Texture only soil analysis launched
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 Successfully Over-seed your Bowling Green
Grass seed can only succeed when the conditions are right. This practical guide explains how to prepare the seedbed, choose the correct mixture and give new seedlings the best chance of establishing on your bowling green.
Introducing Academy Lite
Not every bowling green needs another soil analysis simply because twelve months have passed. Some clubs are still working through the programme produced from their previous report. Others may be happy with the progress they are making and want to continue along the same path for another season. Some greenkeepers simply feel that annual testing is more frequent than they need.
Until now, these clubs faced a fairly blunt choice: renew their Academy Membership and receive another soil analysis, or leave the Academy and lose access to the advice, courses, discounts and support that helped them put the programme into practice.
So, in response to a common enquiry, I've introduced Academy Lite.
Fixing low pH without Lime
As standard soil analysis offerings are generally obsessed with chemistry, a very low pH is often interpreted as a chemical imbalance, which, of course, it is. The question of why those acid cations are dominant on the soil colloid, remains unaddressed in most cases. Instead it seems that many advisers are jumping straight to the temporary, artificial correction advice to add lime, and as we have seen, for fine turf, that can be dangerous advice.
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.