Essential Greenkeeping tasks for January include aeration, moss control, microbe boosting, disease prevention and keeping the surface clear of worm casts. Take advantage of my soil analysis service for a positive start to 2025
Category: Greenkeeping
Managing turf disease effectively
Managing turf disease effectively, cheaply and permanently is well within the grasp of every greenkeeper. The soil in our greens already holds all of the answers to this, or at least it should do. Some of the routine work we do on greens is more damaging than beneficial. The need to manage turf disease more effectively gives us the perfect excuse to start returning our soils and grass plants to their natural disease resistant selves, much to the benefit of our members and clubs. John explains how to manage turf disease outbreaks simply and with reference to vegetarian sausages :-)...may contain nuts!
Focus on Silicon: A Greenkeeper’s Perspective
Timely applications of PotSi have been shown to be particularly effective in preventing the onset of fungal diseases. For example, applying PotSi at the early stages of a Dollar Spot outbreak can significantly reduce disease severity by fortifying the turfgrass against the pathogen. This proactive approach not only mitigates disease impact but also reduces the need for chemical fungicides, promoting a more sustainable turf management strategy .
Bowling Green Ecology
On grass areas where there is little or no human interference in the form of excessive fertiliser and pesticides, such as in meadows or parks, the thatch layer will almost always be at the optimum level for a continued healthy turf/soil eco-system. This is due to the soil/plant relationship being in balance; a strong and sufficiently lively soil microbe population releases nutrition from the thatch layer as it decomposes naturally.
Finding the Sweet Spot in Bowling Green Performance
The Sweet Spot in greenkeeping is when your green's Physical, Chemical and Biological components come into line to deliver results you couldn't previously have imagined were possible. Hitting that sweet spot is a lot simpler than you might imagine too, as focus on the soil's biology will naturally correct some of the worst Chemical problems and compensate for some of the worst Physical ones. There should be no problem "selling" this idea to your club either as first of all it saves money and secondly it massively improves green performance and consistency.