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Do you make these 5 bowls green keeping errors?

  1. Mowing too close;  this causes scalping, moss, weeds and weed grasses such as annual meadow grass.
  2. Over watering; this causes a spongy bowls green surface, poor rinks, compaction, encourages annual meadow grass and fungal disease.
  3. Over fertilising; this causes lush growth and the subsequent slowing down of the green, can contribute to disease outbreaks, poor sward composition and unpredictable playing characteristics.
  4. Mowing too infrequently; this causes peaks and troughs of high performance and under performance of the green. mowing frequency is probably the most important factor in achieving consistent green performance.
  5. Top-dressing; the myth that bowls greens need to be top-dressed regularly is all about selling top dressing materials and services. it is not beneficial to the majority of UK bowling greens and in fact is detrimental to the health of the turf, soil eco-system, is costly and leads to long term problems with thatch, poor performance and localised dry patch.

You can read in detail about how bowls green condition declines here.

The answer to achieving a High Performance Bowls Green is here.

Noxious Chemicals and Performance Bowls Greens

The English language has a habit of dressing things up to make them more palatable.

I wonder if meat would be so popular if we called beef, lamb and pork “dead cow”, “baby sheep” or “pig carcass”.

Sometimes of course if something is particularly hard to swallow we have to resort to French; I don’t think even the big 4 banks could sell many “death pledges” regardless of how desperate we were to get on the property ladder!

However, I have decided not to play along when it comes to producing Performance Bowling Greens and I now lump herbicides, insecticides and fungicides (pesticides) into my newly coined phrase “noxious chemicals”.

So it might come as some surprise that I am now going to advocate the continued use of these products.

The long term plan for any bowling green should be to wean it off of these products, but I still come across clubs who jump in with both feet too early and make their green even worse than it was.

Although done with the best of intentions, this can torpedo the whole program as members rebel against the new program.

If you have a thatchy, compacted, sour smelling green, you will need pesticides for the foreseeable future. However, the plan should be to move to spot treatment only whilst you undertake the real work of aeration and soil improvement.

Eventually, you can become smug like me and call them noxious chemicals, the use of which will never be entertained again.

Maybe we will eventually promote the opening day BBQ with a poster covered in dead baby animals!

Much more info on weaning your green off pesticides here.

Mowing Height and the British Weather

It can be very tempting to get the mowing height on the green down as quickly as possible when the new season starts.

However, the weather can  be very unpredictable at this time of year with sudden and welcome warm spells being chased by almost winter conditions in a very short time frame. As a result there is a need for caution at this time of year when deciding on how quickly to reduce the mowing height on the green.

Performance Greens readers and regulars on this site will know that I generally recommend a mowing height of around 8mm through the winter months.

This should be reduced gradually to the summer height of 5mm with 4.5mm being the lowest recommended height for fine grasses.

At  this time we can sometimes be enjoying temperatures that we will be lucky to see even in July, and with a deft change in the wind direction our little island can seem like a completely different place and we are plunged back  into winter without notice.

Grass that has been chopped down quickly will suffer and I recommend that you stay up at 6mm even for opening day, aiming for 5mm in May, unless it’s snowing of course!

The Pursuit of Excellence and…economy.

Now that the new season is upon us, we’ve been getting a lot of enquiries asking two basic questions:

What is the ideal maintenance program to ensure an excellent bowling green surface this year? and…

How can we reduce costs for maintenance without compromising the performance of the green?

Well, although both of these questions are fairly easy to answer, the actual solution depends a lot on what has gone before and at what stage your green is at, in terms of performance at the moment.

The pursuit of excellence on a sensible budget is very much the theme of Performance Bowling Greens.

In the book you will find a step by step blueprint in layman’s terms where John explains the reasons why most bowling greens don’t perform to the required standard, or if they do, why they don’t seem capable of perfoming consistently over the long term.

Also in the book John talks about his philosophy on high performance bowling greens, what makes them and how to achieve a tournament quality green on a reasonable budget, consistently.

John said ” I decided to write this book to detail in layman’s terms the exact formula needed for a great bowling green. A formula that is based on thorough scientific research and experience”

He went on to say: “I also wanted to alert bowling club officials and greenkeepers to the 4 major obstacles that stand in their way, the 4 obstacles that repeatedly stop them from producing the green they desire, so that hopefully they can learn to spot these and avoid them in the future.”

You can get hold of your copy of Performance Bowling Greens here.

Act now on green dry patch

LDP, localised dry patch on bolwing green
spring is a critical time for LDP management

If your green has suffered the blight of localised dry patch (LDP), sometimes called bowling green dry patch in the past, this is the most critical time of the year to take action to minimise the chances of another outbreak.

It’s unlikely that you will be thinking about irrigation of the green just yet, but dry weather in March and April, usually accompanied by drying winds which cause further moisture loss from the green surface can allow LDP to take a firm grip on the green.

The main effects of this might not show up until June, but the damage will already be done and no amount of irrigation will correct this once it has taken hold.

With this in mind and especially if your green has suffered in the past, you should at minimum be keeping an eye on your water balance chart and making irrigation applications to replenish any deficiencies, even if it seems counter intuitive…trust your water balance sheet!

Now is also a good time to mini-tine the green and apply a granular wetting agent, making sure it is washed into the tine holes thoroughly.

Monthly liquid wetting agent applications should also commence now and the water balance sheet (not Charlie, the club champion in 1977, who doesn’t believe in watering greens!) should rule the roost as far as irrigation decisions are concerned.

Much more on LDP here.