🌟 Improve your sports field with a expert audit.

Rooting Profiles

No Comments

Raúl Bragado Alcaraz

Published on 7 December 2016

Share on RRSS

The various sports surfaces are in many cases built on different rooting profiles.

Thus, for greens we have for rooting profiles recommended by the USGA. They consist of a 300mm thick mixture of mineral particles with the following particle size distribution:

Name	Diameter	Recommendation
Fine gravel	2.0-3.4mm	<3%
Very coarse sand	1.0-2.0 mm	<10% total
Coarse sand	0.5-1.0mm	>60%
Medium sand	0.25-0.50mm	>60%
Fine sand	0.15-0.25mm	<20%
Very fine sand	0.05-0.15	<5%
Limo	0.002-0.05mm	<5%
Clay	<0.002mm	<3%
Fine toal	Fine sand + silt + clay	<10%

And the rooting mix, for adequate physical properties for greens, requires a total porosity in the range of 35 -55 %, where capillarity is lower if possible than the porosity required for air. The hydraulic conductivity saturated must be greater than 150 mm/hour. The amendments added to these profiles are generally peat. However, other amendments such as zeolites, calcined clays and others can also be incorporated as long as the specifications described above are met.

On the other hand, other sports surfaces, such as cricket wickets present rooting zone profiles where the sand/clay mixtures are distributed in different proportions, such as 50-50% or 75-25%. For example, depending on granulometry, required hardness or different depths of each rooting profile.