod Farm located on the sandy soil of the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Aside from a late-Spring frost which had slightly discolored the turf, the grass looked very healthy for this time of year and appeared ready for harvest and installation.
We will continue to keep you updated with the progress on this exciting renovation project. Go Boilers!!!
As an aside I have been taking spring green-up ratings each week on my bermudagrass traffic study and the trends from previous years continue. Compared to ‘Quickstand’ and ‘Yukon’, ‘Riviera’ continues to impress as it comes out of dormancy for it’s third year. More updates to come…..
