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Category: Greenkeeping

Performance Bowling Greens

Should a new bowls green sink?

There aren’t many new bowling greens being built these days but of those that are appearing the initial euphoric rush of the members is somewhat dampened when things seem to immediately start going wrong with their shiny new green.

One of the most common occurrences is that the green sinks, causing bumps and kinks on the surface. I’ve witnessed this first hand, usually after drawing up a specification for the construction of the green and then returning to find that the project architect (bowling green construction is quite often just a part of a bigger project involving buildings etc) and/or contractor has “interpreted” or worse “adapted” the construction specification, has adapted the construction program (sequence), has adopted non-approved methods, or has used “alternative” materials.

In reality it’s usually a mixture of all of these and the main reason that this happens is to save money on the overall project and this usually happens because the project has run over budget on one of the other elements such as the clubhouse or car park. So the most important part of the project suffers due to a lack of good management of the project overall.

Typical details of this are:

  • Purpose built, pre-cast concrete edge/bank sections replaced with wooden batons and concrete blocks to save money.
  • Rootzone depth adjusted to save on materials.
  • Rootzone laid in one layer instead of being built up and consolidated after each layer.
  • Cheaper spec gravel used for drainage layer and trench backfill.
  • Wooden batons, blocks, tools, sandwich and drink containers, grease cartridges, drainage pipe off-cuts etc being left in the green after construction is complete.

Now, if your new green has started to sink and is causing difficulty for your club, your architect, again, should have retained a percentage of the project total from the main contractor until a maintenance period has elapsed (usually 12 months) and any snagging lists are completed to your satisfaction; this allows time to pass for mistakes to start to show up.

In addition to this, there should also be a warranty period on the construction and it isn’t unreasonable for this to be 5 years on workmanship and materials.

Finally, there is the fact that despite all of the above being dealt with properly and on time, the very nature of a bowling green is that it will start to settle out in various places, but this should be minimal and will require some level of corrective maintenance to put it right and this is the main reason for the 12 month maintenance period being included in contracts of this nature.

Green Surface requirements for high performance.

Performance Greens have specific surface attributes

Following on from yesterdays post on Performance Green Properties, the ideal bowling green then, will be uniform in terms of appearance, pace and consistency of play over the whole green and over the season. We will probably see an increase in pace as the summer progresses, but we shouldn’t see too many fluctuations in this pace during an average season.

This consistency is achievable, but only by first getting the green  into a condition where it has returned to behaving as one living eco system. This means that the green will demonstrate some very specific attributes. Today we will consider the surface properties  of such a green. It will need the following :

Grasses.

The grasses we use to produce the surface will need to demonstrate the following attributes:

  1. Fine leafed with an upright growth habit
  2. Slow re-growth after cutting
  3. Resistance to wear, disease, drought, and cold with a fast recovery rate from wear and damage.
  4. Deep green, uniform colouration

All of the above points us to the finer Bent and Fescue Grasses. So now that we know the kind of surface we need and the kind of grass sward we need in order to achieve this surface we can start to define the ideal growing conditions required by such a sward.

Weeds.

It goes without saying that there should be no weeds in the green surface and by weed I mean any plant life that can disrupt the playing surface. Now, most weeds are obvious because they are broad-leafed and show up in stark contrast to the grass surrounding them. However, there are a few less obvious weeds that can also cause inconsistency on the playing surface such as pearlwort and yarrow and these can sometimes be hard to spot and eradicate, Yellow suckling clover is another difficult weed to deal with.

In addition to the weeds proper referred to above, many greenkeepers who would also consider annual meadow-grass (Poa annua) to be just as bad a weed pest as any dandelion or daisy, but the hard truth is that many greens are so badly infested with this grass that to get rid of it quickly would be to get rid of the majority of the grass sward, leaving the green in a very poor state.

The good news is that the approach required to achieve a performance green outlined in this book will gradually make your green unattractive and unaccommodating to both broad-leafed weeds and weed grasses like annual meadow grass.

Diseases and Disorders

In addition to rogue grasses and weeds the surface can be disrupted by a plethora of different pathogens that directly interact with the grass, usually to its detriment and that of the green surface. These are almost always fungal diseases and some of the more common are fusarium, red-thread and snow mould.

