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What does top dressing a bowls green do?

In spite of the common misconception that it does a lot of good and that it is an essential part of annual bowling green maintenance, in broad terms it does very little of good towards levelling the surface, drains club’s of much needed cash and actually causes untold damage to the green eco-system over time.

There are many more articles detailing the reasons for this conclusion 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”

Irrigation for Bowls Greens

Further to my previous post a lot of clubs have been in touch recently to ask for advice about irrigation systems; mainly about the cost of installing them.

Readers of my ebook Performance Bowling Greens a practical guide will know that I am not a big fan of the industry accepted standard for bowling green watering systems. They simply don’t work well enough.

Where standard irrigation systems are struggling to apply enough water to help with fending off LDP or indeed to apply sufficient water as part of Read more