Home » performance greens » Page 6

Tag: performance greens

Can we really trust the fertiliser trade?

The somewhat uncomfortable truth is that we as greenkeepers are actually part of the massive worldwide agriculture industry.

Very few products or technologies ever see the light of day based purely on the needs of bowling clubs or even the much larger golf segment of the fine turf and sports industry.

No, most of the things we use are direct descendants of agricultural or other industrial  products or at least are supported by agriculture’s huge global enterprise.

Every chemical pesticide we use is a direct copy of a product which has a use in growing crops; every fertiliser product is a result of agricultural research and manufacturing processes; even our mowers are based on a machine originally used for trimming in the massive Victorian carpet and textile industry.

Its very interesting to see as part of this discussion the current and on-going dilemma that faces farming. The burgeoning world population means that we have to grow more and more food on fewer and fewer hectares of ground. This ensures that agriculture will continue to be a cutting edge area of scientific research and that as a result we can look forward to continued and constant enticement to try out a multitude of new products and techniques on our bowls greens in the future.

However, there is one train of thought in agriculture and in society in general that is much closer to the one we need to nurture for the assured excellence of our bowls greens in the future, and that is ecological sustainability.

To accompany this goal of sustainability within agriculture there is a renewed interest in the common sense concept of healthy living soil and that is where we need to start on our road to an excellent,
high performance bowling green.

Incidentally, there is an excellent program on the BBC iplayer that explains the mechanics of soil ecology very well. You can still access it here.

5 little known facts about creating a Performance Bowls Green

  1. Top dressing is counter productive to producing a Performance Bowling Green
  2. Following the Performance Bowls Green system reduces maintenance costs from day 1.
  3. Doing too much work on your green can be detrimental to its condition.
  4. The performance greens program has the long term effect of reducing the work needed on the green.
  5. Performance bowls greens can be maintained with zero pesticides, another saving.

Preventative fungicide

The agronomic advice received by many clubs with regard to winter maintenance is just wrong and no where is this more prevalent than in the advice given about fungal disease prevention.

A healthy, living soil contains many different types of fungi and only a few of them are potentially harmful to the green.

If the green and soil are maintained in a healthy condition, even the potentially harmful fungal pathogens like fusarium, take all patch, dollar spot, anthracnose etc, although probably still present, pose no real threat to the turf.

The soil under your green when in its natural state is a little eco-system all of its own and the balance of this eco-system is easily destroyed by clumsy maintenance practices.

Soil micro-organisms and all manner of beneficial fungi need to thrive under there to make your green work the way it should i.e. to a high standard with the minimum of chemical intervention. Beneficial soil fungi actually work with grass plants to help them take up essential nutrition from the soil.

For this reason, even a green that is knackered and at the very beginning of the Performance Greens turnaround process should not be subjected to blanket applications of any fungicide.

This is because broad spectrum fungicides are pretty blunt instruments and don’t differentiate between good and bad fungi, meaning that every blanket application is essentially turning your green away from the door at the Performance Greens Annual Dance!

The whole process of decline in greens due to “traditional” maintenance is detailed here.

The recovery process is outlined here.

One reader told me of his recent bill for fungicide totalling over £800; for a tiny fracftion of that money you can get yourself a map out of this madness here.

Performance bowls green properties.

How can we ensure a consistently high performance bowling green that is economical to produce and maintain. There are 4 specific goals that we need to achieve to say that we have such a green:

Green Speed; the actual surface pace that we can reasonably expect from the green on a regular basis.
Consistency; the ability of the green to replicate high performance throughout the day, week and season and also from season to season.
Predictability; the ability of the green and individual rinks to be set up for play of a reasonably predictable nature, time after time and over time.
Achievability; high performance must be not only physically achievable but also relatively easily achievable and for that the program we put in place must tick the following boxes; it must be:

Workable; with “in-house” labour and skills or with a financially sustainable amount of “bought in” labour and skills.
Sustainable in terms of its environmental, financial and infrastructural requirements.
Replicable time after time within the parameters defined above.
Minimum Input in terms of artificial fertilisers, chemicals and expensive bought in machinery or skills.

The goals we have set above require us to produce a very specific kind of green surface.

Performance Bowls Greens-Getting Down to it

The season is well underway now and its around this time in the season when suddenly it hits clubs that the green isn’t up to scratch…again!

One of the most common problems we hear about from Performance Bowls Greens readers is the difficulty in getting the philosophy to stick at their club. Its all too simple to fall off the wagon and go back to old “traditional” habits.

There are of course no silver bullets in Bowling Green Management but for a lot of clubs the call of the “instant fix” magic potion from a bag or bottle soon looks much more attractive than the relentless application of a strict maintenance program that takes time to show results.

The difference however, is that by applying the Performance Bowling Greens philosophy you ensure that your green improves a little bit every week, and that you work inexorably towards excellence in green surface management.

The typical reliance on the quick fix that still dominates the bowling green maintenance world delivers the most disappointing of results, when greens suffer the continuous peaks and troughs of acceptable performance followed by seemingly un-fixable surface disasters. This the sequence of trial and error that sees clubs go through many phases of committee and greenkeeper changes while meantime the green just keeps getting worse.

To deliver a Performance Bowling Green you must stick to a plan that makes allowance for the following phases of development.

  1. Green Appraisal- Thorough Agronomic and Performance appraisal of green.
  2. Baseline Maintenance Plan– to provide a firm foundation before further development.
  3. Remedial Maintenance Program– work to correct underlying problems.
  4. High Performance Plan– Measures employed to develop green towards performance requirements of club.
  5. Continuous Improvement– A program of Continuous Improvement ensures continued high performance

Such an approach is easily understood by all concerned and simple to communicate to the wider membership.

More soon.