Now have a look back over that last paragraph; if you didn’t wince at least twice, then it’s possible that you are about to embark on a program of work that will actually harm your green.

It probably won’t be dramatic like the sudden death of your green for ever, but it will probably have a negative impact on the future of your green’s ability to be presented for play consistently well, and maybe even on your club’s chance of survival in these harsh economic conditions.

The points I am referring to are the words “traditionally” and “putting the green to bed”

Traditionally, (well if you can call 30 years worth of blind repetition tradition) clubs will be ordering in up to 10 tonnes (20 tonnes in extreme cases) of “top-dressing”. This top-dressing will contain on average 75% sand; so 10 tonnes of top dressing is equal to 7.5 tonnes of sand being applied to a green that probably already has signs of damage from Localised Dry Patch, excessive thatch, low nutrient holding capability and a severe soil moisture deficit.

This is like driving the wrong way up a one way street; the maintenance program for most bowling greens in the UK needs to be the polar opposite of this.

Then we come to “putting the green to bed for winter”; this is absolute madness as the only time when we truly have the chance to overcome some of the worst excesses dressed up as Bowling Green Maintenance during the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries is during the winter. The winter must be utilised to overcome excessive compaction at the very least.

There is a very simple answer to this and it is spelled out in layman’s terms in Performance Bowling Greens a practical guide. A word of warning though; it might not be what everyone wants to hear, especially those who follow the well worn path regardless of the evidence against it…

…but here is a sentence you can use to overcome the most vocal of “traditionalists”:

1 tonne of high sand content top-dressing applied to your green will cost on average £150 +VAT; multiply that by the number of tonnes you usually apply. For 5 tonnes it will be £750 and for 10 tonnes £1500, and its just wrong.

In Performance Bowling Greens, a practical guide; the work program you will follow in autumn will cost a lot less and actually improve your green. Into the bargain you will be taking your green on a journey that will arrive sooner rather than later at a state you can truly describe as High Performance.

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!

I make no apology for writing about this once again, because in my opinion this issue has the ability to accelerate the decline of many already shaky clubs.

It is also clear that there is a deep misunderstanding of the issue across the bowling community…how do I know this?

Well, on several occasions over the last week I have been confronted with some of the worst examples of Localised Dry Patch I have seen in 30 years; in some cases there is virtually no grass cover left and the green surfaces are unlikely to hold together until the end of the season, but…

Despite that, I am still coming up against two of the most mind boggling situations time after time:

1. The first is when I am actually demonstrating Localised Dry Patch in action by removing soil samples from affected greens and showing committee members powder dry soil/sand; and they insist that they think the green needs a good top-dressing!
2. The second is when I get a phone call or email from a club with the same severe LDP problems who have had a recommendation from an “expert” that they need to top-dress their green to over come the problem.

Listen folks; I know this is turning into a bit of a rant but here are a few bullet points that you must remember if your green and maybe even your club is going to survive:

1. Localised Dry Patch (LDP) is a soil disorder not a disease so it can’t be reversed over-night by any quick fix method regardless of how convincing the salesman is!
2. LDP has the capability to ruin your green beyond economical repair.
3. LDP  is so common because clubs have habitually thrown tonnes of sand based top-dressings at their greens for decades; the tipping point has been reached, many clubs are now trying to produce bowling surfaces with limited budgets on very high sand content soils; it can’t be done!
4. More sand will only make the problems worse not better.

So what can be done?

Well currently if your green is affected even mildly by LDP and you are in the process of thinking about an autumn program that includes top-dressing with several tonnes of high sand content top-dressing you are not only damaging your green, but you are also wasting hundreds of pounds.

1. My eBook Performance Bowling Greens, a practical guide costs less than £20, so do your green a favour and just buy a copy…its peanuts compared to what you are about to do otherwise.
2. In the book there is a clear plan for getting over LDP and moving your green to a consistently high performance surface.
3. You will save a lot of cash by taking a more natural, less abusive approach to green maintenance.
4. The savings you make could be what saves your club from going under and your green will be on the road to recovery and consistent high performance into the bargain.

If you decide to ignore this, then please take away one message “Stop Dressing”

Readers of my book 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 an LDP curative program then I usually recommend reverting to hand watering for at least some of the time.

So if your club is starting from scratch and doesn’t currently have an irrigation system installed I recommend that you start by funding a large holding tank; the bigger the better; a good quality pump and 50metres of ¾” professional hose.

You could add a snap fit (professional) sprinkler for ease, but it’s much better to use this arrangement to simply hand water the green. It’s a bit time consuming but it does a much more effective job than automatic systems.

Recommended tank size for automatic irrigation (on a single bowling green) allowing typically 3-4 minutes per sprinkler would be in the region of 3,500 litres

Pump duty for a single phase supply would be 130 litres per minute at 60 metres head (around 85 psi).

However, If costs are still a limitation, for hand watering, I would recommend purchasing a tank with a capacity suitable for future automatic use and a budget pump from somewhere like Machine Mart as a suitable stop gap. They have a range of small domestic pumps with a 3 pin plug which will easily cope with a ¾” hose.

If the tank size is reduced, the limiting factor on amount of application will be the available in fill of water to the storage tank.

As always if you have any questions or comments please feel free to get in touch

However, one of the most prevalent problems on bowling greens in the UK is that of Localised Dry Patch LDP a condition that causes soil to become hydrophobic (water repellent) and which is undoubtedly related to excessive sand content in rootzone

The autumn renovation program is the only real chance clubs have to start to make inroads into the major problems with their greens and the only time when it is possible to make large corrections to thatch and compaction; and you’ve guessed it, thatch is another major problem associated with LDP.

Localised Dry Patch creates large dry areas on greens where grass dies back and the surface is disrupted. All attempts to re-wet these areas by watering the green are doomed to failure due to the water repellent nature of the underlying soil.

