High-sand bowling green rootzones are often biologically sterile. Biostimulants help to rebuild microbial life, improve root mass and nutrient cycling and reduce dependency on chemical fertilisers
Category: Greenkeeping
Worm Casts —and what to do about them
While many assume surface-casting worms are shallow dwellers, the reality is more complex. Lumbricus terrestris, for example, is a deep-burrowing anecic worm—it constructs vertical burrows up to 2 metres deep but returns to the surface to feed on organic debris, which it pulls into its burrow.
June is Localised Dry Patch Time, start now to deal with it Permanently!
Localised Dry Patch typically rears its ugly head in June in the UK, but by then it is way too late to do anything about it. Once your green is displaying the large brown patches of desiccated grass and powder dry soil beneath, no amount of watering or wetting agent will bring it back fully this year. Now is the time to inspect your green and deal with it permanently.
Localised Dry Patch-a modern plague killing bowls greens
Soil sampling will reveal powder dry soil. Unsightly brown patches of turf start to spread over most of the green. The turf on these areas recedes causing a bumpy surface and in most cases the weakened grass will be taken over by moss. But what can be done to cure the problem?
How to Cure Localised Dry Patch in Bowls Greens
Create a healthy living green environment.
This question is an amalgamation of upwards of 50 similar search queries on the site this month.
Essentially what these readers are looking for is a cure for Localised Dry Patch.
As regular readers will know, using the word “cure” in Bowling Green Maintenance is an example of “Symptoms Thinking”
Most problems that occur on bowling greens are symptoms of more fundamental problems and Localised Dry Patch is a case in point.
This is a relatively recent addition to the list of difficulties greenkeepers have to deal with in maintaining bowling greens.
I won’t go into a long description of the problem as that is well documented on the site elsewhere (just click on the LDP tag on the right of the page to go to articles about Localised Dry Patch).
The main thing is to get away from thinking of LDP as something that can be cured; it isn’t a disease; the answer is to change your maintenance practices overall to make sure it doesn’t occur.
This means creating a healthy living soil environment by:
- Increasing air within the soil
- Minimising thatch
- Minimising compaction
- STOP using sand-top-dressings
- Increase microbial activity in the soil
- Firstly by doing 1-4 above
- Then helping to improve conditions through use of bio-fertilisers
- Use wetting agents in the meantime to help with soil re-wetting
- Keep the green surface open throughout the season by using a sarrell roller.
A complete explanation and detailed step by step guidance is included in Performance Bowling Greens, a practical guide