“Spend your energy informing your club and the players of your intentions. Explain the procedure and sell the benefits of success”
growth regulators. Manage the establishment considerately to give the new seedlings a chance to take hold. A healthy and settled environment, with minimal stress, is the order of the day. Stress is no good for new seedlings, so ease the pressure from the environment. This tends to be the longest phase but
it isn’t endless. Take heart that you have already improved the situation beyond recognition through Phase 1. As the finer grasses establish, and assume dominance, your mind will start thinking about hastening the process by stressing the annual meadow grass out. You should only move to the next stage when you are sure that you can lose the annual meadow grass without losing playing quality beyond the patience of the players. Think hard before moving on.
Phase 3: Pressure the Poa
This is the phase where we start playing with the pressures. Through Phase 2 you will have become attuned to the idea of managing environmental pressures and, through this stage, you will start to employ that understanding in a more forceful way. The objective here is to force the poa out. Through this phase we are still looking
to favour the fine grasses so our surface preparations remain focused on minimising disturbance. We continue to prepare our surfaces primarily with topdressing, brushing and rolling (with occasional verticutting only as necessary) but also look for the chance to use stress against the annual meadow grass. At this time we use our understanding of plant growth strategies to play on the strengths and weaknesses of the different species. The browntop bents and fine fescues have developed a far greater ability to withstand an element of stress than the annual meadow-grass. None are true stress-tolerators, so don’t apply too much stress for too long or the favoured species might also suffer. Use stress in a short-term and
controlled fashion to weaken the annual meadow grass without damaging the bents and fescues, and then take advantage of the situation by overseeding. We do have different forms of stress to play with. Constraining water and nutrient availability (and promoting soil acidity) can all be used to exert a positive selection pressure onto the sward. Be very careful though because extreme stress can directly damage the desired species and it can also encourage
disturbing disease and pest attacks. The safest method in the UK is to restrict water availability for a short time at the end of the summer. The finer grasses are naturally strong in this area and will be able to cope. This can be used on the run up to overseeding and then quickly eased afterwards to aid establishment. Restricting fertiliser inputs can also help weaken annual meadow grass but should not be used at the expense of recovery. After stress we need to take advantage of the situation quickly. We can use gentle acidification stress with the use of ammonium sulphate based fertilisers. Just take the annual meadow grass out of its comfort zone while keeping the finer grasses within theirs. Manage environmental pressure to select the desired species. Interestingly, at this stage, we do not want to use products that improve the stress tolerance of the annual meadow grass. A constant reliance on phosphate fertilisers should be avoided for this reason. We must also ensure that the soil doesn’t become water repellent by being dried out too much.
In this phase we hasten the development of the finer grasses by taking opportunities to push the annual
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