Bowling Green FAQ 10: The edge of the green dries out quickly. What can we do to help it?

The green edge is more exposed to the elements and is also the area where players concentrate the most. Compaction, or actually the consequences of it, will most likely be a significant factor, so careful additional aeration around the edge, creating a 1-m strip or so, with the use of a hand fork will be beneficial.

Depending on the aeration equipment used you may find that the tines do not reach very close to the edge, so finishing off with a hand fork (a border fork is ideal) in this area, which might be 150mm – 300mm wide, each time the machine is used would be recommended. The disadvantage of this is that it is clearly going to take a lot longer to aerate the green on each occasion, although the benefit is that you will ensure the entire green has been aerated without missing a small but essential percentage of it.

The aim of the aeration will be to encourage a much deeper rooting of the grasses around the edge, allowing them to explore more volume of the rootzone in search of more available water to extract, reducing the speed at which the edges dry out.

The insertion of metal tines will force apart the soil, creating localised compaction at the tine sides and base, but also allowing roots to grow into the newly created air spaces. To reduce overall compaction a reduction in soil density will need to occur. Disturbing the soil by shattering and raising it up, which is ideal for use on a winter games pitch, will be unacceptable on the fineness needed for a bowling green surface during the playing season. Some form of lifting might be considered as part of the end of season renovation once outdoor play has finished.

Hollow-tining the ends at renovation time will remove compacted soil cores, thereby reducing soil density and will start to relieve some of the compaction. Top-dressing applied to the green, which is infilled into the empty tine holes, will be at a much-reduced density than the core that has been extracted.

Besides some focused aeration and decompaction work, having a strip of grass at the edge of the green which is slightly longer than the main body of the green can also help encourage deeper rooting, reduce the edge drying out and a loss of stability (i.e. crumbling) at the edge. The main time for allowing a slightly longer grass would be when root activity is high and this is typically during late summer to early autumn and springtime, so mostly outside of the playing season. Leaving a strip of one or two mower widths (0.5m-1.0m) around the edge at a height of 8 – 12mm might be considered and as this will not be when main competitions or tournaments are taking place this should not be a major inconvenience, if at all, to players.