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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.

Transforming your Bowls Green-the knowledge.

I keep going on about healthy living soil and healthy living turf and healthy living bowling greens on this site.

In my eBook Performance Bowling Greens, a practical guide, I focus heavily on the process of turning bowling greens back in to healthy living eco systems that are pretty much self sustaining.

By self sustaining I mean that they are in a condition that allows them to be set up and prepared for play in a consistently high performance manner with no pesticides and minimal on-going in-put costs.

This relies on the green being converted from a barren, sand laden, resource swallowing beast that is unpredictable at best and disappointing and expensive at worst.

This conversion process demands two qualities in those who seek to deliver a Performance Bowling Green:

Knowledge, that you are doing the right thing and the Patience to spend the time following the program.

Performance Bowling Greens spells out this process in great detail, but here in basic terms are the key points of knowledge that are important to a successful transition:

  1. Soil micro-life is critically important; this refers to the microscopic life in all soils and includes beneficial fungi which help plants to assimilate nutrients (which fungicides get rid of), and soil microbes, which help to turn organic matter (mainly thatch) into plant useable nutrient ions.
  2. Every time you add sand to the green, the abundance of soil micro-life reduces; sand is inert.
  3. Sandy soils generally have a lower Cation Exchange Capacity (the ability to retain the plant useable nutrient ions created by the soil microbes).
  4. There are two distinctly different kinds of pore space in soils; micro or capillary pore space where plant roots take up moisture and nutrients; and macro or aeration pore space where drainage occurs (to stop the soil from being saturated with water), and oxygen (critical to maintaining a large population of soil microbes) is held.
  5. Compaction ruins the structure of the soil and reduces aeration pore space, oxygen content and soil microbe populations. This is why compacted greens seem to need more and more fertiliser. Compaction + More Fertiliser = Thatch and so the downward spiral into the Circle of Decline begins.

These are 5 guiding principles if you like for a consistently high performance green. You will notice that this is not a list of things to do, but a list of key things to keep in mind, to focus on as we patiently go about the transition process. You can be confident that if you are heading in this direction you are heading in the right direction regardless of how long the road is.

And you can be confident that the view will improve (in the shape of performance) around every corner of that road.

Bowls Social Network

Getting started on bowls-central’s new social network is easy. In a few minutes you can be set up and start benefiting from the many new features the social network brings to the site and its members.

To get started just Register and you will be up and running in minutes.

Use the top most menu on the any page to register for your free membership and to organise and manage your profile and the type of content you want to get involved with.

What is a Member?

Everyone who signs up to bowls central is a member of the community and is free to use all of the site features including:

Activity Streams 

Activity Streams allow you to keep track of the information you are following on the site. Global, personal, and group activity streams with single-stream view. Included are threaded commenting, status updates, favourites, @mentions, RSS feeds, and email notifications.

User Groups

You can join user groups; I’ve set up some initial special interest groups and members are free to join any of these or request a new group specific to their interests.

Groups can be public, private or hidden to allow members to break the discussion down into specific topics.

Forums

Each user group has its own fully featured discussion forum to allow for more in-depth conversations between members. Simply add to an existing discussion or start your own in the forum that best suits the topic. If it isn’t there just request a new user group and forum and you’ll be up and running straight away.

Private Messaging

Private messaging allows members to talk to each other directly, in private. Members can even send messages to multiple recipients at a time.

Friend Connections

Members can make friend connections so they can track the activity of each other, and focus on the people they are most interested in.

Member Settings

Members can change their notification options and sensitive account information, for example to be notified by email when new activity occurs in a group they are interested in.

Future Developments

We will continue to add further features as and when they are available or by demand. This will include making it possible for every member to set up their own blog.

So don’t delay…join up today and join in the conversation on bowls central social! You can register here.

does Calcium have a place in Bowls Green Maintenance?

It’s essential for strong teeth and bones; I know that much from school, but where does Calcium fit into a bowling green maintenance program?

When we hear discussion of soil nutrients, it is usually in terms of Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium; the famous NPK, that we see written on fertiliser bags.

However, there are another 3 major nutrients; these are Calcium, Magnesium and Sulphur.

However, the most overlooked macro or major nutrient in bowling green maintenance is Calcium. Calcium is needed by plants to grow and maintain health. It is a key constituent of cell walls.

If calcium availability is low or compromised grass plants can experience a range of difficulties

  • Once fixed, calcium is not mobile in the plant. It is an important constituent of cell walls and can only be supplied in the xylem sap. Thus, if the plant runs out of a supply of calcium, it cannot remobilise calcium from older tissues.
  • If transpiration is reduced for any reason, the calcium supply to growing tissues will rapidly become inadequate.

Calcium plays a very important role in plant growth and nutrition, as well as in cell wall deposition. The primary roles of calcium are:

  • As a soil amendment, calcium helps to maintain chemical balance in the soil, reduces soil salinity, and improves water penetration.
  • Calcium plays a critical metabolic role in carbohydrate removal in plants.
  • Calcium neutralises cell acids.

Therefore the role of calcium in plants must not be overlooked.

In Performance Bowling Greens, a practical guide I go into this in much more detail.

New Bowls Social Network

chat and share ideas within the new Bowls Social area

Today sees the launch of a host of new interactive features here on bowls-central.

Although not very prominent at the moment if you look at the top left of any main page you will see a new menu called Bowls Social Network, although we would like to arrive at a better name soon and I’ve put up a little competition to see if we can do that!

The new features include Special Interest Groups which you can join to enter the discussion with other members. Membership is free and setting up your profile is very straight forward.

I have set up a few starter groups including ones for the four home nations of Great Britain and Ireland and groups focussed on Performance Greens, Club Survival and Club Membership issues. I will be happy to set up any other relevant groups requested by members.

Once you join a group or groups you will have access to a host of features including discussion forums, private messaging, extended member profiles, friend connections, user groups, activity posting etc.

Don’t worry if you don’t understand everything at the outset just jump in and set up your profile today.

Its easy…just click here choose a user name and password and join the conversation today! Alternatively select “Register” from the Bowls Social Network menu at the top left of any main page.

I’ve put up a few starter questions on the forums to get things moving.

Site users who have previously signed up for the Bowls Club Mastermind Network will be able to sign in with their existing user name and password, or alternatively set up a new account.

As usual, if you have questions or need any help with any of this; just drop me a line by clicking here.

Hope to see you on our new bowls social network!

John Quinn