Wine, soda, ketchup: getting food and drink stains out of artificial turf

Cookouts, birthday parties and a backyard bar near a putting green are where most of these happen. Sugar-based drinks dry into a sticky film that also attracts ants and gnats, covered on our flies and gnats page. Wine and dark sauces like ketchup or barbecue sauce carry pigment that can tint the fiber itself if the spot sits in direct sun. The longer any of it dries, especially on a hot afternoon, the more it bonds to the surface of the fiber instead of sitting loosely on top of it.

A fresh stain is still damp or tacky and the color sits on the surface of the blade, wiping partly away with a wet finger. A set stain is dry and matte, and the color has worked into the fiber and does not lift with a wet finger. A ring of ants or gnats around an old, faded spot is a sign sugar residue is still there even after the visible color has gone.

1. Lift solids without pressing them into the infill.
2. Rinse promptly with a hose on a gentle setting.
3. Match the cleaner to the spill. An enzyme cleaner for anything sugary or protein-based, soda, juice, sports drinks, ketchup, dairy; a mild degreaser for anything oily or buttery.
4. Rinse again and let it dry.

Wine and dark sauces that have set for more than a day may only fade rather than fully lift, since the pigment has taken to the fiber's own color. A $75–$150 deep stain treatment is the next step for anything a home rinse does not fully clear.

Treat every spill the same day, ideally within the hour, and keep a hose or a jug of water handy at any gathering for exactly this. Do not let a stained spot sit through a hot afternoon before getting to it; the sun sets a food stain into turf about the same way it bakes one onto a countertop.