Home » Archives for John

Author: John

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

Climate Change Challenges for Greenkeepers

Climate Change Challenges for Greenkeepers 5. Growing Pains

As greenkeepers we are familiar with a short list of fine turfgrasses that we use to create the best surfaces for bowling. However, our summers are beginning to behave very differently to the conditions favoured by these grasses. As temperatures rise and rainfall becomes less reliable, our cool season grasses are being pushed into conditions their photosynthetic system isn't adapted to. Growth stalls, roots recede and leaf colour fades, not necessarily because we've done anything wrong, but because the plant itself has reached a physiological limit.

Read more

The Circle of Decline

Climate Change Challenges for Greenkeepers 4. The Circle of Decline

Who can forget 1976 when we all burned up through the summer holidays? And 1995 now seems like a stupid year for me to try to build a golf course in one of the driest regions of the country and it was tough work, but we didn't know what summer would be like from one year to the next. However, since the mid 90's, choosing your best summer has all become a bit of a Blur, sometimes with no Oasis in sight :-). I have now lost count of the summers like 76 and 95, because they have become all too regular and as we've seen more recently this is now starting to hit home hard for those of us trying to maintain greens.

Read more

LDP, localised dry patch on bolwing green

Greens are Baking, we have to act Now to avoid Autumn Renovation failures

Across the UK this summer, bowling greens are being baked in the intense summer heat. Weeks of hot, dry weather have left surfaces bare, cracked, and rock-hard. For many clubs, the underlying soil has crossed into a more serious condition — hydrophobicity — where the soil physically repels water, a phenomenon known as Localised Dry Patch.

If that’s where your green is today, you’ve got a problem.

You can simply can't wait until your usual mid-September renovation

Read more

breaking into the circle of decline

Breaking into the Circle of Decline this Autumn

Yes, I'm thinking about Autumn already. Why?, It's all to do with the devastating effect of Localised Dry Patch on many greens this year. I've ever had so many people get in touch. It looks like the more regular occurrence of extreme heat and long dry spells is demonstrating the problem of excessively sandy rootzones, much better than I could ever hope to explain...

Read more