Bowling Green Maintenance: 38e. Minimal Resources and Low Club Membership

Aeration This is a primary activity and with air being free, it is an activity which is commonly not carried out as much as it should be.

Realistically we will be just be using solid tines and slit tines (taking about 2 hours for each activity), with the latter varying between full depth (ideally at least 100mm to 150mm depth) and shallow (about 38mm depth as a general guide) for just the summer months, where time allocations are possible, but in many cases this won’t be possible. Hollow-tine aeration is ideally where thatch is a problem, but we need to balance the considerable time and cost (with additional top-dressing and seed) against what we require as a fit-for-purpose green.

During the summer the use of a spiked roller is ideal in keeping the surface open with micropores to aid air exchange from the soil with the atmospheric air and also to ensure that any rain which does fall has a good chance of making its way through a surface layer and into the rootzone. An estimated time for this is 1½ hours.