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Category: Greenkeeping

High Performance Bowls Green Maintenance

Performance Bowling Greens eBookSpring is upon us.

The new bowling season is, or will soon be under-way and there still seems like so much to do to get the green ready for play.

Today, I am going to give an overview of the work that should be going on at the green and over the coming weeks I will fill this out by looking a bit more in-depth at each of the recommended tasks individually.

For the time being I have dropped the price of Performance Bowling Greens to encourage as many clubs as possible to get hold of a copy of what has become a very popular manual for achieving a high performance bowling green.

Today’s post and the subsequent articles and links I will share with you this month assume that you are working from the Performance Greens Manual.

As usual of course, if there are any questions, please feel free to get in touch. The best way to do this is by leaving a comment on any post, signing in to use the forums or by dropping me an email.

So what should we be doing on the green in the lead up to the new bowling season?

To start, I should point out that the programs detailed in the Performance Greens Manual are spilt into 3 distinct categories as follows:

  1. Baseline: this program consists of maintenance tasks that should be carried out as detailed in the Performance Greens Manual regardless of green condition. Whether your green is in a dire state of repair or is already a high performance surface, these tasks are essential.
  2. Renovation: this program, again detailed in the Performance Greens Manual, is aimed at greens that are in the renovation or recovery phase. These tasks should be carried out in addition to the baseline program.
  3. Performance: this program is for greens that have already been through the renovation phase and are starting to perform at a high level. Again, these tasks should be carried out in addition to the baseline program.

Based on the above, you will be carrying out some or all of the following tasks in early spring:

  • Mowing
  • Worm cast/dew removal
  • Trimming green edges
  • Mini-solid tining
  • Slit tining
  • Scarifying
  • Applying wetting agent
  • Applying corrective granular fertiliser
  • Applying organic growth stimulants
  • Possibly applying pesticides but only if absolutely essential.

Tomorrow we will get started by looking more closely at the correct mowing regime and some of the technicalities of this.

Meantime, I encourage you to get hold of your copy of the Performance Bowling Greens. This will help you to follow the advice from the site and apply it to your own situation more accurately.

The Ultimate Guide to getting a Performance Bowls Green

Tacking

Change Tack is an old Sailors phrase that has passed into everyday conversation to describe a change of approach.

Sometimes when we are working on a project, its easy to feel we aren’t making progress and that a “change of tack” might help.

However, the literal meaning of the phrase as used by sailors describes the actions required to effect a change of direction.

So when the latest greenkeeping fad doesn’t seem to be working as described, its quite common for bowls clubs to change tack.

Unfortunately, whereas the sailors change of tack usually helps to take him to a predetermined destination, in bowling clubs it very often means simply jumping on to the next fad and then waiting to see where they end up!

In Performance Bowls Greens I started off by explaining how this will always be the case for many clubs as the industry must keep re-inventing the wheel to keep up sales and it is actually in the trade’s best interest for your bowls green to be sub-standard so that you feel the urge to keep trying new things to correct it!

The biggest of these fads in recent times is routine top dressing. This has now stuck fast for more than 3 decades and as a result has become a “tradition” and traditions as we know are pretty hard to unhook from.

There are of course many other fads that abound in the shape of products, advice and operations we can carry out on our greens, but top-dressing has been the most damaging.

This is because it has the capacity over a number of years to alter the soil composition and with it the natural ecosystem of the soil in our greens. A few years of this is bad enough, but the decades of it we have now had, has been very detrimental to the condition of bowls greens.

The knock on effect of this is adequately described here.

Photo: A bloke called Jerm

Growth Habit and its effect on turf performance

Agrostis stolonifera 

The grasses we use to produce fine turf playing surfaces fall into 2 main categories in relation to the way they grow and spread. These are Bunch Type Grasses and Creeping Grasses. The creeping grasses are split into 2 further groups, namely those that spread by use of rhizomes and those that spread by means on stolons.

Bunch-type turf grasses, spread almost exclusively by tillering. Tillering is when new shoots occur  from the crown of the parent plant. This means that Read more

Turf texture for perfomance bowling greens

The texture of greens turf is influenced mainly by the width of individual grass plant leaves. The preferred texture for fine turf will be based upon leaf widths ranging from 1.5 to 3 mm.

When comparing turf texture, you should measure leaves of the same age or that are at the same stage of development.

Leaf texture varies greatly even within individual species.

The cultural practices employed in maintenance such as mowing height, fertiliser program and aeration can significantly change leaf texture.

Creeping bentgrass can be reduced by up to 50% as can annual meadow grass. This has been experienced on many greens where the decision has been made to manage the existing sward rather than to aim for fine species dominated swards.

Sward density and stresses from disease, drought, wet or cold can also have a significant effect.

When deciding on seed mixtures it is advisable to choose cultivars and species with similar fine leaf textures in order to achieve a uniform turf.

Texture is very closely correlated with turf density, with denser turfs generally having a finer texture overall.

Essential turf quailities for performance bowling greens – Shoot Density

Over the next few weeks I will publish a few articles to help you to evaluate your turf with an aim to improving its performance over the long term.

Density is perhaps the most important component of turf grass quality. When rating the visual quality of turf it is the shoot density of the grass plants above all else that impacts on the look and function of the turf.

Unlike unoformity, turf grass density can be measured by counting the number of shoots or leaves per unit area although this is rarely done in practice.

A high turf grass density helps to crowd out competition form weeds and weed grasses and is a key quality in producing smooth and fast greens.

The shooting density can vary widely between species and also between individual cultivars within the same species.

The cultural practices employed in maintaiing the turf also contribute to shoot density as does the growth habit of the grass type used. The seeding density and the success of the initial establishment program can also be important factors in the relative density of the non-creeping turf grass species such as chewings fescue and browntop bent.

Attention to soil moisture, mowing heights and correct turf nutrition all have a role to play in increasing the shoot density.  Bentgrass typically produces the most dense turf with shoot densities sometimes reaching over 1,700 shoots per square decimeter, which is equivalent to 164.8 billion shoots per acre.