Cure Localised Dry Patch on Greens with this step by step guide to dealing with hydrophobic soil in bowls greens.

Cure Localised Dry Patch on Greens with this step by step guide to dealing with hydrophobic soil in bowls greens.
Localised Dry Patch is a common problem on greens in summer and it can take a while to conquer it. Could some of our traditional management practices be making it worse?
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?
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:
A complete explanation and detailed step by step guidance is included in Performance Bowling Greens, a practical guide
The plant available water in bowling greens is determined by the physical characteristics of the soil. Most importantly the soil texture dictates the relative percentages of Macro, Meso and Micro pore space in the soil. This soil porosity also dictates the rate at which the green will drain. The balance between drainage and plant available water is one of the most critical components of a performance bowling green maintenance program. Here then is the very crux of all those arguments about top-dressing!