
New lesson on Sand and it’s role in the Bowling Green Rootzone added to Academy
Rhizosphere and Phyllosphere
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.
Sweat the small stuff, for a high performance bowling green this year
If your green maintenance budget was cut in half this year what would you do?
Most clubs when faced with cuts to the greenkeeping budget, will try at all costs to keep the most important work in the plan. Unfortunately, important frequently gets confused with dramatic, which means that the big expense of top-dressing in the spring and autumn usually stays in the plan and I wish it didn’t for all the reasons I’ve explained over many articles.
Meantime, the work deemed less important and which of course is less dramatic is often sidelined or dropped as a result of a fear of what might go wrong if the big, sexy stuff is missed. These big jobs “must be doing a lot of good”, or so the thinking goes, because they’re so expensive and disruptive?