2020 Lawn thread

[ChocolateFrog]

Made a start levelling the bits of my lawn that have sunk, picked a right day for it.



Homemade levelling tool will be coming out later, followed swiftly by a trip to the hardware store no doubt.

[ChocolateFrog]

It works.

Kind of.

[ChocolateFrog]

And done.





1.75 ton of top soil
1kg of lawn starter fertiliser
2kg of shade tolerant grass seed.

[dhutch]

Happy days, looking good. Covering it in polythene? Or just watering plenty?

[dhutch]

monkfish1 said:

Yes. Borrowed one from a neighbour. Does what it says on the tin.

Cheers.

[dhutch]

El Joffo said:

One core sample (can you tell I'm not busy today?)



Doesn't really look like a layer of thatch so much as just some dead grass mixed in with green stuff to me.

Humm. I'm not an expert, but I've seen worse. Maybe scarify and overseed in Autumn? Anyone else?

[ChocolateFrog]

dhutch said:

Happy days, looking good. Covering it in polythene? Or just watering plenty?

Lots of watering.

That sprinkler covers the whole garden from 2 positions.

Figured the warmer ground temps and more light with plenty of watering would be better than waiting until next month and it potentially not getting established before the growing seasons finishes.

[Owensy1405]

My front lawn, fed twice a year with Westland all in one, aerated once a year, and cut twice a week (if I get time) or at least once with an plug-in electric roller mower and watered regularly.

Get quite damp in parts and dry in others but looks pretty good I think.

Edited by Owensy1405 on Friday 7th August 22:58

[AJB88]

Very nice! only a dream for me to have something like that.

[El Joffo]

dhutch said:

Humm. I'm not an expert, but I've seen worse. Maybe scarify and overseed in Autumn? Anyone else?

Thanks Daniel. Seems like the roots have got nice and deep so I think you're right and just needs to be better prepared in autumn instead of just leaving it like last year - and I left it too long for the first cut in spring.

[dhutch]

El Joffo said:

dhutch said:

Humm. I'm not an expert, but I've seen worse. Maybe scarify and overseed in Autumn? Anyone else?

Thanks Daniel. Seems like the roots have got nice and deep so I think you're right and just needs to be better prepared in autumn instead of just leaving it like last year - and I left it too long for the first cut in spring.

I am no expert, but twice now I've tried to overseed in spring, as early as it's warm enough, and failed. Either put down seed and didn't get any germination, or in the case of this spring, a heavy scarify and then just didn't rain again for weeks, fortunately didn't put the see down at all so didn't waste it but did get a lot of patches and crab grass. Doh.

So I'm going to stick to autumn overseeding I think, both autumns I've done patches, which have all come out well. So this autumn, big scarify again, overseed, top dress with this huge mound of top soil I need to seave!

Daniel

[johnpsanderson]

Having looked in envy at others lawns on here, would welcome thoughts on our own! It’s been uncared for since we moved in 7 years ago, but I’m starting to think of working to improve it.

Here’s the current state.


For context: The underlying soil is very sandy. My village is surrounded by sand works, current and the pits from old ones that have been worked out. When we dug out for extension foundations a few years back the builder said we could have cut out the builders merchants and just dug what we needed for the build straight out of the ground, a foot down and it’s like a golden, freshly filled, kids sandpit!

To compound this I’m in North East Essex so the annual rainfall is very low and we often have long dry periods in the summer.

Thoughts on how to approach what feels like a perpetual uphill battle welcomed!

[ChocolateFrog]

Will be interested to see what the experts say.

I'm guessing the answer and results will depend on how much time and money you're prepared to invest.

A fertiliser designed for sandy soil and some watering would probably be an easy win.

Looks like it has potential to be a really nice lawn.

[morfmedia]

johnpsanderson said:

For context: The underlying soil is very sandy. My village is surrounded by sand works, current and the pits from old ones that have been worked out. When we dug out for extension foundations a few years back the builder said we could have cut out the builders merchants and just dug what we needed for the build straight out of the ground, a foot down and it’s like a golden, freshly filled, kids sandpit!

To compound this I’m in North East Essex so the annual rainfall is very low and we often have long dry periods in the summer.

