Special to Road Trips for Gardeners
From Sustainable, Secure Food Blog

Does baseball have you seeing stripes, diamonds, and circles? The October 22, 2018, edition of the Sustainable, Secure Food blog explains the turf maintenance and mowing practices that make baseball infields and outfields a visual feast.

The light and dark green shadings on turf are the result of bending grass in different directions during the mowing process. “Mowers that make the best mowing pattern will have a solid roller that helps bend the grass. Laying turfgrass in different directions determines how the light will reflect off of it. Turfgrass blades laying towards you look dark. Those laying away from you look lighter in color,” explains Adam Thoms, Iowa State University.

The home lawn enthusiast may be surprised to find the variety of equipment available to professional turf teams:

• A solid roller will help bend the grass in broad designs.


• Brooms can create intricate designs.


• Blasts of water can lay the grass down for detail.


• Streams of air, controlled by software, can create patterns in both directions at once.

Additionally, there are practical matters to consider, such as clear foul lines. “The mowing pattern of cool-season turfgrasses should always be parallel to the lines painted on the field to avoid the lines appearing wavy,” Thoms says. “Some mowers now have global positioning systems (GPS) on them to help with creating these mowing patterns and to make sure the lines they are producing are straight.”

To read the complete blog, go online.

(Photo courtesy of Andrew Marking)