TL;DR: Greenkeepers are facing increasing challenges due to climate change, outdated practices, and pest infestations. While Chlorantraniliprole-based insecticides might offer a quick and temporary fix, they disrupt soil microbiology and pose environmental risks. The withdrawal of pesticides, however, presents an opportunity to work smarter and in harmony with nature.
Chitin, found in insect exoskeletons and fungal cell walls, plays a crucial role in soil health. When broken down into chitosan, it enhances plant growth, improves soil structure, and stimulates beneficial soil microorganisms. However, conventional greenkeeping can disrupt these natural processes, leading to a deficiency of beneficial substances like chitosan.
By reducing reliance on artificial inputs and reintroducing natural substances like chitosan, we can restore the soil's natural balance and promote healthier, more resilient turf. Chitosan enhances plant growth and productivity through soil conditioning, plant health stimulation, microbiological associations, biocontrol, and bioremediation. Thus, chitosan plays a multifaceted role in the soil ecosystem, contributing to soil health, plant growth, and disease and pest resistance.
BioActive KitoPlusTM Easy is an effective soil improver enabling the growth of healthy, vigorous plants of good colour and with the ability to resist damage from abiotic and biotic stresses, diseases and insect pests. This product can improve both the rhizosphere and phyllosphere, and therefore boost beneficial microorganism populations, including mycorrhizae, enabling improved nutrient assimilation.
The soil food web has become an increasingly popular term in greenkeeping and bowling green management. The problem-solution-problem, or symptoms approach to greenkeeping has been exposed as fundamentally flawed by the diminishing list of available pesticides now available to turf managers. Is there a better way to manage greens...yes. And the extraordinary discovery is that a greenkeeping program that focusses on the green as an eco-system is fully compatible with producing tight, natural turf dominated by the fine perennial Fescue and Bent grasses.
If your green maintenance budget was cut in half this year what would you do?
Most clubs when faced with cuts to the greenkeeping budget, will try at all costs to keep the most important work in the plan. Unfortunately, important frequently gets confused with dramatic, which means that the big expense of top-dressing in the spring and autumn usually stays in the plan and I wish it didn’t for all the reasons I’ve explained over many articles.
Meantime, the work deemed less important and which of course is less dramatic is often sidelined or dropped as a result of a fear of what might go wrong if the big, sexy stuff is missed. These big jobs “must be doing a lot of good”, or so the thinking goes, because they’re so expensive and disruptive?
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 its life cycle if any of these nutrients are lacking to any great degree.
From the very beginnings of the game of bowls, most clubs bowled on a green constructed largely of local top soil, built, prepared and seeded by the club members, perhaps with the help of a local gardener or farmer. Maintenance was largely mowing, turning the rinks on flat greens, keeping the surface clear of debris and worm casts and an occasional roll before a big match. In the autumn, a squad of members would descend on the green with forks to aerate or spike the green, before putting it to bed for the winter with a final cut and perhaps a bag of fertiliser.
At its most basic, the answer is that excessive use of sand on bowling greens causes the under lying soil to become inert; lacking life or the complex web of interactions that go to make healthy, high performance turf. The natural balance of the soil/turf ecosystem is upset and the green will never be capable of consistent high performance for as long as the folly of top dressing is allowed to continue.
Yes, I'm thinking about Autumn already. Why?, It's all to do with the devastating effect of Localised Dry Patch on many greens this year. I've ever had so many people get in touch. It looks like the more regular occurrence of extreme heat and long dry spells is demonstrating the problem of excessively sandy rootzones, much better than I could ever hope to explain...