April 2012 – ARE YOU WELL PREPARED FOR SPRING?

The start of the new outdoor season is just around the corner. If the extent of the amount of preparation is understood then the green would be at this stage up to date having had the winter months to put the green in good condition. If you haven’t, then here are one or two reminders as to what can still be done.

You may be a newcomer, thrust into the deep end, as many greens are nowadays because of the change in responsibility of maintenance from the councils to the individual clubs as a result, in the main, of financial restraints. In which case here are a few pointers as to what your preparations should include.

The first priority has got to be aeration (allowing air and water into the turf) by regular use of a spiker. You can never do too much spiking and if you can spend a whole day, sharing the job out at perhaps an hour each so that the engine keeps going to maximum use, that would be marvellous. The turf and the root zone will benefit tremendously from this task and the more frequently you can use the spiker the better it will be as you only have until the middle of March for such a concentrated and intense effort.

I have mentioned the root zone, which is the area 5” or 6” below the surface. It is the larder for the plant as it is where the fertilisers finish up and where the water and other nutrients are entrapped above the drainage layer. Also in this area is a mass of roots, living, dying and dead providing organic food for bacteria, fungi and all other lower soil life by recycling this former plant material and making it available to the new plants through soil solution.

Spiking is vital to the success of a healthy turf and root zone as it will make a passage through which water can permeate, thus avoiding water logging and will also in turn warm up the top surface. Spiking will also allow oxygen access into the root zone (aerobic) and give exit to harmful, obnoxious gases which form by putrefaction in the root zone (anaerobic). These gases, if not expelled, would otherwise reduce the activity of beneficial bacteria and soil life.

Another word for spiking is tining which in winter would mean the use of solid tines or chisel tines. These should be used while there is sufficient moisture in the ground to allow the tines to penetrate to their maximum depth. An old 6” screwdriver blade can be used to check the depth of the moisture content in the soil.

A different kind of tine is a hollow tine which actually removes plugs (cores) of turf and soil usually in the autumn, but this is not recommended for use at this time of year. It is normally used once every three years to relieve soil density and produces holes in the green which are left open for two weeks allowing gas exchange and root development besides tremendously improving drainage.

These holes must not to be filled with other materials such as top dressing but will be pressed together by solid and chisel tines after the two weeks of being exposed to the atmosphere. The practice of filling up hollow tine holes comes under soil exchange and not turf management. We will discuss the correct method of hollow tining at an appropriate time during the autumn.

If your green has been neglected in the autumn and no scarifying has taken place then serious consideration must be given to do some scarifying as soon as possible to clear out some of the debris of dead and dying grasses that have accumulated throughout the year. If you have a lot of annual meadow grass then you would expect to see a lot of disfiguring from fungus, in particular fusarium.

Apart from spiking as often as possible you will need to clean out with scarifying as much of the debris that can be seen at every available opportunity. The first thing to remember is not to touch the soil with the tips of the scarifying blades just keep them in the turf. The job is to clean out the turf and not disturb the soil.

Although it is not the ideal time of the year to scarify it might assist the success of the scarifying if you run a light roller over the surface of the turf to firm it up before scarifying to prevent the wheels digging in and altering the height that you were aiming to achieve. The final adjustment to the height of the scarifier blades can be done once the machine is sitting on the green.

It is vital to remove the debris because this is what the fungi will feed on. As it is still the closed season it is permissible to scarify parallel to the banks and then at right angles (north to south and then east to west) but after two or three passes this practice must change to diagonally corner to corner to prevent runs that would influence the path of the woods. I am only mentioning scarifying at this time of the year if it had been left out of the autumn repair work and there was a need to catch up.

Any debris must be collected and removed from the green and disposed of well away from the bowling green as it will contain fungi spores and their food. Treat it like garden rubbish and do not deposit it on your compost heap.

The next thing to think about is spring rolling. Because we have accomplished a fair amount of spiking and removal of debris, the green will naturally be a bit soft so we will have to consider rolling to firm the green up. If no rolling takes place then the green will be too soft for play at the beginning of the season so it is essential to start firming up the green in the middle of March. This is done with as light a roller as possible to start with, which can be a motor mower without the box, in several directions on the green at a fairly brisk pace. Brush or swish first to dry off the surface to ensure that the turf is dry on the top but moist underneath. Each rolling from now on will be done at a progressively slower rate in order to act as a slightly heavier rolling. It can be rolled again two or three days later with the box added on containing a half bag of fertiliser or sand to increase the weight. Alternatively, if you have a 500 cwt roller you can use it fairly briskly at first, then gradually reducing the speed on subsequent days to increase the weight.

Once the green has been firmed up, normal spiking with solid tines only can continue up until the end of April. If the grass is growing then it must be maintained at 13mm or half an inch high by mowing to encourage grasses at the lower level of the grass plant (tillering).