MULTI-SPORTS
Our verti-drain recently broke down again. Last
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time, we had it welded up. It’s the oldest thing you’ll ever see, but now there’s no scope to get another one, so it’s one thing we don’t have now
“Working with the bowling green, and why I got hooked on it, is that anything you do makes a difference. It might be negative, it might be positive, or something as simple as brushing or dragmatting before a cut makes,” Dan explains. “We used to topdress at the end of the season like everyone else. But what I found was I’d put all the material down - soil and seed - and then, by the time the start of the season comes around, we’ve got worms, moss and fusarium - so we’re raking out moss or repairing bits, and we’ve got no material. So what I started doing was scarifying it all out at the end of the season, putting down a bit of fertiliser, seeding some places if it needed it and I started using the topdressing at the start of the season.” “So, when all that moss, fusarium and worm damage is there, I’ll scarify it all out again and then topdress it. Because we’ve got the water system it’s not like we’re at the mercy of the weather, I know it can be cold or warm, but at the start of the season, it would be like repairing it again. I’ve been
What I did was hollow core and, instead of clearing up all the cores, I got the seeder, put a dragmat on the back of it and went over the cores and crushed them all, so it’s like free topdressing
” 90 PC April/May 2020
doing it that way for four or five years, and it’s since then that we’ve had the quarters and semi-finals and a lot of them say it’s one of the best greens in the county. The final is always in the same place, so we will never get the final, so the semi-final is the best we can get; it’s definitely worked out well.” “Our budget is the main issue really because our hands are tied. Our verti-drain recently broke down again. Last time, we had it welded up. It’s the oldest thing you’ll ever see, but now there’s no scope to get another one, so it’s one thing we don’t have now. I don’t know how many other places do it, but we slit every week, so the soil is pretty good and it drains pretty well. Ideally, we want to verti-drain, but there’s not a lot I can do about it.” “We made a brush for the wormcasts on the football pitches, and we started making a little push dimple seeder as well to get a better strike rate with the seed on the green and cricket squares. I just enjoy things like that. I think that’s the sort of thing you enjoy when you don’t have much to work with, so
you can still produce something really good.”
“Because of the budget and machinery we have, I have to think outside the box. I love it. We’ve got a GreenTek Double-Quick, so it has the slits on the bottom and, on the top, it has a hollow coring reel. With the kids pitches and topdressing, we normally use one hundred tonnes of soil maximum, but if someone gave me three or four hundred I’d use all of it!”
“What I did was hollow core and, instead of clearing up all the cores, I got the seeder, put a dragmat on the back of it and went over the cores and crushed them all, so it’s like free topdressing. That’s worked well, but I don’t want to do it this year. I’m not sure if this happens or not, but I imagine holes forming if I do it too often, so I’m going to leave it this season. I’ve done it for the past two or three, and that seems to work well, and it’s good for aeration and soil exchange.” Dan’s maintenance approach has included building a rapport with the bowls,
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