His Yardwork Is No Garden Party

Imagine waking up on a Sunday morning and seeing that your yard looks like Kuwait’s landscape.

Imagine also that your yard is one of the largest in San Diego County.

Imagine further that thousands of guests are expected in just a few weeks.

Imagine yet further that water is so scarce you can’t get a martini on the rocks.

If your name is Steve Wightman, you do not need much of an imagination to envision such a scenario. This is real-life stuff to him.

Wightman, you might assume, would be feverishly thumbing through the pages of Better Homes and Wastelands for a solution. I mean, not too long ago, he had a lush, green yard . . . and now it looks like a poorly tended sand trap.

Here it is, the last day of February, and he needs to have his place landscaped by the beginning of April. Wightman, you see, is turf manager at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. He needs to cover some 107,000 square feet with something, preferably grass, between now and the Padres’ April 9 season opener.

Understand that this chore is complicated by the fact that off-road vehicles ran rampant through the stadium on two different Saturday nights this month. These vehicles, blights on any landscape, turn a perfectly good baseball field into a landfill.

And so Wightman and his crew must start with what looks much more like Goliath’s sandbox than a baseball field.

Given restrictions on water use, I wondered about his approach. Would the Padres be playing on a genuine sandlot field this year, just like when they were kids? What about just painting it green? Please, not a rug . . .

Obviously, I had a few questions as I sat down in his office.

Would the Padres have a drought-resistant field? Would 30% of the field be ice plant? Which 30%? How about a little cactus garden in center, since that figures to be a thorny area for the Padres anyway?

Steve Wightman would have none of these solutions. The stadium will have a grass field, thank you, and a very nice one, you’re welcome. And it will be ready on time.

Indeed, he seemed remarkably relaxed as he sat behind his desk, as if to say this is all in a spring’s work. Clear the dirt from the off-road event, spread nutrients onto the dirt, churn it up, smooth it out and bring on the turf.

Yawn.

“It takes us about five days to get ready,” Wightman said, “and then maybe 2 1/2 days to lay the sod.”

This is, to be sure, a little more precise than putting in that postage stamp lawn you are planning for your aquatically efficient cactus garden.

Wightman’s crew has to stake out the bases, the pitcher’s mound, the dirt portion of the infield and goal post anchors for conversion to football. The infield, in fact, has to be scraped three to four inches below the remainder of the field so the special mix can be brought back from its offseason resting place.

The grading itself is done with transits. The field, for example, is 24 inches lower at the outfield fences than it is at the outside of the infield arc. The infield area and the area around home plate should be as flat as a pool table.

By the middle of next week, all of this will be accomplished and the stadium’s field will be green.

OK, about keeping it green . . .

Water, Steve, what about water?

“We’ve had many discussions here at the stadium,” he said. “Bill Wilson, the stadium manager, has asked everyone for ideas on ways of conserving water.”

One of them won’t be watering only 50% of the field or watering the whole field 50% of the time.

“The field,” Wightman said, “is obviously a very important part of the stadium and we can’t compromise on playing conditions.”

Cuts are being made elsewhere.

“We’ve cut all outside irrigation by 35%,” Wightman said, “and we’ve sent our irrigation guy to water auditing school. It’s a fairly intense program the deals with ways of evaluating your irrigation system and bringing it up to a more efficient level of usage.”

How about having the players take their showers in the sprinklers?

Probably not, but the showers will have flow restricters. And the stadium might not be so squeaky clean, because water can be saved by cutting back the postgame cleaning process. Automatic toilets will not flush quite so often.

Steve Wightman is confident his yard will be splendidly green. It’s a matter of priorities.

Good thing. In a year in which the brown was erased from the uniforms, you’d hate to see it come back as grass.