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High Performance Bowls Green Maintenance

Performance Bowling Greens eBookSpring is upon us.

The new bowling season is, or will soon be under-way and there still seems like so much to do to get the green ready for play.

Today, I am going to give an overview of the work that should be going on at the green and over the coming weeks I will fill this out by looking a bit more in-depth at each of the recommended tasks individually.

For the time being I have dropped the price of Performance Bowling Greens to encourage as many clubs as possible to get hold of a copy of what has become a very popular manual for achieving a high performance bowling green.

Today’s post and the subsequent articles and links I will share with you this month assume that you are working from the Performance Greens Manual.

As usual of course, if there are any questions, please feel free to get in touch. The best way to do this is by leaving a comment on any post, signing in to use the forums or by dropping me an email.

So what should we be doing on the green in the lead up to the new bowling season?

To start, I should point out that the programs detailed in the Performance Greens Manual are spilt into 3 distinct categories as follows:

  1. Baseline: this program consists of maintenance tasks that should be carried out as detailed in the Performance Greens Manual regardless of green condition. Whether your green is in a dire state of repair or is already a high performance surface, these tasks are essential.
  2. Renovation: this program, again detailed in the Performance Greens Manual, is aimed at greens that are in the renovation or recovery phase. These tasks should be carried out in addition to the baseline program.
  3. Performance: this program is for greens that have already been through the renovation phase and are starting to perform at a high level. Again, these tasks should be carried out in addition to the baseline program.

Based on the above, you will be carrying out some or all of the following tasks in early spring:

  • Mowing
  • Worm cast/dew removal
  • Trimming green edges
  • Mini-solid tining
  • Slit tining
  • Scarifying
  • Applying wetting agent
  • Applying corrective granular fertiliser
  • Applying organic growth stimulants
  • Possibly applying pesticides but only if absolutely essential.

Tomorrow we will get started by looking more closely at the correct mowing regime and some of the technicalities of this.

Meantime, I encourage you to get hold of your copy of the Performance Bowling Greens. This will help you to follow the advice from the site and apply it to your own situation more accurately.

Deal with thatch and compaction Now

Regular readers of my articles will know my views on bowling green maintenance problems; essentially there are only 2 that you have to worry about.

Everything else that goes wrong with greens is a symptom of these big 2 issues or indeed a symptom of the commonly held views on how to tackle the big 2.

What are the big 2?:

  1. Thatch: the build up of dead shoots, roots and debris on the turf surface that can get out of hand very quickly and cause or contribute to a huge number of problems. See my article on the circle of decline here
  2. Compaction: the squeezing of air out of the soil profile by foot and maintenance traffic.

Why I am banging on about this again?

Well hopefully your autumn and winter program is fully geared up to dealing with these two big issues.

By now I hope you have undertaken any major thatch removal work required and that you are now embarking on “an all winter long” attack on compaction.

Regular deep slit tining is the best way to relieve compaction; please note this is not a one off job regardless of how impressive the machine used.

It is necessary to continually slit tine the green through the winter to a depth of 150mm or deeper if you can.

Once a week isn’t too much, twice a month is more typical; stop during frost or excessively wet conditions but pick it up again as soon as possible afterwards.

For a full appraisal of essential winter maintenance tasks for your bowling green the Autumn/Winter report is still available at half price:

Autumn and Winter Bowling Green Maintenance Guide
Autumn and Winter Bowling Green Maintenance Guide
The ultimate guide to Autumn Renovation and Winter Bowling Green Maintenance detailing the essential maintenance your bowling green needs through this most critical of maintenance seasons. What you do now will determine how the green performs next season. INSTANT DOWNLOAD ebook more details
Price: £9.97

Bowls Green Maintenance Basics-Green Speed

There are some less than obvious essentials required to achieve consistently agreeable Green Speed

The great debate about green speed has raged on since the beginning of the game. But what are the factors known to affect green speed?

In order of their impact on green speed these are the top 7 factors that you should bear in mind. Obviously there are others such as weather patterns, level of play etc, but these are largely out of the greenkeepers control and in any case do not figure highly in green speed management.

Thatch Layer Control and Management; this means knowing the thatch levels on your green and having a feel for how quickly thatch builds up at each point in the year.

Typically thatch will be much quicker to build up in the main growing season and it can easily take greenkeepers by surprise if they don’t keep a watchful eye on the situation.

Reducing a troublesome thatch layer significantly is a job best left for the autumn when severe measures can more safely be taken, but following the Performance Greens program will ensure that you are minimising the occurrence of new thatch through the production and maintenance of a healthy living rootzone and turf.

You can find more in-depth articles on thatch here.
Compaction Control and Relief; Second only to thatch in causing green problems, Compaction is a Read more

Bowls Green Spiking

Slit tining, solid tining, hollow tining, verti-draining. All of these terms seem to be interchangeable with the word “Spiking” so it can be confusing for the new greenkeeper or green convenor to know what the best approach is at any given time to do the best for their green.

All of these terms relate to the aeration or introduction of air in the green. They all do this by making holes of one kind or another.

When I refer to spiking I usually mean “slit tining” and this is still the best thing you can do to your green through the winter months to relieve the compaction that has built up over the playing season and to keep the green surface open to allow drainage of surface water.

You can get much more detail on the aims of aeration and the techniques used here.