Master Greenkeeper John Quinn is the author of Performance Bowling Greens, and several other titles on Greenkeeping, Club and Business Management.
Grass identification is a key skill for the greenkeeper and over at the Bowls Central Academy the students have been spending a fair bit of time recently finding out about that and all of the things that can go wrong on and under the green. They have then applied this learning to their own greens to enable them to develop a sound maintenance and renovation program for their greens.
"Mair sand" was the call from Tom Morris the most famous and respected greenkeeper of them all, but have we misunderstood him? In reply to an article about fine, firm golf greens John Quinn highlights the similarities between the plight of golf and bowls greens and clears up the apparent contradiction between modern day problems with inert greens and the Tom Morris philosophy.
Compost Tea is a home made spray that is applied to fine turf to increase the micro life in the soil. It reintroduces missing microbes and boosts the populations of all of the main beneficial microbe groups such as bacteria, protozoa and the all important Fungi. Some of these help to degrade thatch, turning it into valuable humus, giving life and body to the depleted and often excessively sandy soil in many bowling greens.
Turf Performance Evaluation is a based on the observation of a variety of different properties inherent in fine turf grasses, their preferred environmental conditions and growth habits. This article kicks off a series looking at these properties in more detail.
With the new bowling season bearing down on us fast, I’ve received a good few emails and calls asking me whether or not it’s worth trying to start the Performance Greenkeeping Program from scratch so close to the new season?
Several of these contacts had the feeling that there was no point starting at this late stage and that it might be better to wait until the autumn, but all that would guarantee is yet another season of conventional greenkeeping and mediocre green performance.
The truth is that of course it would be great if every club could get in touch well in advance of the season opening day and request a full soil analysis and greenkeeping plan to work from, but all is not lost if you haven’t done that yet and there is a way you can usefully get started now.
If you’ve been a reader of Bowls Central and/or Performance Bowling Greens for any length of time, you will know that the conditions that make greens perform badly, on the whole originate from decades of conventional greenkeeping.
This has featured excessive use of high salt mineral fertilisers, lawn sand, sulphates of iron and ammonia and in many cases the over use of sand top-dressings. To top it off, there has been a frequent need for fungicides to combat outbreaks of turf disease.
All of these problems combine to form what I’ve termed the Circle of Decline.
Therefore changing this condition around is the answer and you can do that by starting to liven up your soil’s biology now.
