One of the easiest, cheapest and effective methods of killing moss in turf is to apply Ferrous Sulphate. Therefore, on Bowls Central, I could sell many tonnes of Ferrous Sulphate at a nice profit margin every year by simply pandering to conventional thinking, but you won't find any for sale here. Let me explain why:
Compost Tea Quick Start Guide
Compost Tea is a home made spray that is applied to fine turf to increase the micro life in the soil. It reintroduces missing microbes and boosts the populations of all of the main beneficial microbe groups such as bacteria, protozoa and the all important Fungi. Some of these help to degrade thatch, turning it into valuable humus, giving life and body to the depleted and often excessively sandy soil in many bowling greens.
How to save bowls clubs and grow the game
How to save bowls clubs and grow the game by changing the role of our bowls clubs in our communities. Although it seems futile to think we can make a drastic change to the way things are in many bowls clubs, I know that many clubs are overlooking or possibly ignoring golden opportunities on their doorstep.
Performance Greenkeeping tasks for November
Essential Greenkeeping tasks for November include aeration, disease prevention and keeping the surface clear of worm casts.
Bowls Green Compaction
I once commented that there are only ever two real problems in bowling greenkeeping; compaction and thatch, with the rest of the myriad problems we come across being merely symptoms of these Big Two. Lately, I've revised that thinking, as the more I see of ill treated bowling greens the more I realise that, although they are important, even thatch and compaction are only symptoms too. The trouble we face in greenkeeping is that the industry wants us to treat symptoms. If we treated the root cause after all, we wouldn't need to buy half as much stuff! But before we get too carried away, let's have a recap on what bowls green compaction actually means.
Defining Bowling Green Performance
Over 37 years of greenkeeping and teaching greenkeepers I have come to notice that bowling green performance comes down to just 3 major characteristics. Sounds easy then, doesn't it? Well it actually gets even easier when you identify the one key problem that contributes more to poor bowling green performance than any other.
Green Performance Explained
Green Performance Explained in terms that show the multitude of characteristics of turfgrass plants and their environment that work together to make up the bowls green eco-system. By working in harmony with this eco-system, greenkeepers can shorten the learning curve on turf surface performance dramatically.
Soil Chemical and Peak Sand Analysis
Soil Chemical and Peak Sand (Texture Analysis)
Comprehensive Chemical Analysis and Peak Sand (Texture Assessment) of your green's soil (rootzone). You will receive a soil sampling kit with instructions for taking and returning (freepost) your soil samples to the lab. The results will come back to you from Bowls Central with a full report detailing all Primary, Secondary and Trace elements, Cation Exchange Capacity, Base Saturation, Electrical Conductivity, Organic Matter, pH and your soil's position on the Soil Texture Triangle (assessed by the Laser Diffraction method and alerting you to your greens proximity to Peak Sand). Includes a full report written by a Master Greenkeeper with comprehensive 12 month greenkeeping program for your green. Unlimited support and further advice will be provided as required. Price: £160.00
Price: £95.00
Sand and Bowling Green Performance
The relationship between sand and bowling green performance has become a thing of legend with the majority of clubs still throwing more sand on their greens every year, despite a worrying trend showing poorer and less predictable green performance due to problems like Localised Dry Patch and excessive thatch. It seems that for many clubs the dots aren't being connected between too much sand and poor performance. In this article I will explain the fundamentals that greenkeepers must keep in mind with regard to their bowling green soil.
Bowling green nutrition, how it works
We are familiar with the concept of our grass plants being composed mostly of water (75-85%), but what else is in a grass plant? The answer is that the dry matter of the plant is made up of a mix of 16 elements, commonly referred to as the essential nutrients. We describe them as essential because the plant can’t exist or complete it’s life cycle if any of these nutrients are lacking to any great degree.
Bowling Green Nutrition
Some of these elements are used in bulk by the grass plant. These are Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P), Potassium (K), Calcium, Magnesium and Sulphur. Some others like Iron (Fe), Manganese (Mn), Boron, Molybdenum, Copper, Zinc and Chlorine are used in smaller amounts. I’ve added the chemical symbol for the ones we commonly see on fertiliser bags.
A large part of this dry plant matter is made up of the three big elements Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen. In my introduction to Photosynthesis we saw that the plant takes Carbon (CO2) and Oxygen directly from the air by absorbing them as gasses through the leaf stomata. Last time we looked at Osmosis, the process used by our grass plants to take up water (H20) from the soil and this is where the Hydrogen (H) comes from as well as more Oxygen. The plants can always find an abundant supply of these three elements and if the day comes when they can’t, then we won’t need to be worried too much about how the bowling green looks!
The remaining 13 essential nutrients are accessed via the soil from 2 main sources, but regardless of the source, the grass plant can only absorb these nutrients once they’ve been dissolved and contained within the soil water, more accurately referred to as the soil solution as it isn’t just water anymore.
One source of nutrition is the process of decomposition that happens when plant tissue dies. This organic (carbon rich) material is broken down by soil organisms and micro-organisms and returned to the soil as readily available plant nutrition in the soil solution. This is why the bowling green needs to be considered as an eco system; nothing happens in isolation.
As we saw, nutrients can only be accessed by the plants if they are able to be taken up by the plant roots in the soil solution, but many of the essential elements needed to complete the grass plant life cycle are securely tied up in the soil minerals. These are made available by the slow weathering of the minerals by rain and wind and are washed into soil solution where they are available to the plants. However, the majority of soil nutrients are bound up and unavailable in what are called insoluble compounds.
To be accessible to the grass plant roots, the mineral and organic nutrients must be broken down to their simplest forms called ions and some of these are negatively charged (anions), while others have a positive electrical charge (cations). The most common form of Nitrogen used by plants is N03– which is an anion due to its negative charge, whereas Calcium is taken up as Ca++ which is a cation due to its positive charge, notated as two + signs in its chemical symbol.
These plusses and minuses are important in soil chemistry and in the relative success or otherwise of our bowling green maintenance. More + signs in the chemical symbol for any ion means a stronger bond to the soil colloid, the name given to the negatively charged clay and humus particles in the soil which hold on to cations and stop them from leaching through the soil. Incidentally, this is one reason we need to apply Nitrogen frequently as fertiliser; it’s negative ions are easily leached out of the soil by rain as they aren’t bound to the soil colloid. It also explains why it is futile to double up on fertiliser applications in the hope of a better result.
Before they can be made available to plants as ions in soil solution between 15% to 25% of the essential nutrients need to be dislodged from the soil colloid by an ion exchange and the relative ease or difficulty of this in a soil is called the Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC). The CEC is simply a measure of how many exchange sites exist on the colloid.
Now here is another of those wonders of nature that is difficult to appreciate when you’re looking out the clubhouse window at that square of grass. The root hairs of the grass plants release hydrogen ions (H+) and when these come into contact with the soil colloid, they each take up a place on the colloid, breaking or weakening the colloidal-nutrient bond of one of the other nutrient ions. Each + in a nutrient’s symbol is equivalent to one exchange site, meaning you need 3 H+ Hydrogen ions to knock a Fe+++ Iron ion off the colloid and into soil solution. Once these nutrients are knocked free they become more available to the plants, where they are taken up in soil solution through the root hairs.
Hydrogen ions H+ are at the very heart of another important soil mechanism called pH, but that’s for another day.
Next time we will look in more detail at the physical construction of the soil and find out why we need to be more thoughtful when considering top-dressing.