The Green
Hi everyone, This page is about explaining the organic route that Tiverton bowling club is is going down reference, the green. The preparation of bowling greens for play has caused more debate over the years than the average general election does. Stuart and myself [Ian] looked at this and decided after reading John Quinn’ thoughts on performance greens and the circle of decline; the organic route was for us. We have embarked on a 3 year programme that has been set by John Quinn after a soil analysis had been sought. Below is about John and his thinking.
John Quinn.
Having worked in the greenkeeping industry for the best part of 3 decades in varying roles, I have often been frustrated by the proliferation of mis-information about the correct approach required to produce high performance bowling green surfaces.The approach I am promoting, is not, in my opinion, radical or even that ground breaking; it’s just that most of the generally accepted greenkeeping wisdom that abounds in the industry is unfortunately so far off the mark that it makes what I do look different and maybe even strange to some people. I regularly encounter 4 common obstacles to achieving excellence on bowling greens and strangely enough, all of them occur in the clubhouse and not on the green; they are desperation, lack of consistency, tradition and greenkeeping myths. Let’s take a closer look at these:
Desperation Mode
By this I mean the almost constant quest by clubs to achieve an excellent green overnight. There is total lack of understanding among many bowling club committees about the timescale required to turn a poorly performing green into a high performance one. Due to this the club embarks on a roller coaster ride of chopping and changing their approach to maintenance year after year. One year they will engage a contracting company to turn the green around and shortly into this arrangement there will be a revolt by a group of the clubs elite players due to the lack of progress and it will be all change again to a different approach, which could be another contractor, a new employed greenkeeper or even a combination of these. Other factors that contribute to this problem include a new wonder product being introduced, that a vocal member promotes as the way forward; a contractor who promotes a new approach or an expert who promises a tournament green overnight.These are all clear signs that the club is in desperation mode and if you are a member of a bowling club, you will recognise this instantly. Headless chickens and dogs chasing tails are phrases often used to illustrate this kind of behaviour. This happens because the club members are desperate to have a good green and just can’t wait for the results. Unfortunately, this invariably results in failure, great expense and a perpetually mediocre green.
Inconsistency
You might think I am being unnecessarily harsh; surely having members who are passionate about achieving an excellent green surface is a positive attribute for any club and of course you are right. However, this turns into desperation mode when consistency of approach goes out of the window. And of course consistency of approach goes out of the window as soon as an element of doubt creeps in to the equation. In this respect, the members are being passionate about all of the wrong things and it damages the club and green in terms of the wrong maintenance regime being applied, the extra costs involved in continually changing the plan and the cost of lost members, matches etc. However the really dangerous part is the long term damage being done to the green as a result of there being no focus or agronomic plan and that’s where the 3rd big obstacle usually makes its presence felt and that is the obstacle of tradition.
Tradition
Of the 4 major obstacles to success this has to be the worst and I encounter this 50 times a year at least. The sheer volume of clubs that insist on particular maintenance operations for no other reason than “we’ve always done it this way” is quite frankly astonishing; astonishing because in many cases the operations or techniques in question are damaging to the green and can actually compound the damage done through repetition on a regular basis. Let’s take one of the worst as an example: top-dressing. Continually top-dressing bowling greens with high sand content dressings is one of the worst things you can possibly do in your quest for a high performance green, yet it is now a greenkeeping tradition even though it has only been around for a relatively short time, maybe since the late 1960’s in the UK. However, that unfortunately has been long enough to cause a whole lot of damage to the performance characteristics of many greens.
The Unseen Damage from tradition
Imagine if you will a typical bowling green; let’s say it measures 36 X 36 metres (40 yards X 40 Yards) and the original constructed depth was 200mm (8 inches) which is about typical. Now imagine the top half of the green, the upper 100mm (4 inches). I won’t bore you with the calculations here, but that top 100mm zone of the green is where all of the sand top-dressing has been going for 35 years at the rate of say 5 tonnes a year. The original weight of soil used in the construction of that top zone would be around 250 tonnes. Now 5 tonnes of sand applied 35 times is 175 tonnes, even allowing for a 75/25 (sand/soil) mix that equates to over 130 tonnes of sand being applied to the green over the period. In other words the original soil has now been diluted 50/50 with sand at best. However, many of the clubs I talk to claim to have applied at least 10 tonnes every year and sometimes even 20 tonnes in some cases. I’ll leave you to do the sums. Meantime you might be thinking so what? What possible damage can that have done, it must have improved the drainage, the green speed, the smoothness of the surface and generally have improved the green for play. Well if you are a bowler at a club like this, you already know the answer to that...it hasn’t improved the green has it?
Greenkeeping Myths
These abound in the industry and range from the sublime like the infamous screeding to the ridiculous like using a mechanical road roller to smooth the green surface once and for all. A word of caution is required here. You see most myths are just that, myths, i.e. something that is talked about, passed down through the generations, but didn’t really ever happen. The hilariously funny, yet scary thing about greenkeeping myths is that somewhere, someone will be on a bowling green with a road roller, or trying to find a 36 metre long baton with which to screed level the green in the fashion of a builder laying a concrete floor!
Have a look at the performance green presentation by John Quinn. Below.
Picture 1. The green looking tired after a hard 2017/18 season.
picture 2. Work starts on the green first hard scarify oct 2018.
picture 3. End of 2019 season.
picture 4. Green starting to recover quicker after the end of season work.
Picture 5. End of season 2020 work started. Hard scarify.
More to come.
