Hello I'm Austin Jarrett from Allett mowers. Today we'd like to talk to you
about one specific cartridge and that is the Turf Rake cartridge. This cartridge fits into
all our C-Range interchangeable both electric and petrol. The reason we want to talk to you about it
is the favourite cartridge of our customers and the main reason for that is that it's very gentle.
We can use this even when it's a little bit dry we can use it when it's wet
and it does so little damage to the surface that it allows you to do the cultivations that you need
whether there is a match tomorrow or not because it is so gentle
and and let's face it at our time periods that we can do these cultivations are very limited
so a cartridge that we can use a little and often is absolutely great.
So what do we do with this cartridge? You can see there's little spring tines in fact hundreds of
little spring tines they are just going into the sward, the canopy of the sward and going
underneath the debris that's on the surface but it's also picking out any other loose material
and that might be moss but hopefully it's the blades of grass and dead blades of grass and the
dead material that's later going to form thatch so it ends up being preventative in so many ways.
So our target debris are broken leave, divots just general debris
but also trying to get into the thatch as well depending on how aggressive we're going to be.
It is extremely gentle and it's particularly useful if you have deso type strands that are sewn
into the surface as well because it's not going to damage those but it is still important that
we keep our thatch under control. Why do we want to control that thatch layer and prevent it from
building up? A little bit of thatch is fine but when it starts to build up then what's it doing?
What it does is any water that's falling during the dry periods will be just soaked up like a
sponge it won't go down into the soil and then be available to the plants roots.
If the plant's roots aren't going down more deeply chasing the water then when it does go dry
the plants roots are really shallow where the thatch has been holding the water as
well so that's not good long term. The thatch layer itself can harbour disease and we're all
battling against that one we all want to reduce our use of fungicides and and insecticides. The
nutrients- We spend a fortune on nutrients in the form of fertilisers and again as those get
dissolved and then just sit in the thatch layer then they're not going into the soil, the plant
roots aren't chasing them it's not available to the plant therefore it's wasted money as well.
You do get certain worms, you get an increase in worm activity and the worm casts that we
that we so hate especially in the autumn time and springtime when they start to create those
soil cast patches in our beautiful turf and so anything we can do to reduce the amount of worm
activities has got to be good and of course the all-important ball performance whether you're
a small ball sport or a large ball sport then you've still got issues in terms of ball roll
and ball performance and also stud performance and foot grip in order to give the players the
best possible environment they can have. So if we can reduce that thatch layer and give
ourselves a much more consistent surface as well for our sportsman to perform on.
So let's have a look at how this actually works and we'll see
how this gently removes the debris that we're aiming at.
What height of cut do you actually use with this cartridge? Well you can use a whole
variety you can set it really quite shallow and just target the absolute top of the grass canopy
but if you want to start removing material you can set it more deeply and so simply of course just
using this click height adjustment here. So don't be concerned about whether you're going to cause
any damage set it high and then take it down lower and lower and see what effect you're going to get.
The other thing I like about this action is the way that the
tines gently go into the sward and stand that lateral growth upright. It doesn't cut them
but like it would do with the verticut what it does is just stands them all up,
tidy's the sward up so that for the next mowing we clip all the grass at the very same height.
So the great thing about this system as well is that as you are working you are collecting
the debris and it all goes into this very large capacity box. But this is the enemy this is the
stuff that we're trying to fetch out to allow the air into the grass into the grass sward
and fetching out this unwanted dead material. If you need to know more please visit our website at
www.allett.co.uk and thanks for watching!