A high proportion of the bowling greens I see every year are victims of what has become accepted as “conventional maintenance”. I say victims, because much of what has come to be accepted as normal in bowling green maintenance, is anything but, if you happen to be a grass plant or a healthy living soil. …
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Bowls Green Maintenance
A very general title for today’s article, but it reflects the current industry desire for a fix all solution to achieving a good bowling green. Most clubs are unhappy to some extent with the performance of their bowling greens. This leads to an open ended search for solutions where the searcher i.e. the bowling club …
Bowls Green Maintenance Basics – Surface Consistency
Have you ever played a great game of bowls when everything on the green was perfect; you read every twitch on the rink and it seemed like you had finally got the green the way you wanted it. The disappointment when you return to the green the very next day, prepare the rink in completely …
Bowls Green Maintenance Basics-Thatch
Where grass grows on soil of any type the health of the turf/soil eco-system can be assessed by looking at the thatch layer. On grass areas where there is little or no human interference in the form of excessive compaction, fertiliser, pesticides and mechanical work (other than mowing) such as in meadows or parks the …
Green Surface requirements for high performance.
Following on from yesterdays post on Performance Green Properties, the ideal bowling green then, will be uniform in terms of appearance, pace and consistency of play over the whole green and over the season. We will probably see an increase in pace as the summer progresses, but we shouldn’t see too many fluctuations in this …
Thatch Problems
As bowling green maintenance specialists we get lots of questions every week about thatch. So here is a quick crash course on it; what it is, what it does and how to deal with it: What is it? Thatch is the name given to the mat of dead roots and shoots that accumulates on the …
a lot of hot air?
Air is a very important component of a Performance Bowling Green. 50% of a healthy, performance green will be air; 25% Micro-pores and 25% Macro-pores. The Macro Pore or “aeration” space is where drainage happens. The Micro-Pore or “capillary” space is where grass plant roots get their water and nutrients. Tip the balance in favour …
Thatch Problems
The sward on the majority of UK bowling greens consists of 3 main grass types; various bent grasses (Agrostis), various Fescues (Festuca) and Annual Meadow Grass (Poa annua). Of these, the bent grasses and annual meadow grass are prolific thatch producers. Thatch consists of dead and dying roots, shoots, leaves, stolons and rhizomes and in …
Worn Heads on the Bowls Green
The rink heads on the bowling green are subject to higher levels of wear and tear than any other playable part of the green. The concentration of foot traffic on these areas causes severe compaction of the soil resulting in poor growth characteristics and in many cases invasion by annual meadow grass. Due to the …
Protection of Bowls Greens during “Real” Winters
Thanks to everyone who downloaded the free winter maintenance report at the start of the winter. Now here we are approaching the Christmas holidays and I don’t think many of you will have been able to implement much of the work that I recommend both in the Winter Maintenance Guide and in Performance Bowling Greens, …