Category: Natural Greenkeeping

April 12, 2025

Dealing with Leatherjackets: Chitin v Chlorantraniliprole

TL;DR: Greenkeepers are facing increasing challenges due to climate change, outdated practices, and pest infestations. While Chlorantraniliprole-based insecticides might offer a quick and temporary fix, they disrupt soil microbiology and pose environmental risks. The withdrawal of pesticides, however, presents an opportunity to work smarter and in harmony with nature.

Chitin, found in insect exoskeletons and fungal cell walls, plays a crucial role in soil health. When broken down into chitosan, it enhances plant growth, improves soil structure, and stimulates beneficial soil microorganisms. However, conventional greenkeeping can disrupt these natural processes, leading to a deficiency of beneficial substances like chitosan.

By reducing reliance on artificial inputs and reintroducing natural substances like chitosan, we can restore the soil's natural balance and promote healthier, more resilient turf. Chitosan enhances plant growth and productivity through soil conditioning, plant health stimulation, microbiological associations, biocontrol, and bioremediation. Thus, chitosan plays a multifaceted role in the soil ecosystem, contributing to soil health, plant growth, and disease and pest resistance.

November 21, 2024

Managing turf disease effectively

Managing turf disease effectively, cheaply and permanently is well within the grasp of every greenkeeper. The soil in our greens already holds all of the answers to this, or at least it should do. Some of the routine work we do on greens is more damaging than beneficial. The need to manage turf disease more effectively gives us the perfect excuse to start returning our soils and grass plants to their natural disease resistant selves, much to the benefit of our members and clubs. John explains how to manage turf disease outbreaks simply and with reference to vegetarian sausages :-)...may contain nuts!

November 4, 2024

Finding the Sweet Spot in Bowling Green Performance

The Sweet Spot in greenkeeping is when your green's Physical, Chemical and Biological components come into line to deliver results you couldn't previously have imagined were possible. Hitting that sweet spot is a lot simpler than you might imagine too, as focus on the soil's biology will naturally correct some of the worst Chemical problems and compensate for some of the worst Physical ones. There should be no problem "selling" this idea to your club either as first of all it saves money and secondly it massively improves green performance and consistency.

July 8, 2023

Grass, greenkeepers and the soil food web

The soil food web has become an increasingly popular term in greenkeeping and bowling green management. The problem-solution-problem, or symptoms approach to greenkeeping has been exposed as fundamentally flawed by the diminishing list of available pesticides now available to turf managers. Is there a better way to manage greens...yes. And the extraordinary discovery is that a greenkeeping program that focusses on the green as an eco-system is fully compatible with producing tight, natural turf dominated by the fine perennial Fescue and Bent grasses.

May 28, 2023

Compost Tea, what is it and what can it do for your bowling green?

Compost tea is a specially home brewed spray that will boost the microbe population in your bowling green, allowing you to encourage the finer grasses and combat dry patch, disease and thatch, naturally and effectively.
After studying this subject I can say that compost tea is an essential addition to the Performance Bowling Greens Program. Regular use of compost tea can significantly boost soil microbial activity and helps to make better use of fertiliser inputs. Correct formulation of the mixture during brewing will increase the dominance of the fine perennial grasses in the green sward.
By using compost teas, greenkeepers can reverse decades of damage caused by inorganic fertilisers, pesticides and excessive sand top-dressing.