2021 Lawn thread

[epsilonvaz]

I'm just planning my fertilising schedule. I put lawnsmith summer fert down at the beginning of the month. That means I can put more fert down 3 months later at the beginning of August. Should I put another summer fert down then, or wait a bit and put autumn down?

[r44flyer]

I'd put summer down. Autumn I leave until the very end of the growing season, which the grass then uses to improve root growth to survive the winter without wasting too much energy on leaf growth. This helps give it a kick when it does start growing again in the spring.

[Max5476]

Been in our house 18 months now, but the bottom half of the lawn never really does anything (It was green, but never appeared to grow in between mowing), so scarified, aerated, and overseeded this weekend. Let's see how it gets on .

[garylythgoe]

Just had a new patio laid, and he asked if I wanted the lawn levelling with top soil while he was there. I obliged as he said the grass was a lot lower around the new patio (old crap patio was a lot smaller).

So I’m now left with a top soiled area, and I want some grass rapidly! I’m planning to turf it later this week, unless anyone thinks differently or has any other suggestions?

I’m a bit of a garden newbie but I’m learning quick and I’m keen.

Here’s a pic of the patio and top soiled area immediately after the patio was finished on Saturday.



Any advice appreciated, I’d like some grass rapidly!

[dhutch]

Matt Cup said:

Not a huge garden or as impressive as some of the others on here but I’m looking forward to making it our own and am glad we paid for real grass and didn’t opt for Astroturf.

Looks bang on! #realgrassrules

[Leftfootwonder]

Matt Cup said:

After living in a house with a quite frankly terrible garden (moss, weeds uneven surfaces etc etc oh and it pointing in the wrong direction) I can finally contribute to a lawn thread.

Here is what we will be moving into next week when we finally get the keys

3 weeks ago



Today, coming along nicely thanks to all of the miserable weather we have had this month.



Not a huge garden or as impressive as some of the others on here but I’m looking forward to making it our own and am glad we paid for real grass and didn’t opt for Astroturf.

Congrats! Nothing better than a blank canvas. We moved to our 30 year old house about a year ago and I am still sorting out ste the previous owner did!

[LaserTam]

garylythgoe said:

Just had a new patio laid, and he asked if I wanted the lawn levelling with top soil while he was there. I obliged as he said the grass was a lot lower around the new patio (old crap patio was a lot smaller).

So I’m now left with a top soiled area, and I want some grass rapidly! I’m planning to turf it later this week, unless anyone thinks differently or has any other suggestions?

I’m a bit of a garden newbie but I’m learning quick and I’m keen.

Here’s a pic of the patio and top soiled area immediately after the patio was finished on Saturday.



Any advice appreciated, I’d like some grass rapidly!

I'm no expert, but you may need to take some of the top soil off if you want to lay turf, otherwise the lawn will be higher than the patio. It's not easy to be certain from that picture. May be worth raking the good loose top soil off then leveling the sub soil below before putting the top soil back on and leveling again. You tube for help on laying turf, if you haven't done it before.

Or get some grass seed and spread it on the top soil, rake it in and keep it watered. Not quite so instant but could be less work.

[dhutch]

Modern turf is thin af, so you wont have to take much off!!

Personally, unless there was a specific reason to need it done for, say, the bh weekend, then I would seed it.

At this time of year, if you bung down a decent dollop of good seed (like 50-60g/sqm) and get a bit of polythene over it (£6 4x4m disposable dec sheet) then you will have germination within a week, something you want walk on in 2-3 weeks, and as established a lawn as you will get with turf be summer.


Daniel

[Chicken Chaser]

Seed it. It'll start coming through quickly in this weather, it's like Autumn. Give it a month and you'll be cutting it.

[Chucklehead]

i've got a 60m2 section of lawn that has gradually succumbed to creeping buttercup. I fertilised and scarified a few weeks back, but have not yet got round to overseeding because of the weather and never got round to dealing with the weeds before that because nothing was growing.

I'm going to scarify again but still can't deal with the weeds because i'll be overseeding at the same time. I'll dig out the worst offenders, but can i add lime at the same time as overseeding? I appreciate it won't kill the buttercup, but hopefully help in making it a bit more inhospitable.

[NeilMick]

Pleased with my lawn this year, need to get an electric scarifier though, kills me doing it by hand so could probably be better.

[randlemarcus]

Thoroughly scarified. Poor lawn looks like the tail end of a drought on August.

[simonrockman]

I know that popping up on a thread which is years old and asking a question which has been done to death is bad form, but I'm going to do it anyway..

What is the consensus of opinion on robot mowers? I had an early robot vacuum cleaner and it was rubbish, so I threw it away. Has the technology moved on? My law is 6m x 20m. Would I need to pick up fallen apples or would the mower just nudge them along?
The gardener is coming once a fortnight and I think it will probably need cutting more often than that.

[ChocolateFrog]

simonrockman said:

I know that popping up on a thread which is years old and asking a question which has been done to death is bad form, but I'm going to do it anyway..

What is the consensus of opinion on robot mowers? I had an early robot vacuum cleaner and it was rubbish, so I threw it away. Has the technology moved on? My law is 6m x 20m. Would I need to pick up fallen apples or would the mower just nudge them along?
The gardener is coming once a fortnight and I think it will probably need cutting more often than that.

Pretty sure there's a dedicated thread for robo mowers.

Lots of PHers seem happy with theirs.

[garylythgoe]

Update: I went ahead and had a go at turfing the newly top soiled section from a few posts ago.

It was a lot of effort digging out the old clay soil to properly level it. I did it in the baking sun yesterday!

Essentially I had to shuffle a lot of the soil about as it compacted a lot. I also dug out a lot of the clay and laid fresh top soil down.

I fertilised the soil with growmore the night before.

Here’s the finished result from yesterday. I’ll post more pics up in a week or two. But as a newbie, I’m over the moon with the result!

[ChocolateFrog]

It's going to be dry and warm over the next week so plenty of water required.

[Audis5b9]

Really proud of our lawn

Do we start with napalm , and try again?

[Johnnytheboy]

It's fertile and growing, a standard 4-in-1 would make a heap of difference to that.

[illmonkey]

After some advice. This is my grass, it seems ok but not great. No weeds, but looks a bit bare. I was going to just get some feed, rather than one of the 3in1 or 4in1 stuff, as there is little point killing weeds that don't exist.

There is also the annoyance of the grass sloping, it's flat for 1/2 of it, but raises almost 300mm to one corner. I'm very tempted to rip i tall up and level it. But I imagine that's a digger and a man (I had one in for my patio, £660 for a day with 2 blokes). Then we'd need to re-turf. So probably £1k all in.

Side note, I need to order some topsoil for a raised 10m x 60cm bed with wild flowers, there is also a bit we plan to put some box hedging in. I will need a ton. Is a Blended Loam from a local builders/garden centre sufficient?

[Danns]

Finally getting somewhere near a presentable looking lawn.

Was the first cut where I didn’t have to dodge around the seeded area on the centre.

I’m determined to get perfectly straight stripes on the next cut.