2015 Lawn thread

[RichB]

what's verticutting?

[jagnet]

Cactussed said:

Can I just chuck some topsoil over it and then seed and water? Will the new grass grow into the existing stuff underneath? Again, want to avoid lifting turf on large areas...

Whilst not technically ideal, ihat'll work fine. It's not the ideal approach, and you may well find those areas settle a little lower over time, but the new grasses won't have any trouble growing through the old turf at that depth. I'd also be inclined to heavily hollow tine aerate those areas before adding the topsoil to help the soil layers blend better.

[jagnet]

RichB said:

what's verticutting?

Cutting vertically rather than horizontally to remove side growth and also lift it so that it can be cut by a normal mower, and allow more light down into the sward to encourage thickening of the finer grasses.

There are dedicated verticutting tines but scarifying ones will do fine in the absence of one. A verticutting reel has tines that tend to be more closely packed and sharper than that used for scarifying.

The idea is not to cut down into the soil surface to remove thatch, but to keep just above it removing some of the live side growth.

As coarser grasses often grow laterally, as seen when you rake the lawn, with long grass shoots then standing upright where they'd been able to grow out horizontally below the cutting height, verticutting really thins them out.

Edit:

Having already mown at my normal (fairly low) height, this was after running the scarifier over the lawn a couple of times on a high setting to verticut:


Despite light raking on occasions, there's plenty of longer shoots now standing upright, and much growth already removed:


Then another cut to follow so that I could top dress. A little lower this time but most of the growth being cut was the stuff that had been lifted earlier:


Before topdressing - far less taken out of the lawn compared to deep scarifying in autumn:


The thinner areas in the foreground are where most of the coarser grasses had taken hold.

Edited by jagnet on Wednesday 1st July 19:52

[bazza white]

Any one know what this is. We have sprigs coming through the lawn, drive and a big bush of it.

[Willeh85]

bazza white said:

Any one know what this is. We have sprigs coming through the lawn, drive and a big bush of it.

I found something similar or that growing in my overgrown flowerbed recently and would also be interested to know what it is.

There are some very nice gardens being shown off here, I'm hoping next year that mine as a whole and not just the lawn will be of a better standard

[captainzep]

It's not the best or neatest, but seems fairly healthy and stands up well to footie/cricket/badminton with the kids. Lawn extends to the ash tree in the middle distance and back around the house which thankfully just about justifies a ride-on.

[r44flyer]

bazza white said:

Any one know what this is. We have sprigs coming through the lawn, drive and a big bush of it.

It's horsetail. Sadly for you it's one of the most invasive and difficult to kill weeds there are. It's right up there with japanese knotweed as far as I'm concerned, but has little potential to do any real damage to buildings etc.

We have it in our garden and after a constant battle with it it's now under control. Where possible I spray with Kurtail which while expensive it works very well. Not grass safe though, nothing that touches horsetail is so constant mowing and smothering with well kept grass is your only hope of beating it into submission. We have no open beds, only a couple of small areas with shrubs through permeable sheeting and chippings on top, and raised beds inside patio area with sterilised soil and kitchen waste compost for veg. All grass clippings are binned, one sprig of horsetail will grow into a mass in a new location in no time.

Good luck and try not to go mad.

[bazza white]

Willeh85 said:

I found something similar or that growing in my overgrown flowerbed recently and would also be interested to know what it is.

Found put at last appears to be horse weed. Bit of a st to get rid of by the looks :-(

[Willeh85]

bazza white said:

Found put at last appears to be horse weed. Bit of a st to get rid of by the looks :-(

I thought it was some sort of weed. When I pulled some of it out of the ground some seeds seemed to go flying off it as the stems are quite springy.

I don't think it will be much of a problem though as now I'm actually living in my property(hurray rennovation thread and photos to follow later this month) I'll be much more proactive and keeping on top of it all and pulling any unwanteds out as soon as they appear.

On the topic of weeds still, I've been surprised at just how far down the route system goes for your bog standard well established garden weed. I dug one out of the bed that had grown quite large, and the main root grows straight down to about a foot!

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

Horsetail starts in mid-spring by sending up strange, brown spikes. These are the reproductive structures (not sure if you can call them 'flowers'). So it's a good idea to snap them off as soon as you see them. The foliage comes later in spring, and dies back for the winter.

The trouble with horsetail is that it has a tough, waxy skin that resists penetration by most weedkillers. It also grows a long way underground - up to 2 metres, so I've read.

In evolutionary terms, it's an ancient plant - forms of it were in existence well back into the dinosaur era.

[hacksaw]

Almost over night, with the current wet and warm conditions, I seem to have grown a massive patch of clover!!! Now treated with verdone law weedkiller, just hoping I'm not left with a bald patch, I've only just managed to fill in all the bald patches from all the moss I removed. Never ending battle this nice lawn game.

[jagnet]

hacksaw said:

Never ending battle this nice lawn game.

Isn't it just

Interestingly, until the middle of the last century, having clover amongst your grasses was a sign of a nice lawn and clover seeds would often be included in mixed grass seed packets.

