Green speed continues to be a very popular topic even though we are out of season. The quest for speed is often reduced to shaving the green and neglecting to water it in dry weather. This approach guarantees problems later in the season and in subsequent seasons. There is a comprehensive article on what you …
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Green Speed pointers
The most popular subject in bowling green maintenance is…Green Speed. The main factors affecting green speed are in order of importance: Sward Composition Thatch control and management Mowing frequency Control of compaction Control of LDP Mowing height .
Think laterally for bowls green speed
Green speed is always a hot topic at this time of year and the most popular methods for achieving increased speed are usually to turn off the water and set the mower down; both of which can cause long term damage to the green. Mowing the green regularly below 5mm can really start to harm …
Bowls Green Maintenance Basics-Green Speed
The great debate about green speed has raged on since the beginning of the game. But what are the factors known to affect green speed? In order of their impact on green speed these are the top 7 factors that you should bear in mind. Obviously there are others such as weather patterns, level of …
Grass, greenkeepers and the soil food web
The soil food web has become an increasingly popular term in greenkeeping and bowling green management. The problem-solution-problem, or symptoms approach to greenkeeping has been exposed as fundamentally flawed by the diminishing list of available pesticides now available to turf managers. Is there a better way to manage greens...yes. And the extraordinary discovery is that a greenkeeping program that focusses on the green as an eco-system is fully compatible with producing tight, natural turf dominated by the fine perennial Fescue and Bent grasses.
How to painlessly transform greens from Poa annua to bent/fescue
Transitioning your green from Poa annua to bent/fescue is not only critical to achieving a Performance Bowling Green, but is actually a realistic goal. The spongy, soft turf associated with annual meadow grass is less than ideal for bowls. Common wisdom says that this can't be done without major disruption and that even after it is achieved it wont last. This article explains in detail how to undertake the transition of your green from Poa annua to bent/fescue turf and dispels the myths about stressing Poa. This is the way to change your green permanently and without fuss. It will also save your club money on maintenance, so what's not to like?
A note on the ecology of greens (and squirrels)
Understanding that the ecology of greens exists and what that means is more important for greenkeepers than understanding how that ecology works or indeed any of the scientific components of ecology in isolation. Stepping back and letting nature do its stuff can yield remarkable results.
In this article you'll discover how some commonly applied greenkeeping techniques are actually rather blunt instruments that can result in more harm than good. Top-dressing, applying lawn sand and fungicides are routinely applied to greens in an effort to treat the symptoms of common problems in the soil.
Turf Resiliency. Performance Evaluation of the Bowling Green Part 10.
Turf resiliency is one of the major factors determining bowling green performance and as such warrants close attention by the greenkeeper. Up to this point in our series on the evaluation of bowling green performance we have been dealing with attributes of grass, turf and soil that depend a lot on the greenkeeper's experience and "feel" for the turf. With resiliency we are getting closer to making more objective measurements.
Turf Grass Elasticity. Performance Evaluation of the Bowling Green Part 9.
Turf Grass Elasticity is an important factor in bowling green performance. Today we look a little closer at what this actually means and how it relates to our maintenance and use of the green.
Turf Grass Rigidity. Performance Evaluation of the Bowling Green Part 8.
In measuring the performance of the bowling green there are visual and functional factors to consider. Now that we've studied the visual clues we move on to the functional ones in earnest. Today we will look more closely at what at first might seem a strange quality of turf and that is Rigidity. This property of sportsturf is closely associated with the physiology of the individual grass plants we looked at in an earlier series and also with bowling green performance, as it influences green speed and trueness.