Category: Greenkeeping

March 11, 2015

Lessons from Wimbledon…how to water your bowling green

We’ve just had the most amazing Wimbledon fortnight; lovely weather for the most part and to top it off the first British Men’s Singles winner for over 70 years.

One issue that has cropped up over and over again is the fact that the courts at Wimbledon are actively protected from rain and moisture during play and that presumably then they aren’t watered during the event either. This is a very controlled and artificial situation for a short period of time and you can be assured that the sprinklers will be going hard at Wimbledon this week to aid recovery of the courts.

This has fed into the age old debate about watering bowling greens. Some greenkeepers have a really tough job convincing their members that they should water the green at all during dry spells. It’s understandable of course because the hot weather seems to improve the green surface, especially in terms of speed.

There are three key things to understand.

The grasses we use in the UK are termed cool season grasses which means that they struggle to survive and perform well in prolonged periods of hot weather. Cool season grasses must close their leaf stomata in hot weather to preserve internal moisture and this has a negative effect on their ability to photosynthesize (produce food).
Soil and plant moisture evaporates (through evapo-transpiration) at an average rate equivalent to 25mm of rain a week even in normal summers.
Localised Dry Patch (LDP) is a devastating (at least to playing surface performance) disorder that is prevalent on many UK bowling greens due to decades of inappropriate maintenance and is exacerbated by low moisture. Once it takes hold it is almost impossible to correct in a single season. More on Localised Dry Patch here.

To conclude then it is usually preferable to water the green following a deeply not daily routine. The correct way to water a bowling green is detailed here.

March 9, 2015

a lot of hot air?

Air is a very important component of a Performance Bowling Green.

50% of a healthy, performance green will be air; 25% Micro-pores and 25% Macro-pores.

The Macro Pore or “aeration” space is where drainage happens.

The Micro-Pore or “capillary” space is where grass plant roots get their water and nutrients.

Tip the balance in favour of one or the other of these and things start to go wrong.

Compaction reduces the Macro air space in soil and inhibits drainage and root penetration. The soil now holds on to too much moisture and a whole raft of other problems ensue; particularly the build up of excessive thatch due to the anaerobic (lacking in oxygen) soil conditions brought about by the reduction in air space.

Thatch becomes a breeding ground for fungal disease and a base for Localised Dry Patch to take hold. The thatch doesn’t break down naturally as it should because there is a massive reduction in the population of aerobic soil microbes and they usually do this job.

Tip the balance the other way by applying excessive amounts of sand top-dressing and there is now too much air space, there is very little capillary space and the green starts to dry out too quickly. Localised Dry Patch now takes over, the surface is unpredictable and the soil can’t provide the nutrition the plants need naturally any more.

Yes, for a healthy living green that performs to order you need a lot of space; 50% air space.

Luckily, a healthy living soil knows how to do all of this without us.

We are only needed to help rectify the damage we inflict, which is mainly compaction and nutrient depletion through the removal of grass clippings.

Ahh! how simple!

March 7, 2015

Thatch

Thatch is the mat of fibre between the grass and soil on your green. Although some thatch (5-6mm) is desirable too much can have a devastating affect on the playing surface.

When thatch builds up beyond the optimum level it can quickly cause problems with surface drainage, which in turn can encourage fungal diseases like fusarium patch and this can kill off huge areas of turf if left unchecked. Recovery from such attacks can also be troublesome and expensive.

This tendency to encourage disease is related to thatch’s ability to Read more

March 5, 2015

Thatch Problems

thatch build quickly on compacted turf

The sward on the majority of UK bowling greens consists of 3 main grass types; various bent grasses (Agrostis), various Fescues (Festuca) and Annual Meadow Grass (Poa annua). Of these, the bent grasses and annual meadow grass are prolific thatch producers.

Thatch consists of dead and dying roots, shoots, leaves, stolons and rhizomes and in comparison to a completely natural setting, it builds up remarkably quickly on fine turf such as bowling greens. This is due to a few factors that are unique to sports surfaces, mainly related to their use and maintenance. Chief among these factors is compaction as we saw yesterday.

Some thatch is good and in fact essential to maintaining the integrity of the surface, but if a layer builds up beyond that (thicker than about 8mm) it can really start to cause big problems.

Flooding, disease, uneven surfaces, Localised Dry Patch, root-break, skinned heads, Read more

March 4, 2015

Doug’s Spiker

Doug has adapted his rotary mower to save a lot of back breaking work

Straight after my request for guest posts/articles Doug Smith shares this labour saving idea for light aeration of the green. This follows on from Rob’s recent post on hand fork aeration. I’ll let Doug do the talking now:

Hi John, I have been reading your advice on green Aeration, the one on using a fork, I too have used a fork to

do the job, but only for a short time, I found it took far to long, and very hard work, so I gave it some thought,

and adapted my lawn mower, [see photo,] I use it on my home lawn, twice a month, and on the Bowls green.

hope this is of some use to your readers.

Regards Doug Smith

Thanks very much Doug for sharing this with us and hopefully it will be the first of many from readers in the coming months.