Bowling Green Report

THE BOWLING GREEN IS COMING ON IN LEAPS AND BOUNDS, HOWEVER, THIS WAS NOT THE CASE IN SEPTEMBER.

We were abandoned by our precious green’s contractor in July, but, with it not being a growing season we where unable to do anything about it.

At the end of August we decided to approach the Western Province grounds committee and the following week we met with Terry Hepworth, who offered some very sound advice on how to proceed, we also contacted Gavern Williams, who runs the Milnerton bowls club greens.

Gavern has worked with us for the past three months in which time we have removed all the weeds, which left us with very little grass, about 25% remained.

New grass was ordered in September and during that time, Gavern and his crew planted 2400 new plugs of grass. A vigorous fertilizing programme was undertaken in conjunction with a very strict watering programme.

IN October Gavern started the top, dressing with a mixture of Silica sand and an organic sand and during November we started cutting so as to encourage the grass to grow sideways rather than up.

This has not all been plain sailing, as the Northern side of the green falls within the shadow of the town houses and the Bayview grass planted is not a good grass to grow in shade. We have had to over-seed with Bent grass, which tends to grow better in shade area than Bayview grass.

This area will take a lot more time and care to establish itself but we are hoping to have 3 lanes open for play by the middle of January.

Watch this space for further developments...

Report courtesy of Ross Hopton.