2015 Lawn thread

[jagnet]

jagnet said:

Whilst it's not helped progress extending the lawn, the temporary charcoal pit has paid dividends this weekend with time to get a couple of good burns done, although I did have to increase the size of the pit for the second one. There's now enough ground up charcoal for all of next year's composting and half a dozen bags of rapidly activating biochar which should be ready in a week or so:

[Turbodiesel1976]

I've been following my careful regime of doing absolutely nothing to my lawn except cutting it not too low

Front:





Back:

[wjwren]

Turbodiesel1976 said:

I've been following my careful regime of doing absolutely nothing to my lawn except cutting it not too low

Front:





Back:

Looks great

[Zoon]

After a bit of advice, my lawn is OK with plenty of dark green grass. But in patches below the surface there are bits of bright yellow almost straw coloured grass.
Any ideas what I need to do?
Is it a scarifier job?

[zed4]

My little effort. I've been treating it this summer.

[Turbodiesel1976]

wjwren said:

Looks great

Cheers

Proof that you needn't stress and spend hours and hours on your lawn poking it with spikes and all the rest. If theres a little moss or thatch or a few weeds so what, just let the grass grow and cut it just under the mower's maximum height with good sharp blades (if you're lazy and/or just don't have time, like me)

[Richyboy]

Your lawns look excellent.

I raked mine like a mad man, fed it with seed and perhaps cut it too short because the constant rain doesn't give many opportunities to cut. Doesn't look much different from the last time I posted:

[markiii]

Zoon said:

After a bit of advice, my lawn is OK with plenty of dark green grass. But in patches below the surface there are bits of bright yellow almost straw coloured grass.
Any ideas what I need to do?
Is it a scarifier job?

me too, be intrigued to see the answer

[wjwren]

My neighbour spends on average from 10am to 3pm everyday attending to his lawn! He forks it everyday without fail. The lawn is pretty small and looks no better than mine which never gets forked and gets cut once a week on a high setting. It's ridiculous!

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

jagnet said:

jagnet said:

Whilst it's not helped progress extending the lawn, the temporary charcoal pit has paid dividends this weekend with time to get a couple of good burns done, although I did have to increase the size of the pit for the second one. There's now enough ground up charcoal for all of next year's composting and half a dozen bags of rapidly activating biochar which should be ready in a week or so:

So that's what it's for - I was afraid to ask!

I'm intrigued - and must admit that this is a gap in my composting knowledge. What does charcoal do to a compost heap/bin? Does it affect the pH of the final product? My understanding is that charcoal ash is a good fertiliser but is quite alkaline - probably not what we want in our area of the world. That said, I still throw barbecue ash onto plants that I think will benefit despite the alkalinity. But the same is not necessarily true of charcoal itself.

So what do you do? I guess you set a load of wood burning and then cover it with soil to smoulder?

[jagnet]

Zoon said:

After a bit of advice, my lawn is OK with plenty of dark green grass. But in patches below the surface there are bits of bright yellow almost straw coloured grass.
Any ideas what I need to do?
Is it a scarifier job?

Difficult to say without seeing a photo. It could be thatch, or it could be a sign that the grass has grown too long and had too much cut off at once. Or one of several other reasons.

zed4 said:

My little effort. I've been treating it this summer.

That's looking lovely

Richyboy said:

Doesn't look much different from the last time I posted:

It definitely looks like a lawn that's had a bit too much cut off in one go. Little and often, and the less often you can the higher you need to keep the cutting height. There's some deep green areas there which could be down to uneven feed application, or uneven seeding. There could be other reasons as well, but without knowing more it's hard to say.

wjwren said:

My neighbour spends on average from 10am to 3pm everyday attending to his lawn! He forks it everyday without fail. The lawn is pretty small and looks no better than mine which never gets forked and gets cut once a week on a high setting. It's ridiculous!

That's more than a little excessive and probably doing more harm than good

[moles]

Seeded mine today, I have enough horticultural fleece to cover the lot but haven't put it down yet. I was going to for keeping the birds off but I have managed to rake it in quite well so most of the seed is covered slightly. Do I use the fleece or not i imagine it will keep the soil moist for longer as the sun is out a lot this week but someone told me not to use it as the humidity under it will do more harm than good and effect germination?????.

[jagnet]

The fleece is generally good to use to speed up germination by keeping the soil warm and moist. The main problem comes from keeping it on too long once the seeds have started germinating; the humidity under the fleece can increase the risk of disease.

If you're around to water during the day it's not quite so useful, but otherwise I would use it if you've got it. Keep an eye on the seedlings and once you start to see green shoots develop I'd remove the fleece.

[Cactussed]

I used hessian for similar reasons, worked a treat.

[jagnet]

Dr Mike Oxgreen said:

So that's what it's for - I was afraid to ask!

