A grass football pitch plays through the wettest eight months of the year. Pitch & Course builds the soil under it so rain goes in instead of sitting on top, the goalmouths root back between fixtures, and the pitch comes through August pre-season without living on the sprinkler.
20 bags of 25 kg, spread once a year at 500 kg per hectare with a standard spreader. Delivery quoted at order.
Postponements, a goalmouth that turns to mud by November, a centre circle worn to bare ground, and turf that browns off the week pre-season starts. They look like grass problems. They are soil problems.
Compacted topsoil takes water slowly, so it sits and the referee calls it off. Slit drains and sand bands only help with the water that reaches them.
Shallow, thin roots give way under studs, and the bare ground does not knit back before the next fixture. Deeper roots hold the surface and grow back between games.
Soil with little humus dries fast and holds little. Humus holds water where the roots are, so the pitch comes through a dry July without the irrigation bill.
Two Irish racecourses have had Bacteriosol under the racing surface and the parade ring since 2019, and both have extended the area every year. Their managers have put on the record what they saw: deeper roots, a sod that recovers faster after racing, and ground that drains.
Started on the parade ring and a small piece of track that was proving difficult for sod depth and water retention, monitored with the course's track advisor, and extended every year since. By 2023 it covered about a quarter of the racing surface.
We have found that the roots system has increased year on year and has led to improved sod strength, quality and density. The biggest return we have made for our investment is seeing the sod under foot recovering quicker than before after each race meeting, and ultimately leading to a safer racing surface.
The walk in to the parade ring lay wet and soggy after any overnight rain and had to be cordoned off on race days. Three years after the first application it was filmed the morning after a stormy night with 10 to 15 mm of rain, and the manager said it was “making our job so much easier to bring areas literally back to life”.
After a very, very wet night we have practically dry soil, meaning that the drainage in the area is just fantastic.
Their words, on the record, from two courses that started small and now treat more ground every year. Every order comes with the record sheet, so your ground joins the record.
Sand, synthetic phosphate and potash, and a good part of the nitrogen are bought to do what a living soil does on its own. Water comes down with them.
Press With Pitch & Course to see what changes. Press a line to read why.
Half the sand on established turf. Sand is bought to open a tight surface and dilute thatch. The biology turns thatch into humus and builds the crumb structure that sand was standing in for, so the dressing halves. Keep what you use for levelling.
No synthetic phosphate or potash. Most turf soils hold years of both, locked up where roots cannot use it. The biology unlocks it around the roots, so the synthetic bag comes off. That is the SOBAC plan, and it is the plan that runs on more than 300,000 hectares.
40 per cent less bought nitrogen. Organisms at the surface take nitrogen from the air and the humus releases what it holds, so the sward is fed from the soil instead of the bag.
Less water to keep it green, and here is what was measured. On a split trial, 100 mm of water went into treated ground in 235 seconds against about 27 minutes untreated, so rain and irrigation reach the roots instead of running off. Roots went from 35 cm to 95 cm on heavy clay, so the sward draws on water it could not reach before. Humus holds water where the roots are.
The sand, phosphate and potash and nitrogen figures are the SOBAC plan for established turf, the plan that runs on more than 300,000 hectares. The water figures were measured in soil pits on Warwickshire clay and in a split trial in Brittany. The record sheet that comes with every order adds your ground to that record.
A living soil needs less put on it. That is better for the water that leaves the ground, for the players and horses on the surface, and for the wildlife at the edges.
What you do not spread cannot wash off. Less bought nitrogen, no synthetic phosphate or potash and half the sand hauled in means less leaving the ground in drainage water and fewer lorries on the drive. The humus it builds is carbon held in the soil.
Bacteriosol is naturally occurring soil biology on a plant and mineral base, non-toxic and non-pathogenic. The surface can be used as soon as the granules have gone in, and the players, horses and grounds staff are on ground that gets fewer synthetic inputs each season.
A soil that is alive underneath feeds everything above it, the insects and the birds that work a pitch or a course at first light. Less synthetic input reaches the margins, the hedges and the water's edge.
The change is biological, so it builds year on year, and each season starts from where the last finished.
The biology establishes and the first gains are below the surface, where a core shows them: root depth and density, and how fast a ring of water goes in.
Structure opens through the topsoil and a pit shows it. Wet and dry weeks move the surface less. Goalmouth recovery between fixtures shortens.
Humus is built through the profile and the pitch holds itself. The routine stays the same: one pass a year, at the renovation.
Treat the first team pitch and leave the second, or treat one half of a pitch lengthways and leave the other. That is the whole comparison, and it is one a club committee, a head teacher or a parks manager can read in a minute.
A one page record sheet comes with the order. A baseline soil profile, dug and read before the first application, is a priced extra: ask when you order.
When it goes on. The end of season renovation, in May or June, after scarifying and aeration and before the new sward closes over. The soil is warm (SOBAC advises above 12°C for turf) and there is a clear fortnight either side with nothing synthetic going on.
| Ground | Area | Product | A year, plus VAT |
|---|---|---|---|
| One full size pitch | 0.71 ha | 1 pallet | £1,000 |
| Two junior pitches | 0.8 ha | 1 pallet | £1,000 |
| A club with three pitches | 2.1 ha | 3 pallets | £3,000 |
| A school with four pitches | 3 ha | 4 pallets | £4,000 |
| A council site with ten pitches | 7 ha | 10 pallets | £10,000 |
Whole pallets only. We will round your plan to the pallet and tell you what is spare.
Put it on at the end of season renovation, leave a pitch untreated, and compare the two through the winter.