[divider type=”space”]
RI Firm Takes Long View of Turf War at Fenway
The Providence Journal | August, 2005
[dropcaps]A[/dropcaps]fter the Rolling Stones flattened the outfield, crews from Kingston Turf Farms help put down New Jersey grass. Next year, the company hopes the sod will be its own.
The Boston Red Sox needed emergency help at Fenway Park, and no farm or farm club in Rhode Island could answer the call. The Sox did not need a player, which they can always pluck from Pawtucket; they needed turf – nearly an acre of it.
For three decades, Kingston Turf Farms supplied the Red Sox with turf. But last season, the Sox replaced Fenway’s clay soil with sand to improve the field’s drainage, and no grass in Rhode Island could grow in the sandy soil.
When two Rolling Stones concerts crushed 40,000 square feet of outfield grass this week, the Red Sox had to reach down to southeastern New Jersey to find turf that could flourish in Fenway’s new soil.
That rankled Brian Bouchard, founder and owner of Kingston Turf Farms. Yesterday, he sent a crew to Boston to help install the stuff in time for last night’s game (the start time was delayed an hour or so that the work could be done), but it bugged him that his Rhode Island workers had to install New Jersey turf.
Next year, that will change. Bouchard anticipated the change from clay soils to sandy soils – major-league teams in all sports are installing sand – and two years ago he tore up his oldest field.
Bouchard took the clay out of 7 acres, laser graded the surface, then mixed 3 inches of sand with 3 inches of topsoil, rototilled it, laser graded it again so that in 7 acres of field there isn’t one quarter inch of slope.
Yesterday – by coincidence the day that his crew was laying New Jersey-grown turf – he finished installing an irrigation system in his new sandy turf field, completing two years of work that will put him position to supply Fenway park.
“Years ago, the thought was you put a lot of clay down – it helps hold the water” to keep grass green, Bouchard said. But with better irrgition systems, holding water is no longer a concern. “Now the problem is the elimination of water,” Bouchard said. After a hard rain, water pools on clay-based soils, making for poor playing conditions. Sand lets water drain, and makes the field ready for palying, even after a rain delay.
Rhode Island’s native soil is 55 to 60 percent clay, which made it ideal for old ball fields but too rich for the modern, sand-based systems.
The field that Bouchard opened yesterday, after two years of work, is 75 to 80 percent sand. As of yesterday, it had been limed and fertilized; after a few days of watering, it should be ready for planting with hybrid Kentucky Bluegrass, which he can sell next year to the Red Sox and the New England Patriots.
Comments are closed.