The application of yet more sandy top-dressing is not going to make this better; indeed it will in most cases make the problem worse next year.

It would be more beneficial to start the process of recovery by following a program that includes thatch reduction, wetting agent application and overseeding. All autumn programs should include the application of a granular fertiliser to correct any underlying deficiencies, usually a low N and high K product.

Where moss is a problem; and with LDP it usually is, you should use a proprietary moss-killer or lawn sand between 2 and 4 weeks before thatch removal work.

Later this week we will be releasing our new publication Bowling Club Survival and in it the process of Green Maintenance is shown to be critical in several different ways.

The most obvious link between Bowling Green Maintenance and Bowling Club Survival is of course that the club with a better green should be able to attract more members and tournaments, thus giving that club a better chance of surviving.

Secondly of course there is another obvious link; and that is that if we reduce expenditure on green maintenance then we will save costs and therefore give our club a better chance of survival.

Between these two clear survival strategies lies a quandary that many clubs have found themselves in for decades now:

“if we spend more money on Bowling Green Maintenance the green will be better; so if a better green would give us a better chance at Club Survival, we shouldn’t be cutting expenditure on Green Maintenance”

In Bowling Club Survival we will discuss why the answer to this argument isn’t as obvious as it seems and leave you with a clear strategy to make progress on this issue fast; but that’s only the beginning because this new guide will tackle 7 distinct strategies that must be mastered in order to give clubs the best chance of surviving the current challenges in both the economy and the game of bowls itself.

Please complete the form below to register your interest and we will ensure that you are among the first to be alerted when the guide is launched.

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I still hear the phrases “closing the green down for winter” and “putting the green to bed for winter” all too often and that is a worry.

Of course these are for the most part just harmless terms for the end of the season, but in some cases they still mean literally ignoring the green from now until next March.

Autumn is the only time we can really tackle big issues like thatch reduction and compaction relief in a meaningful way.

We also have to ensure that all running repairs that require re-growth such as over-seeding of bare patches are carried out soon after the season ends to give the work the longest and best chance to succeed.

Moving beyond the autumn renovation plan it is vital that maintenance continues throughout the winter months, especially in terms of compaction relief as this is an ongoing effort and doesn’t stop in winter time. In fact winter is the best time to get on top of compaction by following a concerted monthly program of compaction relied measures.

I’ve updated our Winter Bowling Green Maintenance Guide. The guide is FREE and you can get a copy by dropping your details in the box at the top right of the page.

If you have already signed up to receive email updates from us you will have already received a link to download a new copy.

Good luck with the autumn renovation works and winter programs and remember, if you have any questions just drop me a line anytime.

John

photo: Sandy Steele, the booler

Sunday 22nd August saw the finals of the Greenmaster Scottish National Mixed Pairs being held in glorious sunshine at Broughty Bowling Club. Pictured left to right are John Quinn, Greenmaster Ltd, Kevin and Marion Fraser the tournament winners from Newhills Bowling Club, Aberdeen and Scottish Bowling Association President Ewen Farrell.

CEC refers to a chemical process that occurs in the soil of healthy living greens and describes the process by which positively charged nutrient ions (cations) are attracted to negatively charged soil particles. This is the soil’s method of retaining the essential nutrition required by the plants and is effortlessly achieved by healthy living soil.

However, in the desert sands of most UK bowling greens, CEC is usually very low indeed and nutrition is scarce.

The thinking outlined in Performance Greens a practical guide is based around a program that can be followed to allow new organic matter to be generated by the green itself; partly through the natural breakdown of thatch by soil micro-organisms and partly (due to the scale of the problems) through inputs that we add to help the process along. And of course we must help the process along as nature isn’t usually in a hurry about these things. Incidentally we can learn a lot from this; mostly that we should be taking a very long term view of green maintenance. However, we must of course provide a decent surface during the transitional period to make sure we still have a bowling club at all.

So what can we do about increasing CEC?

Firstly it is imperative that we stop the madness of the sand, or the blind adherence to the application of high volumes of sand dominated top-dressings every year; I can’t stress this strongly enough; it MUST stop if you are to have any chance of improving your green.

Secondly we must increase soil oxygen by removing excessive thatch, relieving compaction and carrying out regular aeration.

Only then can we think about trying to help increase CEC through artificial inputs. One of the ways we can do this is to introduce CEC boosting materials such as zeolite. This is a natural mineral product that can help to retain moisture and increase CEC in the soil.

Incidentally a basic understanding of the CEC process can help us to get our heads round the general approach we should be taking to turf nutrition and dispel some more of the myths that result in the overuse of fertilisers at many clubs. In particular it is important to understand that some of the essential nutrients, Nitrogen in particular, are available to the plant as negatively charged ions (anions) and this is why we have to add Nitrogen more frequently than most other nutrients; negatively charged soil particles repel negatively charged ions. This means that nutrient anions are either taken up by plant roots or leached from the soil. This demonstrates irrefutably that it is pointless to over apply Nitrogen unless you have a penchant for contaminating your ground water with fertiliser and/or throwing money down the drain.

Following the successful release of our ebook Performance Bowling Greens, a practical guide by John Quinn earlier this year we are currently putting the final touches to a new and complementary publication called Bowling Club Turnaround and Survival.

This book is targeted at individual clubs and will offer a cohesive strategy to help them assess and quantify their current situation, develop a strategy for turning their fortunes around and finally to implement that strategy effectively.

Bowling Club Turnaround and Survival lays down a step by step plan that clubs can follow to ensure that they are making the best of every opportunity presented to them.

This ground breaking new ebook will be available here from the end of August 2010.

You can register your interest using the form below. This will ensure that you are among the first to be alerted to the book’s release.

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