Sometimes confused with diseases are a series of other green defects usually labelled as disorders. These are generally not pathogenic, so don’t directly damage the grass plants, but their effects can be just as devastating to bowling greens. These include slimes and squidge usually associated with acidic soil conditions and the very problematic Localised Dry Patch, associated with thatch, over use of sand and irrigation problems.

Again though, there is nothing to worry about because like we saw with unwanted grasses and weeds in the sward, the conditions required to produce a consistently high performance green will make your green extremely unattractive to these troublesome disorders and diseases.

Green sub-surface requirements for high performance.

The soil we use to support both the structure of the bowling surface and to sustain the grasses required for a high performance surface will require the following attributes:

  1. A strong, stable soil structure that resists compaction and wear.
  2. A healthy, living soil that retains sufficient moisture and nutrients to sustain a healthy sward of fine grass.
  3. A free draining medium able to cope with heavy periods of rain without puddling excessively and which drains quickly after heavy rainfall.

We will keep exploring this and tomorrow I’ll be looking at the sub surface requirements for performance; what goes  on beneath?

What causes compaction on a bowls green?

Compaction is of course one of the big issues in bowling green maintenance and people are always looking for ways to prevent or minimise its occurrence.

Compaction happens to a greater or lesser extent depending on soil type. At the two extremes of this are Clay and Sand.

Think of a potter wetting some powdered clay to throw a pot and you can immediately picture the compaction and drainage properties of this soil type; it compacts very well when wet and clay pots don’t allow drainage at all; and when clay soil is wet this is pretty much the case under your green too. Clay is a very good moisture and nutrient retainer.

Now imagine running on to the upper reaches of the beach, up near the dunes and it’s hard to imagine how this highly mobile sand could ever be compacted. Due to the particle shapes which are round, there is a huge amount of air space between particles which doesn’t allow for any level of compaction.

The above examples are, I think, the reasons that clubs have been all too eager to jump on the sand band wagon over the last few decades; more sand seems to equal better drainage and lower compaction.

The best bowling green soil lies somewhere between the two and is a sandy loam as discussed here.

So although individual actions like foot and maintenance traffic can be said to cause compaction, the underlying soil holds the real answer.

Thatch on the bowls green

thatch builds up quickly on unhealthy greens

After LDP there is probably more information on this site about Thatch than anything else.

Thatch production by grass plants is a natural process.

Thatch is the layer at the very top of the green surface between the green grass blades and the brown soil beneath.

Simply put; the bigger the distance between the green and the brown, the bigger a problem you have.

The denser and wetter and smellier the thatch layer between the green and the brown the more likely it is that you will be suffering other problems like fungal disease, slime, algae, moss, weeds, localised dry patch, bumpy surface, lack of green speed, lack of green consistency, grass growth problems, recovery problems, skinned heads, slippery surface and loss of grass cover.

Thatch is not an isolated problem; it usually comes along with some or all of the above.

To get a more thorough understanding of the processes going on here, have a look at this article.

For more detailed information on thatch, there are more articles here.

Performance Bowling Greens eBook is here.

Dry patch on greens

The condition known as localised dry patch (LDP) which is so prevalent on bowling greens throughout the UK is a very frustrating problem for many bowling clubs.

The frustration comes mainly from the fact that LDP isn’t a disease so it can’t be eradicated by a simple application of fungicide or any other chemical.

LDP is instead a disorder of turf that causes the soil beneath some areas of the green to become hydrophobic or repellent to water.

LDP causes large areas of the green surface to turn brown and sometimes even recede below the main surface level, causing bumpy, uneven surfaces and an increasingly poor bowling experience as the season progresses.

Like almost everything else that goes wrong with bowling greens LDP is merely a symptom of other issues present on the green; in this case excessive sand content in the green’s rootzone profile (topsoil).

The excess of sand makes the rootzone inert and unable to retain moisture or nutrients. More importantly, the soil can’t sustain a big enough population of beneficial soil micro-organisms, which would assist with the decomposition of thatch and produce essential plant useable nutrients.

The recovery process can take several years, although there will be notable improvements to the green surface throughout the recovery process.

To overcome this problem, it is important to adopt a completely new approach to green maintenance along the lines of the performance greens program and the single most important part of this process is to stop throwing tonnes of sand at the green every year.

More information here: LDP