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Category: Greenkeeping

Structure of a grass plant

How Grass Works

Since I did a little bit of an introduction to turf grass botany yesterday by talking about cool and warm season grasses, there has been further interest from readers in exploring turf grass botany.

There’s no better place to start than at the beginning, so today we will look at the basic shoot structure of the grass plant. Of course there is a lot of variation between species in how these structures appear but the following is a broad overview of turf grass plant shoot structures.

Shoot
This is the basic functional unit of the plant and consists of a short stem with leaves appearing alternately from nodes along the stem.

Stem
The stem is the main trunk of the plant that can take the form of a crown, which is a kind of bunched up stem where all of the leaf producing nodes are stacked one on top of the other or of an elongated stem (stolon or rhizome) that grows laterally either on or below the soil surface with widely spaced internodes from which new shoots and roots can appear. Lastly it can appear as a long upright stalk with widely spaced internodes (leaf producing points) ending in an infloresence/flower which is called a culm; more commonly called a seed head. The main functions of the stem are:

  • sites of buds where new shoots or roots can be initiated.
  • the movement of water, nutrients and food (carbohydrates) between the roots and the leaves.
  • storage of food for emergencies such as drought or injury.

Nodes
These are the bulbous points on the stem where leaves, roots or branches of the stem are initiated. These nodes are key to the recovery of turf grass from wear and tear and other natural stresses such as heat and drought, insect and disease injury. They are key structures in determining the recuperative potential of the turf grass plant.

Internode
The internodes are the sections of the stem between nodes and these sections rather than just being the bits between the all important nodes, are key areas of activity in the plant. This is where the translocation (transport) of water, nutrients and already photosynthesised food (carbohydrate) occurs.

A key point to note here is that if you cut through the stem, new growth will be stimulated from the immediately adjacent nodes on each side of the plant to form new shoots or roots depending on their position on the plant. This is why frequent mowing is so important in producing a dense turf.

Leaf
The grass leaf is the part we think of as the blade (although that has a more specific meaning in botany) and grows laterally out of the stem at a node. The leaf consists of an upper blade which is flattened and a basal sheath which encircles the stem at the node from which it arises. The leaf is the key food producing structure of the plant as it contains chlorophyll, the green pigment responsible for the capture of light energy from the sun. The leaf is a hive of food producing activity, being the main site of photosynthesis in the grass plant. It is the leaf that when combined with many thousands of others, forms the turf that we need for bowling.

Blade (leaf)
Rather than referring to the whole leaf, the blade is actually the flattened portion of the leaf furthest from the stem, although in species such as Festuca (Fescues) the flattening is barely perceptible.

Sheath (leaf)
This is the tubular portion of the leaf surrounding or wrapping around the stem at a node. Usually referred to as the basal sheath, it contains some chlorophyll which gives it a green colour.

 

So that’s the basic structure of the turf grass plant in very brief terms. Next time I will dig a little deeper and look at how grass plants actually grow.

As always, if you have anything to add, observations or questions just add a comment below or drop me a line.

Grass plant image thanks to Wackymacs   

Performance Bowls Greens-the 4 biggest obstacles to success

When I set out to write my book, Performance Bowling Greens, it made me think about the main obstacles to success encountered by many of the bowling clubs I visit and in many ways it comes down to what can only be described as Common Sense versus Commerce. The 4 biggest obstacles I encounter again and again are as follows:

  1. Desperation Mode; or a state of mind that permeates a club when nothing they do seems to yield the results they crave.
  2. Lack of Consistency; which is direct result of the 1st obstacle, and is when the club repeatedly changes its approach to maintenance because it basically has no faith in any of the maintenance models it encounters.
  3. Tradition; although a lot of the traditions in question are not that old.
  4. Greenkeeping Myths.

The reasons for the problems I have just mentioned are mainly to do with the need that exists in every
industry to have companies or people who can supply materials and equipment in order for the work of that industry (in our case greenkeeping) to go ahead. So you see as greenkeepers or bowling clubs we are part of a commercial chain that needs constant lubrication in order to keep going.  The end result of that process is the pressure put on all of us to try new things, new machines, new fertilisers, new chemicals etc. And of course this isn’t a bad thing in itself, because if it wasn’t for this continual process we wouldn’t have any of the tools we need to continue maintaining our green. The trouble comes when laymen or greenkeepers lacking confidence in their abilities are constantly bombarded with new “stuff” by “experts”. This leads to “new traditions” which lead to a lack of consistency, which leads to poor results, which leads to desperation for a solution and desperate people are willing to believe anything, so even myths can take on the appearance of common sense.

In Performance Bowling Greens I will be detailing a more measured and calm approach to bowling green maintenance based on scientific fact, a deep understanding of nature and the interaction between turfgrass and soil. An approach, in fact a full program you can follow to ensure that your green performs to a very high standard at a reasonable cost.

And its there that we will pick up the story tomorrow, as I will be looking at how heavily the future of bowling depends on the ability of clubs like yours to deliver consistent high performance on what can only be described as a shoestring budget.

You can get your copy of Performance Bowling Greens here. Meantime I’ll will be back tomorrow with more news.

Slime on bowling green turf

Slime on bowling green turf and squidge are disorders of turf that can be both unsightly and hazardous for players as they can both make the surface slippery.

Although they don’t cause damage to the turf as such, they are signs of underlying problems with your green.

