Category: Greenkeeping

April 23, 2026

How to painlessly transform greens from Poa annua to bent/fescue

Transitioning your green from Poa annua to bent/fescue is not only critical to achieving a Performance Bowling Green, but is actually a realistic goal. The spongy, soft turf associated with annual meadow grass is less than ideal for bowls. Common wisdom says that this can't be done without major disruption and that even after it is achieved it wont last. This article explains in detail how to undertake the transition of your green from Poa annua to bent/fescue turf and dispels the myths about stressing Poa. This is the way to change your green permanently and without fuss. It will also save your club money on maintenance, so what's not to like?

April 20, 2026

What is the The Soil Food Web?

Each individual grass plant releases sugars through its roots to attract beneficial microbes. In return, those microbes mine nutrients from the soil, cycle organic matter, suppress disease, and improve soil structure. This is so important to the health of plants that they give up around 50% of the sugar they produce during photosynthesis as root exudates.

April 19, 2026

Sand Top Dressing – Friend or Foe? Soil Texture 5.

Sand Top Dressing - that ubiquitous and apparently simple greenkeeping operation indulged in by most clubs annually is actually a much more complex operation than most give it credit for. In this article John Quinn explains the mechanics of top-dressing. He explains what it can and can't do and why you must understand some soil science before top-dressing is considered.

April 18, 2026

Soil Texture part 4, the Soil Texture Triangle.

So far on our investigation into soil texture we've discussed the problems of building sand castles, why you shouldn't let the Treasurer buy sand for you and a few other less important details like the complexity of sand, soil formation, particle size distribution, macro and micro soil porosity and we finished last time by looking at the famous Soil Texture Triangle

April 17, 2026

Bowls Green Soil Texture part 3

In the first part of this series we discovered that the ideal bowling green soil (or rootzone) will be 50% space, 5% organic matter, with the remainder (45%) being made up of mineral matter, namely Sand, Silt and Clay. These are the 3 universal mineral components of soil. Part 1 finished with an explanation of the soil fractions, 5 of which were sands of varying sizes.

In part 2 we found out a little bit more about sand and it's behaviour as a drainage medium and we discovered a little more about how soils are formed. We finished by looking at the importance of sand particle shape and size in bowling green rootzones.