Again no expert here but plenty of water, some LawnSmith fertiliser and perhaps use a wetting agent if you get a lot of dry spells and it should head in the right direction. Once autumn comes with some wetter weather, get some more grass seed down if required.

Some compost / lawn dressing from Fields Compost would probably help out too for more nutrients and better moisture retention?

Is anyone else thinking of getting some overseeding done this week down South as it looks like we might have a decent combination of daily rains and high (soil) temperature to get the seed germinating. About 1/5 of my grass is going dormant due to the extreme heat and too big to practically water it. Otherwise will wait till Autumn and cooler temperatures.

[dhutch]

johnpsanderson said:

Here’s the current state.

The underlying soil is very sandy!

I am not an expert, but I guess your options include.

- Dig it out a foot and put in 60 tons of half decent soil, topped off with nice top soil, turf or reseed.
- Spread 2" of nice top soil over the top and re-seed with suitable seed.
- Tickle in half an inch of topsoil and overseed it.

Not quite as extreme maybe but we are on a sandstone ridge, often a full 6" soil on top, sometimes more, but in places only 3-4" soil to bedrock!

I've been improving it for the last 24 months having moved in, have bought some Lawnsmiths 'StayGreen' which is their draught tollerance for sandy soils seed, and got 5-6tons topsoil from elsewhere in the garden and plan to do good 1" topdressing and overseed with that come autumn having had such a dry spring I held off the job in April.

Be interested what others say.

Daniel

[johnpsanderson]

dhutch said:

your options include.

- Dig it out a foot and put in 60 tons of half decent soil, topped off with nice top soil, turf or reseed.
- Spread 2" of nice top soil over the top and re-seed with suitable seed.
- Tickle in half an inch of topsoil and overseed it.

Thanks chaps, yes I did expect that the right way to do it is to dig out the whole garden by a significant amount, then put in decent soil, but obviously that won’t be cheap!

To be fair, I don’t water at all at the moment, so will probably start with that for a few months - see what improvement I get - then go from there.

[ChocolateFrog]

Was hoping we'd see some of those promised thunderstorms in Yorkshire but so far nothing, well it did rain for about 30 seconds this morning but otherwise bone dry.

I'm watering for an hour in the morning and the same in the evening to get my seeds germinated.

Was 34 degrees today in the garden, which I imagine is far from ideal.

[LocoBlade]

dhutch said:

Happy days, looking good. Covering it in polythene? Or just watering plenty?

Just a note about using polythene at the moment with the hot weather, don't! I had a ~20cm square bare patch in my lawn (newly sown last autumn) I think from where one of the cats was repeatedly weeing so I thought I'd use the polythene trick I've successfully used before to protect the seed I'd put down and to cover a 2m x 1m area to discourage the cat for a couple of weeks geting it out of the habit of using that area, plus thicken up the area in general as existing grass usually grows really well under the poly.

I checked it after a couple of days and all looked fine but came home another couple of days later last week after a particularly hot day to find all the grass scorched and brown, so what was a 20cm dead patch is now a 2m x 1m dead looking patch. Sods law as we're about to put our house on the market to sell so I'm frantically watering it to try and get some colour back before we have photos taken and viewings

Edited by LocoBlade on Wednesday 12th August 07:24

[ScotHill]

Our grass was looking pretty green, if a bit long, but now I've cut it there are lots of patches of what looks like dead grass, dry and yellowy brown. I'm assuming the tips of the grass were green but the bits nearer the soil were dry, so I basically just cut all the green tips off.

Is this because I'm not treating it properly, or did I just let it grow too long? Up in Glasgow so while we've had some dry spells it's never been roasting hot this year.

Edited by ScotHill on Wednesday 12th August 08:27

[morfmedia]

Locoblade either green spray paint, photoshop, chuck some grass seed down ASAP and or returf should only cost £20 or so of materials.


ScotHill: Only ever chop of 1/3 of the grass length max at one time seems to be a "golden rule" as its mainly water. As you say the shorter it is the more green / yellow you will see.

Hopefully you get some more rain as down South it's been so dry for so long everything is looking more brown (thunderstorms due today for us thankfully).