I'm intrigued - and must admit that this is a gap in my composting knowledge. What does charcoal do to a compost heap/bin? Does it affect the pH of the final product? My understanding is that charcoal ash is a good fertiliser but is quite alkaline - probably not what we want in our area of the world. That said, I still throw barbecue ash onto plants that I think will benefit despite the alkalinity. But the same is not necessarily true of charcoal itself.

So what do you do? I guess you set a load of wood burning and then cover it with soil to smoulder?

Sorry, missed your post last night whilst I was trying to multi quote

There's multiple benefits to incorporating charcoal into the soil. It's a very very stable form of carbon and will last for hundreds, if not thousands, of years in the ground without degrading. It helps to keep the soil less compacted and more friable. It has a very high surface area to volume ratio, absorbing nutrients and water and then slowly releasing them as the plants require, plus increasing air space. It also has a really positive effect on the soil biology. Because of its high absorption ability, several studies have shown that putting raw charcoal in the soil can actually stall plant growth for the first year or two as it draws in existing nutrients that would otherwise be used by the plants, so 'activating' or 'charging' it beforehand is a necessary step to prevent this.

The easiest way to charge the charcoal is to mix it in with the compost. Nutrients released in the composting process get absorbed, leaching is much reduced (especially nitrogen), and the end product is that much more friable.

It does alter the pH a little thanks to the ash content's higher pH but a little iron and sulphur will bring it down enough for the lawn, plus other amendments such as peat moss etc can be used.

There's a couple of youtube videos with Josiah Hunt that are really worth watching on the subject (I find the channel's owner to be a bit annoying, but you can't have everything )

https://youtu.be/w_2SJ90ugG8 (general biochar chat)
https://youtu.be/1UiW3-IMfME (5 ways to activate biochar)

Interestingly, the use of charcoal to improve productivity by farmers in the 18th and 19th century is mentioned in quite a few contemporary books and accounts. The most famous use of charcoal to improve soil fertility is the Terra Preta soil in the Amazon basin.

As for making the charcoal, burning it in a pit by gradually layering the wood helps to starve the lower layers of oxygen as it gets used by the upper layers. The productivity is much improved versus just building a bonfire and avoids the need to construct retorts or Kon-Tiki kilns etc. Once the top layer is just embers I prefer to cover it with soil overnight or longer so that it cools down a little and gives larger pieces of wood chance to char properly in the meantime. This video pretty much covers the way I did it. Finishing with smaller wood helps to get the top layer to embers and avoid either burning too much charcoal or ending up with too many browns. You can still get some browns, particularly on the ends of the trench but overall these were minimal and it worked very very well. It was also much less smoky than some other methods.

To grind it I just pass it through the garden shredder, although it does need to be damped down a little first with water or the resulting dust cloud gets a bit ridiculous with an impact shredder

[505diff]

Is it too late for weed and feed, I've got autumn lawn food as well, and was wondering if I can get both down in the next few weeks?

[jagnet]

A lot depends on the weed and feed product and where you are in the country.

Having a look at the Evergreen 4 in 1 as an example, it doesn't specifically state how long the fertiliser lasts, however it does say that repeat applications can be done after 6 weeks. That would take you to the end of October before applying the autumn feed, which should still be early enough for much of the country and will be when I apply my autumn feed but the further north you go the less time the grass will have to benefit from it.

Whatever weed and feed product you use, avoid applying the autumn feed too soon afterwards. Also consider applying selective herbicides, moss treatments and fertilisers as separate products. If you don't have a lawn covered in weeds then spot spraying is a better approach.

[jagnet]

An additional thought to what I posted earlier - will your lawn actually need an autumn fertiliser at all if you feed it now?

If you feed the lawn regularly, there's probably a good reserve of P in the soil already. K is highly soluble; on sandy soils it'll leach easily but on clay soils that's less of a problem unless there's poor soil structure. It'll also depend on rainfall (or irrigation) levels. Higher pH levels will also reduce K leaching. Whilst the turf will need some N, too much encourages top growth at just the time the turf should be settling down for winter.

Adding more of any particular nutrient than the turf grass needs for healthy growth won't make the turf any healthier. I'd take a moment to ask whether or not the grass looks as though it's calling out for more nutrients before adding more feed.

[AbbasSTI]

I moved into my new home in June. The front garden was relatively lovely but the back was a bit of a jungle...





Not being a fan of weedkillers/chemicals I dug out and removed as much as possible. Then rotavated, raked, rotavated, raked all weekend and levelled off the best I could and ended up with this:





Lawnsmith should be delivering my EasyGreen Grass Seed and starter fertiliser today which will be topped with some peat moss and we'll see how she goes.

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

AbbasSTI said:

ended up with this:

That's a magnificent job!