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Pre Season Bowls Green Fertilising

Pre season bowling green fertilising is a key component of the Performance Bowling Green program.

Spring and autumn are the ideal times to make nutritional corrections using granular fertilisers.

During the playing season I recommend that you rely on bio liquid fertilisers applied on a spoon fed basis approximately every 14 days. There is a large range of suitable products available from a variety of manufacturers.

The bio liquid approach to fertilising the green delivers a more consistent growth pattern and the “bio” or carbohydrate component encourages natural decomposition of thatch and release of soil borne nutrients to the plants as and when they need them.

However, the rigours of winter can leave imbalances in the soil due to luxury uptake by the plants of Potassium and the natural leaching processes inherent in the soil.

Due to this it is a good idea to top up the soil with a corrective application of granular fertiliser at this time.

The soil temperature will still be fairly low so the product you use should contain a little quickly available nitrogen (ammonia), as well as a slow release N component. Plants also need a little Phosphorous at this time to aid strong root development, especially if you over-seeded the green in autumn.

More articles on nutrition here.

Pre Season Mowing Program

There is more to mowing than meets the eye

Whatever the season, mowing remains the most important job in the maintenance of a Performance Bowling Green.

Often overlooked due to the everyday nature of the task, there is a lot more to mowing than meets the eye. It is particularly important to follow the correct mowing regime to ensure green consistency and speed. More detailed information on green speed and consistency here.

At this time of year in the run up to the new season, it’s especially important that we get the mowing program right.

During the winter the green surface should have been maintained at a mowing height of around 8mm. In very cold winters, you will see some recession in height and this is difficult to avoid. However, in mild winters, like the one most of us have had this year it is quite normal for the green to keep growing throughout the winter months and this growth needs to be kept in check to minimise the outbreak of diseases and other problems associated with lush winter turf.

Now that the new bowling season beckons we need to gradually lower the cutting height and I would suggest taking it down to around 7mm this month, aiming for 6mm by opening day and 5mm by the end of May, all dependent on soil temperature and prevailing weather; we can still be in the grip of icy cold winds at Easter.

Mowing frequency will be dictated largely by growth rate, but once a week now should be the minimum, bearing in mind that you don’t want to be removing more than a third of the leaf at any one time. So, if the green is growing vigorously, then more frequent mowing will be required.

Of course its tempting to keep the work to a minimum, but mowing will also help to lightly roll the green surface, so it might be beneficial to mow more frequently than is actually required.

The most important factor in mowing is ensuring that the mower is razor sharp and that there is zero contact between the blade and cylinder to give the cleanest and least damaging cut to the grass leaf. More detailed information on mowing can be found here.

Tomorrow we will look more closely at the pre-season renovation work required on the green, with a look at some do’s and don’t’s.

The Circle of Decline—why many bowls greens never improve.

The diagram below shows the process that many poorly maintained bowling greens experience over a period of years if 3 basic maintenance issues are not addressed as a priority.

The top 3 issues on all fine turf are:

1. Thatch Control

2. Compaction Control

3. Turf Nutrition

the Circle of Decline, the reason many greens never improve

In addition to the top 3 there are of course other important issues such as irrigation management, topdressing etc, but if these 3 big issues are under-managed then the green will spiral into what I have called the Circle of Decline.

Simply put this is the course of events that go on largely un-noticed by many bowling clubs until it is too late to effect a quick recovery.

A lack of attention to thatch build up (see other posts under the thatch category) results in a thick mat of un-decomposed  dead grass shoots, roots and leaves. This mat gradually effects the turf’s ability to put down roots and take up water and nutrients. In advanced cases a root break will occur and Localised Dry Patch is a very common symptom of excessive thatch also (see other posts under the LDP category)

Disease

In winter, thatch can hold water like a sponge and encourage fungal diseases such as fusarium patch to take hold. This sometimes results in over use of chemical fungicides which kill off the disease and many beneficial fungi into the bargain.

Symbiosis

Grass relies on beneficial microbes, such as fungi to make best use of the available nutrition and so begins to have difficulty obtaining the necessary nutrition from the soil.

This often results in over fertilisation, as much of what is applied is not made available to the plants due to the anaerobic conditions which now prevail.

By now conditions are highly favourable to the weed annual meadow grass which is a very shallow rooting species. The finer fescue and bent grasses are compromised and in an effort to keep the meadow grass alive excessive irrigation is required.

This contributes even further to the excessive thatch layer as meadow grass is a prolific producer of thatch and we are back to the beginning of the cycle.

Action must be taken to break into the circle of decline, take action before its too late for your green.

Dead Bees on Bowls Greens

Our email forms on the site have been playing up this week and not sending on the email addresses of people making enquiries in some cases.

One such case was an enquiry about dead bees on the green. The message read:

Over the last week I have found dozens of bees dead or dying on the greens…. has anyone else found this? and what might have caused it? it is troubling…

Well, as an amateur bee keeper this troubles me too, so any input from readers would be appreciated.

There are a few different possibilities here:

At this time of year when the bees are flat out producing and feeding new brood and storing food for later months, the worker bees only live for about 5 or 6 weeks, by which time they are worn out and die, so if there are hives fairly close to the greens this might be one explanation.

Another possibility is that the weather conditions might not have been suitable for the bees, particularly if it has been colder than normal for the time of year as it has been here in Scotland.

Then its on to more troubling causes, with the various disease and parasite problems that beset bee colonies, such as Varroa mite being uppermost here.

Pesticides are another possibility.

Beyond that there is a very troubling condition which has become known as “Colony Collapse” which has decimated honey bee populations around the world including here in the UK. A definitive cause for this hasn’t yet been identified.

It would be good to get feedback from more experienced beekeepers and anyone else who has some ideas or theories on this.

Meantime, if you are interested in learning more about the problems faced by the honey bee, then there is a very good program on the BBC iPlayer here ,which is available to watch for another 5 days.

Investing in Irrigation-can you afford not to?

Irrigation: cost or investment?

Previously we talked about some of the reasons commonly put forward for not watering bowling greens. I also shared with you, my amusement that so many clubs fail to mention irrigation or lack of it when looking for an explanation for the poor quality or condition of their greens; even though it’s very obvious. They will use just about every other aspect of bowling green maintenance as a reason for poor performance.

Now we come to the cost of irrigation; and I am not talking about the cost of installing a system, but merely the cost of the water being applied on any given night.

This is another big reason or excuse that I hear a lot about:

“we can’t water any more because it costs a fortune”

Now of course there will be variations (slight) around the country and also from system to system, but here is my 10 second rundown on the cost of water for irrigation:

  • As we saw previously a typical system will put out 1mm of irrigation water for every 2 minutes of system run time.
  • A typical system will also put out 150 litres per minute; so to calculate the cost per mm of irrigation we do this:
  • 2 (minutes) X 150 (litres) X 4 (sprinkler heads) = 1200 litres/mm

That’s to achieve 1mm over the whole green.

As 1200 litres is 1.2 m3 you simply have to multiply the irrigation requirement in millimetres by your cost per m3 and then by 1.2

Example:

  • Water balance sheet shows we need to replace 15mm of moisture loss.
  • Multiply 15 (mm) X 1.2 (m3) X £/m3
  • 1.2 (m3) X £0.90 = £1.08/mm of irrigation over entire green.

I’ve used 90p as an average cost, but you can find your own local charge on your water bill or by phoning the water company.

The question is whether you see irrigation as a cost or an investment in the future of your green.