Clover does have many benefits and I've recently seeded some white clover in a lawn, which will no doubt surprise the gardeners when it germinates Instructions not to use any selective weed killers on the clover have been left.

As with all things, what goes around comes around and you can now buy Eco Lawn seed containing a mix of grass and micro clover seeds.

Now to wait and see if the medieval flowery mead lawn comes back into fashion under the 'eco' banner. Given that adding clover is a fairly hard sell, suggesting that irisis, violets, wild strawberries, borage, poppies etc might be nice in the lawn is going to be very tricky

[Philemon]

IIRC, clover binds nitrogen to the soil, which, along with lightning, are one of the only "natural", i.e. non-fertiliser method to do so. Until the Häber-Bosch process was discovered, clover was one of the most efficient ways of doing so.

[jagnet]

the clover, with a little help from bacteria, 'fixes' nitrogen from the air in small root nodules as it grows, releasing it into the soil when it dies. When mown some of the root dies back also releasing nitrogen.

The clover also doesn't suffer from burning from dog urine as grass does, and whilst not immune from drought does stay greener for longer in dry conditions than grass.

For a self fertilising, lower maintenance lawn that has to stand up to wear and tear from pet dogs and their urine spotting, and that ordinarily struggles in dry conditions due to fast draining soil, a clover infused lawn has a lot going for it.

Well that was certainly my thinking behind sowing clover in this particular lawn. We'll see how it goes. It'll still need regular overseeding to replace grass lost to urine burning, but hopefully the clover will at least lessen the visual impact in the meantime and help prevent other weeds taking advantage and establishing in those patches.

For large areas of lawn, clover can save a lot of time and money by reducing the need for fertiliser, with the added bonus that white clover seeds are very inexpensive and go a long way when mixed with grass seed.

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

I think I might have patches of red thread. Areas of previously healthy grass have gone brown quite quickly, perhaps with a slight reddish tinge when viewed from a distance - although looking closely I can't actually spot any of the characteristic red threads. We don't have a dog.

Are the gelatinous red threads crucial for a diagnosis, or should I just assume red thread anyway?

The lawn was last fed with a granular feed at the beginning of June. My plan was to feed again later this month. Should I bring that forward and do it now, or is it too soon? For now, I have watered the patches with a general purpose balanced feed (Miracle Grow) in a watering can.

The lawn has all but stopped growing - I normally mow twice a week, but it's now been a week since I've mowed and whilst it could do with a cut it isn't desperate. I'm planning to raise the mower a notch when I mow today. Perhaps I should be watering a bit more, in the mornings.

Are any of the fungicidal products any good against red thread? They seem to get very mixed reviews on Amazon.

[jagnet]

I suspect that it probably isn't and that it's just down to the heat and dry conditions. I wouldn't feed it now as it's not really growing, but wait until some decent rain is due. I'd give those areas a quick spiking and water well and see if they recover.

I don't know what it's like in your part of Surrey, but here even forecasted heavy rain has resulted in little more than a couple of drops and that's it. Not even enough to wet the patio. Most lawns here are developing brown patches and some are already looking like it's 1976 again. Even Charterhouse's formal lawns are struggling. The Met Office are predicting heavy rain on Tuesday, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Having said that, if you feel that you have had prolonged periods of leaf wetness recently then it is possible that it could be red thread.

In conclusion: might be, might not be

Edited by jagnet on Saturday 4th July 09:08

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

Good idea - I'll get the fork out, and perhaps go over the whole lawn with the spikey roller thingy.

To be honest we really haven't had much rain or heavy dew, so you may well be right that it's just drought affecting locally compacted areas.

We did have a short burst of heavy rain last night and the water butts have collected about 10" of water, but it probably wasn't enough to water the garden very deeply. That's about the only rain we've had for a fortnight. Perhaps I should have had the sprinklers out sooner.

[daytona365]

How often is it necessary to mow relatively new healthy lawn, at this growing time of year ? Seems ours needs doing weekly.

[jagnet]

Dr Mike Oxgreen said:

We did have a short burst of heavy rain last night and the water butts have collected about 10" of water, but it probably wasn't enough to water the garden very deeply. That's about the only rain we've had for a fortnight. Perhaps I should have had the sprinklers out sooner.

We should have had some rain like that last night, and I even got the spiky roller out in anticipation so that some of it could get right down into the rootzone straight away, but it passed us by I love living in the UK's desert region

daytona365 said:

How often is it necessary to mow relatively new healthy lawn, at this growing time of year ? Seems ours needs doing weekly.

Weekly on a medium height cut would be quite normal unless a lack of rain is making your lawn go into survival mode. The shorter your lawn the more often it'll need cutting. The golden rule is 'never remove more than a third of the leaf length in one cut'. If you want to cut less often then you'll need to cut it higher.

[R8VXF]

I am currently having to cut the lawn every 2 days. Lawn is still getting watered every morning and with this weather the grass is growing so quickly. Still got a few bare patches i need to sort out but it feels really rewarding seeing it grow from seed.