Sometimes we over complicate things in greenkeeping. Checking off the points on this short list of things to change in your programme will help a great deal to simplify your life.
Author: John
Master Greenkeeper John Quinn is the author of Performance Bowling Greens, and several other titles on Greenkeeping, Club and Business Management.
When Beer was Cheap and the Summers Long
When were the good old days of bowling? 1950’s? 1960’s?
For me, although I wasn’t around then, this makes a lot of sense, because it ties in nicely with a huge change in agricultural practices in the UK. This led to big changes for greenkeeping too.
The Role of Microorganisms in Soil Health
The Role of Microorganisms in Soil Health is vast and in many cases misunderstood. For decades we have been obsessed with the potential harm that just a few pathogenic microbes can cause, instead of learning to think of the soil as an eco-system. We've learned the hard way about that approach and now that pesticide availability is being reduced we need to start taking this seriously. Excellent article here from Christopher Johns, Research Manager, Northern Australia and Land Care Research Programme
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.
The perfect soil. Performance Evaluation of the Bowling Green Part 12
In the previous articles in this series, we’ve discovered how to evaluate performance by simply looking for visual indicators on the turf and by gauging some of the functional attributes of grass plant communities when they form turf.
Before we move on to the final stage of this series where we will look at some of the latest and most objective techniques for performance measurement, I wanted to stop for a moment to consider what lies beneath the green layer.
All of the functionality and therefore performance of the bowling green depends on healthy turf and turf is of course not just grass plants. Turf is a construct of a healthy grass plant community containing millions of individual plants, growing in a medium that is suited to sustaining healthy growth and reproduction. The medium is, of course the soil our greens are built on; but what is soil?
If you look at the pie chart at the top of the article you will see the proportions of what I think of as the perfect soil.
Mineral Component
In the diagram you will see that 45% of the soil is made of Minerals. The mineral component of soil is usually made up of a mixture of 3 main groups and these are Sands, Silts and Clays. A suitable mixture of these is critical to the soil’s performance as they dictate the soil’s ability to provide nutrition and moisture to the grass plants and suitable drainage. The mix of sand, silt and clay defines the soil’s texture.
Organic Component
The organic component will ideally be around 5% and this is made up of living organisms, micro-organisms and dead, decomposing and already decomposed plant tissue (humus). The organic material is added to by the plants themselves as they produce thatch and the soil organisms break this down to release plant nutrients.
50% Nothing
Then there’s the remaining 50% of the soil to look for, but if you do, it might cause you some confusion, because in the ideal soil the remaining 50% of its volume will equate to nothing at all. In fact it is 50% space, or soil porosity to give it the correct name.
Ideally half of this space will be made up of small spaces called micro pores and large spaces called macro pores. The micro pores hold the soil solution which is a mix of water and plant available nutrient ions and the macro pores provide air space and this is where all of the drainage occurs after heavy rain. This air space keeps the soil well oxygenated so that it can sustain a huge population of soil microbes; around 1 billion in a teaspoon of soil.