Master Greenkeeper John Quinn is the author of Performance Bowling Greens, and several other titles on Greenkeeping, Club and Business Management.
There has been a flurry of enquiries this week about winter maintenance practices, one of my favourite subjects as regulars will know.
Anyway, although I might not have said it all before click here for a selection of related articles.
There is also an in-depth report on winter maintenance here
The somewhat uncomfortable truth is that we as greenkeepers are actually part of the massive worldwide agriculture industry.
Very few products or technologies ever see the light of day based purely on the needs of bowling clubs or even the much larger golf segment of the fine turf and sports industry.
No, most of the things we use are direct descendants of agricultural or other industrial products or at least are supported by agriculture’s huge global enterprise.
Every chemical pesticide we use is a direct copy of a product which has a use in growing crops; every fertiliser product is a result of agricultural research and manufacturing processes; even our mowers are based on a machine originally used for trimming in the massive Victorian carpet and textile industry.
Its very interesting to see as part of this discussion the current and on-going dilemma that faces farming. The burgeoning world population means that we have to grow more and more food on fewer and fewer hectares of ground. This ensures that agriculture will continue to be a cutting edge area of scientific research and that as a result we can look forward to continued and constant enticement to try out a multitude of new products and techniques on our bowls greens in the future.
However, there is one train of thought in agriculture and in society in general that is much closer to the one we need to nurture for the assured excellence of our bowls greens in the future, and that is ecological sustainability.
To accompany this goal of sustainability within agriculture there is a renewed interest in the common sense concept of healthy living soil and that is where we need to start on our road to an excellent,
high performance bowling green.
Incidentally, there is an excellent program on the BBC iplayer that explains the mechanics of soil ecology very well. You can still access it here.
“Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow”
This is the common mantra of the serial procrastinator.
In bowling club turnaround terms, putting off taking action until tomorrow could be critical or even terminal for your club.
So why do so many clubs avoid taking action on such obvious problems as:
The list goes on and on.
Well, the easy answer is “we don’t have enough money to improve the facilities”
But this is a self fulfilling prophecy in many respects as the lack of action on the smallest details leads to an increasing feeling of helplessness and the club slips into a downward spiral of failure.
What can be done?
The simple answer is Anything!
Doing nothing will guarantee failure.
Even if you get it wrong, you will have made a mistake you can learn from.
So in a typical club what needs to be done?
Finally for today your club must have a group that is dedicated to pushing this plan through, regardless of the level of resistance from internal and external sources.
This group must learn to distinguish the key differences between Projects and Actions and make sure that each project is broken down into key actions that can be taken every day to move the club’s turnaround process along on a steady path.
As leader or representative of your club this weekend why not make it your duty to track down and speak to the leader of another society or club in your town/village/vicinity; say the president of the Ramblers Club for example and follow this 5 step plan:
At your next club meeting; report the outcome of this meeting and suggest that someone else does the same with another local group asap.
This is the kind of very simple strategy that can really start to make a big difference to your club and community.
I've had a lot of requests to supply a general set of recommendations for winter maintenance for bowling greens. Although the full program for any green should be based on a thorough inspection and soil analysis, there are some general rules you can follow. I've also put together a suggested package of materials to help you apply this program more easily.
