2022 Lawn Thread

[Bikesalot]

I removed an old pond that was slap bang in the middle of the garden.
I’ve rebuilt a larger raised pond at the end of the garden.



Filled with various hardcore from previous garden projects, left over soil and finally a tonne of top soil



Sprinkled over 2.5kg of Wilko grass seed and 1.5 weeks later…



One month after seeding and first cut…



Should prob have done the whole lot but it’ll blend in pretty quickly and I didn’t have the time / effort to start that section from scratch.

[Arnold Cunningham]

A bit of a feed on the other stuff too and it'll probably all blend in well enough.

[deckster]

Nice job. Agree that a decent feed and also an overseed with the same stuff you used on the new patch will go a long way to blending things in.

[HRL]

We had a bit of a mole infestation last year but other than flattening the molehills I just cut the grass as usual and it seems to have recovered perfectly.

I’ve still got the grass seed I was going to sow but it would appear that I’ll just hold onto it for now.

Was a hot day yesterday for the ride-on and I may have been suffering minor sun stroke last night.

[Arnold Cunningham]

deckster said:

Nice job. Agree that a decent feed and also an overseed with the same stuff you used on the new patch will go a long way to blending things in.

It would certainly accelerate things - but even without, our lawn had about 1/3rd of it reseeded where the bushes had been left unmanaged for a decade or so - proper job needing diggers to get them out. It took a couple of years to settle, but now you can longer see the line between old & new.

[dudleybloke]

Gave mine it's first cut today at 70mm, just took the tops off the longer bits, will wait till its uniform before I start reducing the blade height.

[roltyid]

dhutch said:

All up, that doesnt half look bad to me in terms of a starting point. Better than a lot of lawns already!

Mower is good, I dont thing the importance of a sharp blade and regular cutting can be over stated. Twice a week in growing season.

Expect is hadnt seen any feed for a while, so a dose of lawn feed, spring and summer slow 3 month release such as the LawnSmiths Natur.

Compaction is also a common issue, wrong time of year for now, but a good hollow tine all over in autumn/earlyspring, or any other aeration. Deep fork aeration at and exit/entry points? Check for thatch and scarifiy if needed. If its a bit thin, this is also the time to overseed.

I think for most lawns, some occasional board leaf weeds are ok, certainly Clover can almost be a benefit. However if they bother you, you can treat with herbicide. Aka lawn weed killer, Resolva or Weedol. Make sure its the green bottle with LAWN on the front, not the Red bottle full of glyphsate!

Otherwise, welcome!

Thanks for the feedback - I've ordered some feed to get something down for the summer, then will need to think about mower.

[dudleybloke]

Seems the last lot of seed I got was mixed with crappy stuff, getting a few patches of crab grass.
Options are go nuclear again, kill the lot and try again, pull out the crap stuff which is going to be a lot of work, or put up with it.
At the moment the nuclear option is on the cards.
I'm proper pissed off about it

Nice grass.


Orrible crap.

Edited by dudleybloke on Sunday 26th June 15:03

[ChocolateFrog]

If it makes you feel any better my horrible grass is significantly worse than your horrible grass.

[Dr Mike Oxgreen]

ChocolateFrog said:

If it makes you feel any better my horrible grass is significantly worse than your horrible grass.

Mine too!

I’d happily accept his ‘orrible grass in place of my crappy stuff!

What I would say is that the “nuclear” option simply doesn’t work, and it’s probably not the fault of the grass seed. Weed grasses produce vast quantities of seed, which hang about in the soil for years. When you kill off your lawn and re-seed, you might think you’re starting with a blank canvas, but you’re really not. What germinates is all your lovely posh seed from your seed supplier, plus all those weed grass seeds that have been waiting in your soil, biding their time. So it’s no surprise that you end up with the same old weed grasses that you had before.

[AyBee]

dudleybloke said:

Thickening up a bit now, I've just put some more seed down over the sparse bits.

How long did you wait before re-seeding over the sparse bits? I re-seeded from a blank canvas (scarified, aerated and overdressed with compost) about 2 weeks ago and can't decide whether to give the bare patches more time or put more seed down?

[dudleybloke]

I waited about 10 days before reseeding the bald bits.

