Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC) is a measure of a soil’s ability to retain essential plant nutrients in the form of chemical ions and therefore its ability to provide sufficient nutrition to grass plants.
A while back I wrote a more in-depth article on this subject which included suggestions for increasing or boosting CEC. You can read it here.
What is the single most important area of maintenance to concentrate on for a performance green?
If we want to save money on bowling green maintenance, where should we concentrate our spending?
What will give us the most bang for our buck?
3 variations of the same question that crop up on an almost daily basis here at bowls-central.
The answer is Thatch.
However, this simple one word answer is almost never received with the open arms I expect it to be.
After asking questions like the above, it seems that most enquirers are instantly deflated and disappointed with the brevity and simplicity of the answer, but this is the very essence of Performance Bowling Green Maintenance.
Click here to get started on your journey to a Performance Bowling Green.
Since announcing the club website offer yesterday, I’ve had 2 enquiries related to advertising on your new club website.
The first question was:
Q1. Will our website be covered with adverts for bowls-central?
A1. No.
Second question was:
Q2. Can we have sponsors ads on our website?
A2. Of course, you can display any amount of sponsor ads on your site to raise money for your club funds. We are happy to help with adding these and of course there are many other ways that you can raise money through your site such as Google ads, and an increasing number of programs you can join and promote on your site to raise money for the club.
So not only do you get a professionally designed, built and hosted site, you also potentially get a new revenue stream or multiple revenue streams for your club into the bargain!
You can see the club website offer here.
In less than a week my new book, Performance Bowling Greens will be launched on this site; 15th of February to be precise. In the lead up to the launch we have been looking into some of the obstacles that stand in the way of the average bowling club achieving the performance they desire from their green. Today I want to look at one of those obstacles more closely and that is the obstacle that Tradition puts in our way. The trouble is that many of these “traditions” are really not that old. One of the most damaging of these is the “tradition” of top-dressing our greens with high sand content dressings every year.
Now I should warn you at the outset that this is a long one and you might want to grab a coffee before we get started. The reason for the length of this article is that I don’t just want to discuss the process of top-dressing; I also want to show you how damaging it can be to your green and how damaging it can be to your wallet. To do that I am going to re-present to you 3 of the most clicked on articles we’ve ever published on this site (which shows, I think, that many clubs already understand the problem). So here we go:
At most bowling clubs the end of September is when thoughts will start to turn to the autumn renovation program or the “closing of the green” as many clubs call it. Bowling clubs throughout the UK will take delivery of between 3 and 10 tonnes of very expensive top-dressing compost, which will be applied to the green after hollow tining or some other aeration operation, in the belief that Read more
A common question is “How much does it cost to water a bowling green for a season?”
Answer: a lot less for a performance bowling green than one in the throes of a traditional maintenance program.
It surprises me that clubs are surprised at the little surprises they get when the water bill comes in.
How can you be surprised that you used more water this year when you added 5 or 10 tonnes of sand to the green last autumn?
Many greens are already unmanageable in a normal (UK) summer due to excessive water requirements, localised dry patch and impermeable thatch; in a drought scenario its unlikely that there is any amount of water that would suffice.
This is because most of the water applied to poorly maintained greens is wasted to evaporation, run off and/or leaching.
Thick thatch holds water at the surface like a sponge, until of course LDP sets in, then it becomes akin to concrete and most water is lost to run off.
LDP causes soil particles to become hydrophobic, shedding any water that gets through the thatch to the macro-pores in the soil and away to the drains.
Performance greens can be watered cheaply and effectively because they only need enough to keep them alive during prolonged dry periods and can mostly take care of themselves in the normal course of a British Summer.
In many cases there is no need for anything more sophisticated than a large holding tank (the bigger the better) a simple pump and a 19mm hose to hand water hot spots on the green. This is much more effective than pop up sprinklers.
Water requirements and routines are given in more detail here.