The conditions that attract these disorders to your green are excessively wet and spongy turf, usually due to excessive thatch. The soil will usually also be very acidic as a result of anaerobic soil/turf.

The medium to long term solution is to deal with the thatch and you can get the low down on that here.

Immediate and on-going aeration will help a lot to get the process of recovery started, but this has to be part of a concerted program of work to deal with compaction, thatch and generally poor soil conditions.

The question of liming acidic soil comes occasionally, but this is not recommended as broadcasting of lime on fine turf can lead to immediate outbreaks of fungal disease and in any case it usually isn’t needed.

As soon as you start to get some oxygen back into the soil by relieving compaction and dealing with the wet and usually smelly, anaerobic thatch, the soil will start to “sweeten” again.

However there is one little lime based trick you can use to clear the green of the odd patch of slime to allow a match to go ahead and its detailed here.

The main issue is to start to follow a Performance Greens maintenance program to get over the conditions that caused the problem in the first place.

ecology

Bowls Greens don’t have beds!

I often hear the phrase “putting the green to bed” at this time of year.

It is the most frustrating thing to hear because I don’t know of any club that can afford the luxury of stopping work on the green now.

The autumn and winter period is the most important time to get on top of a range of big problems that blight bowling greens.

For example Thatch encourages diseases such as fusarium, insect pests like leatherjackets and chafer grubs and contributes significantly to the onset of Localised Dry Patch the modern scourge of bowling greens throughout the UK. As if that wasn’t enough excessive thatch also saps the speed from your green and causes heavy, unpredictable rinks, contributes to un-even surfaces, causes bumpiness and bad rinks, reduces the efficacy of fertilisers and encourages weed grasses such as annual meadow grass to predominate the sward.

Then there is Compaction which impedes natural drainage, causes shallow rooting of grasses (which leads to skinning on heads), impedes irrigation and rain penetration and causes root break. And that’s before we even consider its expertise at encouraging weed grasses such as annual meadow grass, its ability to severely reduce the efficiency of irrigation, efficacy of fertilisers and its major contributory role in the creation of un-even surfaces and loss of grass cover on edges and heads.

If you only deal with these two issues this winter you will have gone a long way towards creating a performance green; they won’t go away by giving the green “a rest”.

I recently uploaded a new 18 page special report on autumn and Winter Maintenance of the Bowling Green to the Shop which shows you how to deal with thatch and compaction this Autumn and Winter as well as a host of other problems like Insect Pests, Fungal Disease, Localised Dry Patch and Moss.

Performance Bowls Greens the key to Bowls Club Survival

The quality and consistency of the playing surface on your green and your club’s chances of long term survival are inextricably linked, why?

Well if we consider the sport of bowls as a business for a minute it is clear, at least in the UK , that there is a vast over supply in the bowling marketplace. There simply isn’t enough demand for bowling to sustain the sheer volume of clubs that currently exist. The reasons for this are manifold and include some really “deep” factors which economists and sociologists might describe as, well… socio-economic, but the most important thing for bowling clubs to consider is that there simply aren’t enough bowlers around to make every UK bowling club economically sustainable. In other words some, maybe many, clubs will perish  in the years to come.

Of course, there are big picture issues that can be addressed and might help to improve the uptake of the game, like for instance the way bowls is marketed, and the general image of the game, perhaps more TV coverage of tournaments would help. All of that is big stuff, that can and will take a long time to bear fruit.

Meantime, if we come back to the close up view, the view out of your clubhouse window in fact, we can all start to do something this year to give our own club the greatest chance of survival; and that is tocommit to providing our members, visitors and prospective members with the best green possible to play on. This one thing is, in my opinion,  the key to growing the game again from the ground up in the years to come.

The 2 greatest barriers to the average bowling club making such a commitment are :

  1. the perceived cost and…
  2. the perceived difficulty associated with such a plan.

The key word here is “perceived” and there is good reason for that as we saw yesterday when we looked at inconsistency, traditions, desperation mode and greenkeeping myths all of which add to the perception of great expense.

If you’ve been reading my posts this week you will know that my new book Performance Bowling Greens is due to be released on this site on Monday 15th February and my major impetus for sitting down to write the book in the first place was to banish the notion that Performance Bowling Greens are prohibitively expensive and/or difficult to produce consistently.

In Performance Bowling Greens I detail a no-nonsense blueprint that you can follow to get the ultimate Performance from your Bowling Green. This really is a break with tradition (and if you read my post yesterday you will know the truth behind tradition) and a re-evaluation of how Performance Bowling Greens actually work. The book dispels all of the commonly accepted Greenkeeping Myths and moves straight to the program you must follow to achieve the highest level of performance and consistency from your green. Above all I have written the book in a way that will give you the confidence to just get on and do it.

Yesterday I shared with you my thoughts on the main reasons that clubs fall into the cycle of inconsistency and therefore perpetual disappointment with their greens. Today I would like to re-stress just how important it is that your club starts to follow a structured improvement plan aimed at producing a high performance green consistently over the long term.

When you pick up your copy of Performance Bowling Greens next Monday you will have a step by step blueprint that you can follow to turn your green around for good and start to enjoy the extra security such a green will provide for your club. The most important aspect of the book is that it details an approach that any club can take and in almost every case, it won’t only improve the green’s performance dramatically but will also return a significant financial saving to the club.

I will share a typical bowling club story with you and if you don’t recognise your own club within the story its possible that you already have a high performance bowling green.

Remember you can get your copy of Performance Bowling Greens in the shop