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The Circle of Decline—why many bowls greens never improve.

The diagram below shows the process that many poorly maintained bowling greens experience over a period of years if 3 basic maintenance issues are not addressed as a priority.

The top 3 issues on all fine turf are:

1. Thatch Control

2. Compaction Control

3. Turf Nutrition

the Circle of Decline, the reason many greens never improve

In addition to the top 3 there are of course other important issues such as irrigation management, topdressing etc, but if these 3 big issues are under-managed then the green will spiral into what I have called the Circle of Decline.

Simply put this is the course of events that go on largely un-noticed by many bowling clubs until it is too late to effect a quick recovery.

A lack of attention to thatch build up (see other posts under the thatch category) results in a thick mat of un-decomposed  dead grass shoots, roots and leaves. This mat gradually effects the turf’s ability to put down roots and take up water and nutrients. In advanced cases a root break will occur and Localised Dry Patch is a very common symptom of excessive thatch also (see other posts under the LDP category)

Disease

In winter, thatch can hold water like a sponge and encourage fungal diseases such as fusarium patch to take hold. This sometimes results in over use of chemical fungicides which kill off the disease and many beneficial fungi into the bargain.

Symbiosis

Grass relies on beneficial microbes, such as fungi to make best use of the available nutrition and so begins to have difficulty obtaining the necessary nutrition from the soil.

This often results in over fertilisation, as much of what is applied is not made available to the plants due to the anaerobic conditions which now prevail.

By now conditions are highly favourable to the weed annual meadow grass which is a very shallow rooting species. The finer fescue and bent grasses are compromised and in an effort to keep the meadow grass alive excessive irrigation is required.

This contributes even further to the excessive thatch layer as meadow grass is a prolific producer of thatch and we are back to the beginning of the cycle.

Action must be taken to break into the circle of decline, take action before its too late for your green.

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

Deeper Faster Bigger…Better…Not in Bowls Green Maintenance!

Next question to ask as a matter of urgency:

Does anyone have plans to get rid of compaction once and for all by hiring in a guy with a tractor and a big spiker that can go in 12, 16, 18, 20 inches? You add your own number here.

Pointers:

  1. Compaction is an on-going issue; it’s natural and happens due to play, maintenance, weather etc.
  2. There are of course factors that make compaction worse or better such as soil type and maintenance.
  3. You can’t “get rid” of compaction once and for all; compaction management is an on-going bowling green maintenance task.
  4. Compaction relief is best tackled mainly throughout the winter months by old fashioned (unfashionable) deep slit tining to 6-8 inches depth.
  5. Green flooding is more commonly caused by thatch than compaction
  6. Deeper isn’t better in this case; anything deeper than 8 inches risks damaging the subgrade of your green permanently.
  7. Don’t take a tractor on your green please!

Transforming your Bowls Green-the knowledge.

I keep going on about healthy living soil and healthy living turf and healthy living bowling greens on this site.

In my eBook Performance Bowling Greens, a practical guide, I focus heavily on the process of turning bowling greens back in to healthy living eco systems that are pretty much self sustaining.

By self sustaining I mean that they are in a condition that allows them to be set up and prepared for play in a consistently high performance manner with no pesticides and minimal on-going in-put costs.

This relies on the green being converted from a barren, sand laden, resource swallowing beast that is unpredictable at best and disappointing and expensive at worst.

This conversion process demands two qualities in those who seek to deliver a Performance Bowling Green:

Knowledge, that you are doing the right thing and the Patience to spend the time following the program.

Performance Bowling Greens spells out this process in great detail, but here in basic terms are the key points of knowledge that are important to a successful transition:

  1. Soil micro-life is critically important; this refers to the microscopic life in all soils and includes beneficial fungi which help plants to assimilate nutrients (which fungicides get rid of), and soil microbes, which help to turn organic matter (mainly thatch) into plant useable nutrient ions.
  2. Every time you add sand to the green, the abundance of soil micro-life reduces; sand is inert.
  3. Sandy soils generally have a lower Cation Exchange Capacity (the ability to retain the plant useable nutrient ions created by the soil microbes).
  4. There are two distinctly different kinds of pore space in soils; micro or capillary pore space where plant roots take up moisture and nutrients; and macro or aeration pore space where drainage occurs (to stop the soil from being saturated with water), and oxygen (critical to maintaining a large population of soil microbes) is held.
  5. Compaction ruins the structure of the soil and reduces aeration pore space, oxygen content and soil microbe populations. This is why compacted greens seem to need more and more fertiliser. Compaction + More Fertiliser = Thatch and so the downward spiral into the Circle of Decline begins.

These are 5 guiding principles if you like for a consistently high performance green. You will notice that this is not a list of things to do, but a list of key things to keep in mind, to focus on as we patiently go about the transition process. You can be confident that if you are heading in this direction you are heading in the right direction regardless of how long the road is.

And you can be confident that the view will improve (in the shape of performance) around every corner of that road.

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.

Autumn and winter bowls green maintenance

We are getting an increasing number of enquiries about the correct process for Autumn bowling green maintenance at the moment.

Here are my top 10 tips for autumn maintenance:

  1. DO NOT TOPDRESS
  2. Remove as much thatch as possible.
  3. Create air space in the top 100mm of the green
  4. Relieve Compaction
  5. Treat LDP by applying wetting agent
  6. Renovate heads to ensure recovery for next year
  7. Improve CEC on overly sandy soils by introducing zeolite
  8. Boost potassium levels
  9. If over-seeding, also give some Phosphorous
  10. Draw up a program of work to carry on right through the winter months. Don’t “put your green to bed”

Performance Bowls Greens-Making Best Use of Winter

Time is marching on and most greens have had their autumn renovation works completed and the greens have been “put to bed”, which is my least favourite phrase in bowling green maintenance.

There should be no question of putting a green to bed for winter, as the next few months are the most vital of times for starting your journey towards a performance bowling green.

Bowling green maintenance has traditionally concentrated on the bowling season and greens have to a large extent been almost neglected during the winter.

The 2 main problems that greens suffers from and which are the root cause of almost all of the difficulties we encounter on greens can only really be tackled head on during the winter.

First among these is thatch and if there is an excessive build up of thatch on your green you should be taking appropriate action now to reduce this mechanically before it gets too cold.

The remainder of the winter right up to March or thereabouts should be peak compaction relief time; this is the only time when you can tackle it properly and the best technique to use is pedestrian, deep slit tining.

So if you are not out doing this now, don’t be surprised if your green isn’t performing very well next season.

The trouble with neglecting this work is that it just can’t be caught up with again during the season, which results in a very early deterioration in condition once the season is underway; in many cases the green doesn’t really get growing until well into the late spring period. Meantime the green is being subjected to further compaction and wear at a time when recovery is limited due to cold soil and weather. If this is combined with last year’s compaction and thatch which hasn’t been dealt with properly in the close season then tgreen can deteriorate beyond recovery very early in the season.

Let’s re-cap on some of the major problems that arise from neglecting this work:

Flooding, puddles, un-even playing surface, Localised Dry Patch, bare areas, poor use of fertiliser/increased fertiliser requirements, disease, more pesticide required, more water required, moss, weeds, poor runs, slow green surface, inconsistent rinks, unhappy members etc.

Now is the time to be getting on with the early stages of renovation which will lead to a performance bowling green for your club in the future.