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Author: John

Master Greenkeeper John Quinn is the author of Performance Bowling Greens, and several other titles on Greenkeeping, Club and Business Management.

How to end poor bowls green performance

A very large number of bowls greens in the UK have problems with performance and surface predictability.

It’s quite common for the bowls green to be praised as the best ever one week, only to to be un-recognisable as the same green the next.

Many times this is blamed on the weather or the greenkeeper or both, but the fact is that the majority of greens are already in poor condition due to decades of inappropriate maintenance.

This article explains this problem in more detail and this eBook holds the key to ending
this frustration permanently.

How to harness nature to achieve a performance bowls green

In Performance Bowls Greens, a practical guide there is a simple but detailed procedure for getting back to natural greenkeeping, reducing maintenance costs and ensuring predictable and affordable long term bowls green performance.

In it John Quinn explains what has gone wrong in UK bowls green maintenance, why we rely on industry norms at our peril and more importantly what we can do about it.

This best selling eBook, breaks down all of the myths and fairy tales about bowls green maintenance including why you shouldn’t be top-dressing your green or following many of the green keeping practices currently deemed essential.

No bowls club can afford to be without this eBook.

The great top dressing hoax

Top dressing with high sand content composts has become a tradition in bowling green maintenance but it is far from beneficial.

  1. After 3 decades of routine top-dressing most greens are “inert” and can’t support a population of beneficial soil microbes.
  2. Soil microbes break down thatch and release nutrition to the turf.
  3. High sand and thick thatch usually result in Localised Dry Patch which is a long lasting, devastating condition that causes the soil to repel water.
  4. The surface smoothing and levelling actions of top-dressing are massively over-sold and of very little relevance to producing a smooth, fast green.
  5. Most bowling green irrigation systems are inadequate to start with, but are completely useless in the face of localised dry patch.

The process of top-dressing a bowling green has become so ingrained in our maintenance practices that it is hard to find a club that doesn’t do it, but over the decades it has devastated a huge number of greens in the UK.

Do your green and your wallet a favour and break the habit this year.

Performance bowls green properties.

How can we ensure a consistently high performance bowling green that is economical to produce and maintain. There are 4 specific goals that we need to achieve to say that we have such a green:

Green Speed; the actual surface pace that we can reasonably expect from the green on a regular basis.
Consistency; the ability of the green to replicate high performance throughout the day, week and season and also from season to season.
Predictability; the ability of the green and individual rinks to be set up for play of a reasonably predictable nature, time after time and over time.
Achievability; high performance must be not only physically achievable but also relatively easily achievable and for that the program we put in place must tick the following boxes; it must be:

Workable; with “in-house” labour and skills or with a financially sustainable amount of “bought in” labour and skills.
Sustainable in terms of its environmental, financial and infrastructural requirements.
Replicable time after time within the parameters defined above.
Minimum Input in terms of artificial fertilisers, chemicals and expensive bought in machinery or skills.

The goals we have set above require us to produce a very specific kind of green surface.

Performance Bowls Greens-Getting Down to it

The season is well underway now and its around this time in the season when suddenly it hits clubs that the green isn’t up to scratch…again!

One of the most common problems we hear about from Performance Bowls Greens readers is the difficulty in getting the philosophy to stick at their club. Its all too simple to fall off the wagon and go back to old “traditional” habits.

There are of course no silver bullets in Bowling Green Management but for a lot of clubs the call of the “instant fix” magic potion from a bag or bottle soon looks much more attractive than the relentless application of a strict maintenance program that takes time to show results.

The difference however, is that by applying the Performance Bowling Greens philosophy you ensure that your green improves a little bit every week, and that you work inexorably towards excellence in green surface management.

The typical reliance on the quick fix that still dominates the bowling green maintenance world delivers the most disappointing of results, when greens suffer the continuous peaks and troughs of acceptable performance followed by seemingly un-fixable surface disasters. This the sequence of trial and error that sees clubs go through many phases of committee and greenkeeper changes while meantime the green just keeps getting worse.

To deliver a Performance Bowling Green you must stick to a plan that makes allowance for the following phases of development.

  1. Green Appraisal- Thorough Agronomic and Performance appraisal of green.
  2. Baseline Maintenance Plan– to provide a firm foundation before further development.
  3. Remedial Maintenance Program– work to correct underlying problems.
  4. High Performance Plan– Measures employed to develop green towards performance requirements of club.
  5. Continuous Improvement– A program of Continuous Improvement ensures continued high performance

Such an approach is easily understood by all concerned and simple to communicate to the wider membership.

More soon.