Cutting grass

Having just finished mowing the lawn it occured to me. How did they keep the grass short on grass airstrips before they had modern grass cutting equipment? In particular WW1 airfields such as Stow Maries that had to be ready for use at a moments notice.

Apparently they used to pour whisky on it.

That way it grew half cut!

Seriously though I think they used mowers pulled by horses, and then eventually they used tractors.

Gang mowers are not a new invention -I suspect they were available back in the days of steam tractors

canberra wrote:

Apparently they used to pour whisky on it.

That way it grew half cut!

Seriously though I think they used mowers pulled by horses, and then eventually they used tractors.

That seems to tie in with the fact that they had stables at Stow Maries.

philbasildon wrote:

Having just finished mowing the lawn it occured to me. How did they keep the grass short on grass airstrips before they had modern grass cutting equipment? In particular WW1 airfields such as Stow Maries that had to be ready for use at a moments notice.

won't be cuting mine for a while, still got damn snow on most of the lawn.

This technical document, titled "Fifty Years of Airfield Grass Management in the UK" is interesting. Bit technical, perhaps, for non-ecologists in places but it does explain why grass management on airfields is important and does focus upon regimes undertaken by the RAF (mainly) between 1949 and 2000.

It largely focuses upon the grass cutting regimes needed to control certain species of birds on airfields to mitigate against bird-strike. It would be interesting to find a follow-up report though.

Chris

Edit: Forgot to highlight the link!

I think there is also something about how high the grass should be cut too, to stop ground nesting birds or something, one of the others on here will know more about this I am sure

I remember they let the grass grow at Wittering. Every time I rode up the A1, I thought what a mess, still if it worked far less messy than a bird strike

The RAF employes a "Long grass policy" on some, but not all, of it's airfields since the 80's. It was an attempt at habitat management in relation to deterring birds from airfields. Overseen by the resident Bird Control Unit, it required a certain type of Rye grass to be sewn that would stand up right in pretty much any weather and be kept at an ideal length of 9 inches ( or 6 now I believe. Critical areas were not subject to the policy). The theory being that birds are less likely to alite in long grass as they can't see any preditors (or spitfireman with his belt fed shotgun) creeping up on them. This required a committment from the land management teams to maintain it, cut it, fertilize and thatch it as and when necessary to ensure it remained effective. In my experience this generally didn't happen that well, and what long grass did grow was a haven for the smaller birds, particularly Skylarks, Pippits, Snipe etc,etc. The Royal Navy wouldn't employ this idea, instead insisting that their airfield at Culdrose be gang mown to lawn length. I think this was and still is common practice on RN airfields. They do use Raptors though but that's another story.

Kembles groundsmans shed