There is one key element during a soccer game: the pitch. A well-maintained field increases performance, reduces injuries and helps manage costs over time.
Over the past six years, Frank Lopez has transformed the Salinas Regional Soccer Complex’s grass fields from unkempt and patchy into a green, smooth surface.
Lopez and his team regularly maintain soccer complex’s fields. They keep the grass at 1.5-inches tall, following the advice of soccer experts. (The maintenance team need not be players themselves: “I don’t play soccer,” Lopez points out. “I just maintain the field.”)
Lopez has 40 years of landscaping maintenance experience and works throughout the Salinas Valley, from San Ardo to Salinas, maintaining greenery at different types of places, including shopping centers, vineyards, athletic fields and more.
Lopez once thought about becoming a lawyer. “It didn’t work out, so I got into landscaping,” he says. “Here I am, 40 years later.”
The Weekly spoke to Lopez, the owner of Frank’s Gardening Services, just before the soccer turf is next used for the Harvest Cup tournament on Sunday, Oct. 12.
Weekly: You do different types of landscaping. Which is most difficult?
Lopez: This field [at the Salinas Regional Soccer Complex]. We have a lot of challenges here because during the season, there’s so much play on here. They practice on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and then there are full games on Saturdays and Sundays.
We all work together on managing the water because it takes a lot of water to keep this field green. And then just doing the repairs from the goalies. We apply new seed, we apply organic topsoil to it, and try to restore all the areas that are damaged.
How were the Salinas soccer complex fields when you came on board?
When I got here, there was a tractor stuck in the mud about three-quarters of the way down. The weeds were so tall. I had people working out in the corral area. You couldn’t even see them because the weeds were so tall. This lawn was totally trashed. We brought everything back and made it happen to where it is now – which I get a lot of compliments on, so I must be doing a decent job.
What do you do when you’re not landscaping?
Work. It’s all we do. We work, usually five-and-a-half or six days a week. Sunday I go to church and go home and relax. We don’t take on any new accounts whatsoever. We’re busy enough that I just keep what I have.
Do you do your landscape at home?
Yes. It’s not as nice as some of my good customers’ yards. I live on five acres at the top of Pine Canyon [near King City]. We have a small vineyard on there. We have probably 150 potted plants between our pool patio and our family patio.
I tell my wife, “If we’re going to go on vacation, we’re going to go somewhere [that] looks nicer than my place” – and there ain’t a whole bunch of places that look nicer than my place.
So you work both home and away from home. When was your last vacation?
Before we started [at the soccer complex] five or six years ago? I get a day off here and there. I’ll take off early on a Thursday and then be gone on Friday and Saturday and come back Sunday. That’s usually the extent of my vacations.
Let’s say you do get a moment of free time.
I like going to the ocean a lot. I like the beach, and that’s where I usually head to when I do have time off. The calmness of the beach, the ocean, no grass, no soccer conflicts. Usually, it’s one of those spur-of-the-moment, let’s go and just make it happen.
You said you have a vineyard. Have you made wine?
Yes. We grow it, we fertilize it, we maintain the plants and we harvest it. I take it to a winery, and they produce the wine for me and they bottle it. We tried doing that a couple of years. It’s just way too much work. So now I just hire it out and get it done.
We grow a red wine – Shiraz – and they tell me it’s really good. I don’t really drink a whole bunch of it. I give it away to my customers for Christmas and stuff, and they all seem to like it so we keep growing it.
I didn’t harvest last year. But the year before, we ended up with 65 cases of wine.
If you do have wine with a meal, what do you pair it with?
A rib-eye steak.
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