Getting the mower ready is often seen as someone else's responsibility during the close season, but great care should be taken to make sure you are not falling foul of tradition again. Relief grinding and back lapping have become an unfortunate norm in cylinder mower set up, but can be more damaging to the turf and the mower than you might expect. John Quinn explains the theory and suggests a solution that will ensure your mower gives you trouble free service and impressive results all season long.
Search for mower blades - 14 results found
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!
Performance Greenkeeping tasks for June
A lot of us experienced a very dry start to spring, but might now be regretting complaining about that as we are faced with seriously biblical rain. In his article on the Performance Greenkeeping tasks for June, John takes account of the weather fluctuations and offers some timely advice on Anthracnose, Red Thread, aeration, irrigation, Localised Dry Patch, mowing and plant nutrition.
What bowls green maintenance should be carried out before a game?
Concentrate on minimising lateral grass growth for greater speed and smoothness. OK, so this is probably a bit late for this year, but keep a note of it for future reference. This has been a popular question on the site. The readers who searched on variations of this theme were essentially asking, “What can be …
Turf grass growth characteristics and habits
I often talk about close mowing here on bowls central and don’t usually recommend a cutting height of less than 4.5mm even in perfect growing conditions. Of course the mower blades will have been set higher during the recent very dry and very hot weather to allow the plants to retain more leaf area and …
Smooth and fast greens!
As always this season has started off with many greens playing “slow”. The usual reasons apply of course; mowing heights are still above summer level, the frequency of cutting is still low in many cases due to a really slow start to growth in many areas. Many greens are also thatchy and there has been …
Top dressing and over-seeding in Spring
I’ve had a couple of enquiries asking about the correct methods, quantities and materials for Spring (pre-season) over seeding and top dressing of bowling and golf greens. This is easy; the correct thing to do in this respect is…Nothing! Over-seeding into a sward that is about to become very vigorous as spring progresses is futile. …
The Green Stuff. Performance Evaluation of the Bowling Green Part 11.
Sometimes the things we see every day become so familiar that we stop noticing them and this can be the case with the most obvious of performance signals on the bowling green. We can learn a lot from just being a bit more observant of the every day activities we get involved in as greenkeepers. …
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.
Performance Greenkeeping tasks for August
August is upon us and the days are shortening noticeably already. Thought's might already be turning to autumn and the plan for renovations of the green. My Greencraft Column in Bowls International this month explains how you can assess your green and make the right decisions for autumn renovation works.