I am sure July will be a very challenging month for many groundsman and greenkeepers, particularly those faced with producing playing surfaces during this period of very hot weather.

A recent pitch inspection for the RFU in the Wirral enabled me to see the difficulties facing community club groundsmen who have no watering facilities and are at the mercy of the weather. Their soil based pitches where suffering from heat stress with the grass turning brown and dying off.

However, there are some turf management steps to help reduce drought stress, such as changing cutting heights, use of organics, wetting agents, spiking regimes and effective use of water whilst it is available. Early, preventative action is critical, as there are limited things you can do once the drought is underway. A couple of good tips are:

• Try to keep as much grass cover as possible by raising the height of cut by a few millimetres.
• Control warm-up and training activates by rotating them around different areas of the pitch to reduce wear.
• Ensure you cut the grass with sharp mowers, leaving a clean cut.

The use of plant growth regulators (PGR) can also be a useful tool to help the plant combat drought conditions. PGRs will slow the plant's growth, thus reducing the need to cut so often. However, a programme of growth regulators is not cheap.

Depending on the soil type, some pitches will dry out at different rates; sandy soils will be very quick to dry out, whereas clay soils retain moisture and are more likely to help sustain plant growth over a longer period. There may be a need to cancel games if the pitches become too hard. However, grass is a very resilient plant and will recover quite quickly once it receives adequate moisture.

If you are able to water, please ensure you conserve and do not waste it. Do not irrigate during the hottest part of the day, you will lose most of the water you are trying to put on by evaportranspiration; irrigate in the evenings, and also ensure you water to depth.

When choosing an irrigation system you will need to get some advice on which one will suit your needs, generally this will be dependent on what water resources you have available. Are you on mains water, borehole or extracting from a river/pond resource?  You will need extraction licences to take water from boreholes, lakes and rivers. Many self-travelling sprinklers require a certain pressure of water to operate effectively.

Never forget, irrigation equipment is an essential tool for managing natural turf pitches.