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

Top-dressing material: Consider what might be best for your own situation, rather than a typical situation.

A slightly higher percentage of silt, clay and very fine sand might be considered because if we are relying on minimal irrigation the retention of water within a soil profile can be increased by having a higher percentage of fines than might typically be applied on more highly maintained greens. With an increase in available water content this will aid sward development for longer periods of time during drier conditions. The top-dressing will still need to be significantly sandy as we do not want conditions which create waterlogged conditions and drain poorly.

If top-dressing is to be applied at the same time as the grass seed, then the following guide rates might be considered:
• April: selected areas of 370m2 at 1.5kg/m2 = 555kg.
• May: 100m2 at 0.5kg/m2 = 50kg.
• June: 100m2 at 0.5kg/m2 = 50kg.
• September: selected areas of 420m2 at 2kg/m2 = 840kg.
• September: remainder of green of 1055m2 at 1kg/m2 = 1,055kg.

The total top-dressing requirement is therefore 2,550kg, which might cost about £400 as a single delivery of 25kg bags of 70/30 or similar sandy top-dressing.

Allocated times for applying the top-dressing might be as follows:
• April: 4-hours.
• May: 1-hour.
• June: 1-hour.
• September: 16 hours.

Irrigation: This will be used on a minimal basis, and primarily at times to aid seed germination and initial establishment and also to help prevent any fertiliser scorch of the sward and to ensure optimum use of a turf tonic. The green will be allowed to dry out and where necessary shallow rooted annual grasses will die off, although recolonisation will occur fairly rapidly once rainfall becomes consistent following a prolonged dry period. Reduced artificial watering will also reduce the volume of leaf to remove for cutting.

Likely applications will therefore be limited, so an estimate of just 20 occasions during the playing season and assuming static sprinklers are used attached to hoses, an estimate of 2 hours of watering to include setting out, moving and putting away equipment is allocated per occasion. This would result in 738m2 being watered each hour so a green would ideally be watered on a day when play is scheduled for no earlier than a noon start, to allow the surface to dry.

The volume of water being applied will be unlikely to enable water to penetrate to a good depth (if this is at a rate of say 30 litres per minute or 1.8m3 per hour), being primarily dependent on water pressure, size of water pipe and connecting hose, this would equal 2.44 litres for each m2, totalling 72m3 over the year), so this activity really needs to be considered as a heavy syringing and shallow watering, whilst deeper watering is ideally provided by heavy rainfall. If greater amounts of water were applied during the same time, then the material cost of the water would subsequently increase.