How to Top Dress the Outfield in Baseball

Adding top dress to your lawn in an effective method to ensure it remains healthy, green and lush all year long. Like a lawn, a baseball field also requires regular top dress to keep it in optimal shape. Both the infield and outfield grass on natural turf baseball fields are top dressed. In professional baseball, top dressing the outfield is a key responsibility of the grounds keeping crew. In lower levels of the sport, the job may fall to a team of volunteers.

Things You'll Need

  • Aerator
  • Topsoil
  • Sand
  • Fine compost
  • Grass seed
  • Wheelbarrow
  • Shovel
  • Rake
Show More

Instructions

    • 1

      Aerate the outfield by towing an aerator behind a tractor. Aerate the entire outfield once, as too many passes may soften and deplete the ground. Without aeration, the top dress will not sink into the earth effectively. Once the outfield has been aerated, it is ready to be top dressed.

    • 2

      Prepare your top dress in an area adjacent to the field, such as a paved parking lot. Top dress is made using equal parts topsoil, sand and fine compost. The amount of top dress you'll need to make depends on how badly the field is in need of a top dress. Because top dressing is done regularly to ensure a quality field, mix as much as you'll need for several applications.

    • 3

      Dump equal parts of topsoil, sand and fine compost onto the ground and mix it thoroughly using a shovel or rake. It is imperative that the compost is extremely fine. If fine compost cannot be obtained, make the top dress from equal parts of topsoil and sand.

    • 4

      Sprinkle grass seed into the top dress. The amount of seed needed depends on the sparseness of the grass on the field, but the seed should be barely visible in the top dress.

    • 5

      Load a wheelbarrow or tractor-pulled wagon with the top dress and cart it to the outfield.

    • 6

      Dump the top dress onto the field creating several piles roughly 20 feet apart. You will have to make several trips if using a wheelbarrow.

    • 7

      Rake the top dress to spread it around the outfield, making sure to add it thickly to dips and holes in the field. The top dress should be raked thinly enough that the outfield grass is not covered.

    • 8

      Water the outfield thoroughly as you normally would with a hose or sprinkler system. Because every field accepts a different amount of water, there is no universal amount of water to put on a field. However, you can test the earth's saturation with a soil probe. The dirt should be wet six inches below the surface. Watering the outfield following the aeration and top dress application helps the dirt, seed and minerals soak into the field quickly and prevents seagulls from eating the seed. If it's a sunny day, the water will dry up quickly, making the field ready for use within an hour.