Soil Moisture and Bowls Green Performance are so closely linked that we assume we know everything there is to know about it. More sand will make it better surely? Master Greenkeeper John Quinn has been digging a little deeper than most and putting his students to work on some experiments to get to the root of truly High Performance Bowls Greens.
Bowls Central has been delivering greenkeeping and club management advice for 5 years now and we have grown a substantial readership as a result.
Now that the site is established as an online destination for bowlers and clubs looking for help, I’d like to expand the range of advice offered.
In particular I see a need for detailed articles on the following subject areas:
With this in mind, I’d like to ask if you, or any of your friends have experience in either of these fields and would be interested in writing an article, a series of articles or even a regular column for Bowls Central?
I’d like to see this type of help expanded as much as our readership feels it needs to be on Bowls Central so am happy to support you in any way I can to help you deliver advice on these subjects. There is no direct payment available for this work, but depending on the quality and frequency of articles you are able to provide, we can support writers in some or all of the following:
Please feel free to reply with any questions you have about this, or to make a suggestion. I’d also be pleased if you could alert any of your friends or contacts who might be interested.
Please reply using the contact form.
Photo Credit: Julian Stallabrass via Compfight cc
Bowls green performance and organic matter go hand in hand. In this article we continue to test our hypothesis about the effect Organic Matter has to bowls green surface performance. John compares the different kinds of organic matter in greens and shows how we can measure these to direct us to a better maintenance regime that focusses on performance and produces healthier greens and greens that are more economical to maintain.
"Bad rinks", "bad roads on rinks", "straight hands", "off the heads", just some of the multitude of anecdotal evidence for poor bowling green performance. Meantime the real causes of problem greens are not only missed, but are actually being perpetuated by some of the maintenance practice we employ. The Objective Measurement of Bowls Green Performance is long overdue so we can move on and start to work on the real issues.
Common sense greenkeeping doesn't always prevail against the huge pressure piled on greenkeepers and bowls clubs to try new products and techniques. The renovation and maintenance of bowls greens for high performance needn't be so complicated.
