Performance turf requires heat and moisture and it is inevitable that you will have to turn to your irrigation system at this time to keep your green’s progress moving forward. Failure to keep up now could result in a disastrous season later on when the green dries out unevenly, succumbs to Localised Dry patch or simply doesn’t perform due to a lack of moisture early in the season.
Tag: answers
Over-seeding Fact and Fiction
Another very popular subject on this site is over-seeding of greens in Autumn.
Over-seeding is commonly carried out as part of the autumn bowling green maintenance and renovation program and is very often a disappointment.
You would expect this work to quickly fill in the bare patches and spaces in the sward left by disease, localised dry patch and a host of other green problems, but this is very often not the case…why?
The answer to most disappointing results from over-seeding is “competition”. Competition from the mature, indigenous grasses whether fine or weed grasses like annual meadow grass usually reduces the success or survival rate from over-seeding to a very small percentage.
This quite often comes as a surprise to greenkeepers who have observed a very good “take” shortly after seeding (7-14 days). At this early stage it is not uncommon to see vigorous lines of dense new seedlings bursting forth from the green. This however, is usually a false reading.
At this very Read more
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 of one or the other of these and things start to go wrong.
Compaction reduces the Macro air space in soil and inhibits drainage and root penetration. The soil now holds on to too much moisture and a whole raft of other problems ensue; particularly the build up of excessive thatch due to the anaerobic (lacking in oxygen) soil conditions brought about by the reduction in air space.
Thatch becomes a breeding ground for fungal disease and a base for Localised Dry Patch to take hold. The thatch doesn’t break down naturally as it should because there is a massive reduction in the population of aerobic soil microbes and they usually do this job.
Tip the balance the other way by applying excessive amounts of sand top-dressing and there is now too much air space, there is very little capillary space and the green starts to dry out too quickly. Localised Dry Patch now takes over, the surface is unpredictable and the soil can’t provide the nutrition the plants need naturally any more.
Yes, for a healthy living green that performs to order you need a lot of space; 50% air space.
Luckily, a healthy living soil knows how to do all of this without us.
We are only needed to help rectify the damage we inflict, which is mainly compaction and nutrient depletion through the removal of grass clippings.
Ahh! how simple!
How to Cure Localised Dry Patch in Bowls Greens
Create a healthy living green environment.
This question is an amalgamation of upwards of 50 similar search queries on the site this month.
Essentially what these readers are looking for is a cure for Localised Dry Patch.
As regular readers will know, using the word “cure” in Bowling Green Maintenance is an example of “Symptoms Thinking”
Most problems that occur on bowling greens are symptoms of more fundamental problems and Localised Dry Patch is a case in point.
This is a relatively recent addition to the list of difficulties greenkeepers have to deal with in maintaining bowling greens.
I won’t go into a long description of the problem as that is well documented on the site elsewhere (just click on the LDP tag on the right of the page to go to articles about Localised Dry Patch).
The main thing is to get away from thinking of LDP as something that can be cured; it isn’t a disease; the answer is to change your maintenance practices overall to make sure it doesn’t occur.
This means creating a healthy living soil environment by:
- Increasing air within the soil
- Minimising thatch
- Minimising compaction
- STOP using sand-top-dressings
- Increase microbial activity in the soil
- Firstly by doing 1-4 above
- Then helping to improve conditions through use of bio-fertilisers
- Use wetting agents in the meantime to help with soil re-wetting
- Keep the green surface open throughout the season by using a sarrell roller.
A complete explanation and detailed step by step guidance is included in Performance Bowling Greens, a practical guide
Problems with Bowls Greens
Yes there are, but they are actually few in number and most of them are symptoms of the big 2.
Fusarium, Localised Dry Patch, Thatch Fungus, Compaction, Spongy Surface, Slow Green, Bumpy Surface, Anthracnose Disease, Dollar Spot, Thatch, Slime, Algae, Fairy Ring, Moss, Leatherjackets, Poor grass growth, Annual Meadow Grass, Weeds, Pearlwort, Angry members, Excessive water costs, etc etc…blah blah blah.
I could go on for a long time with that list.
This is another composite question from the search results on the site this month. About 40 people so far have typed in something like “I’ve got problems on my bowling green”
As regulars know there are only 2 problems on bowling greens; thatch and compaction and everything else is simply a symptom of these two.
So the question should maybe be:
How do bowling greens succumb to thatch and compaction?
Answer: Inappropriate Maintenance Practices.
The Circle of Decline explains this fully.