[Hereward]

HRL said:

...We had a bit of a mole infestation last year but other than flattening the molehills I just cut the grass as usual and it seems to have recovered perfectly. ...

I get moles at certain times of the year (seemingly when my clay soil is neither too waterlogged nor too hard) and I have taken to collecting the arisings with a spade and wheelbarrow every day or two. It's rather tedious but good exercise and means no unsightly squashed molehills, plus the loose soil they excavate is beautiful for topping up beds / filling low spots / blending with compost. I changed my mindset to realising it's the mole's habitat and not my garden.

[HRL]

Hereward said:

I get moles at certain times of the year (seemingly when my clay soil is neither too waterlogged nor too hard) and I have taken to collecting the arisings with a spade and wheelbarrow every day or two. It's rather tedious but good exercise and means no unsightly squashed molehills, plus the loose soil they excavate is beautiful for topping up beds / filling low spots / blending with compost. I changed my mindset to realising it's the mole's habitat and not my garden.

Yeah, that’s not a bad idea and I understand about it being it’s natural habitat. I’ve moved my wildlife angst to a stray peacock now. It tried attacking one of our dogs the other day so trying to figure out how to catch and release it elsewhere without harming it.

My head says use a shotgun, but my heart says that’s a bit OTT!

[danny0001uk1]

Hi All,

Just 2 quick questions,

Does anything work to stop burn patches from my female lab? Seen dog rocks etc you put in drinking water but do they work.

Also is there any grass seed I can chuck on the lawn which would take or would I have to rake and sow etc

Thanks

[dhutch]

danny0001uk1 said:

Hi All,

Just 2 quick questions,

Does anything work to stop burn patches from my female lab? Seen dog rocks etc you put in drinking water but do they work.

Also is there any grass seed I can chuck on the lawn which would take or would I have to rake and sow etc

Thanks

I've not used dogrocks, but everything I have seen or read about them makes it sound like snake oil, and I dont really want to put random stuff I dont understand in the dogs water either. Plus one of them mainly drinks out of ditches and puddles anyway.

At which point I think the options are.
- Train them to pee elsewhere, which is something we have had mixed success with, but does work with time and energy.
- Take them elsewhere to pee. When we (my partner) got in a routine of walking them first thing, without letting them out first, the lawn improved greatly.
- Follow them around with a watering can. I don't do this fanatically, but I do dump a gallon of water on the ground if I see them do a large mid-lawn piss.
- Grow some additional turf elsewhere in the garden, which you can use to patch in the burnt part quickly when needed. Is actually a thing apprently!
- Give it a bit of a rake, chuck some seed+soil mix into it, ad other than right now when its dry and a dry thing, it will take and look fine within a month.
- Sigh, rub their ears, and breath deeply!

[Stedman]

Could some of the more knowledgable help here, please.

Is the difference in colour from where new seed (darker?) has taken over the last two years compared to the lighter green stuff? I’ve been away for 2+ weeks and the darker stuff was very tall where as the lighter stuff wasn’t much taller than you see in the image. I’m on clay soil, had it hollow-tined early April and had a dose of spring+summer from LS shortly after the HTA. (Top up of spring and summer before I went away - hence a few scorch marks. Silly Stedders..)

Thanks in advance.

[Evanivitch]

Stedman said:

Could some of the more knowledgable help here, please.

Is the difference in colour from where new seed (darker?) has taken over the last two years compared to the lighter green stuff? I’ve been away for 2+ weeks and the darker stuff was very tall where as the lighter stuff wasn’t much taller than you see in the image. I’m on clay soil, had it hollow-tined early April and had a dose of spring+summer from LS shortly after the HTA. (Top up of spring and summer before I went away - hence a few scorch marks. Silly Stedders..)

Thanks in advance.

If the patches are darker and longer then you have something effecting nutrition.

So it's either the fertiliser has been spread poorly (I'm guilty of that) or you have subsurface issues with either nutrient content or moisture management. I used to find the centre of an old pond that had been filled it would always grow quicker because the sub surface was always better than the surrounding areas (much of which still had significant rocks below the surface).

[Stedman]

Thank you - that’s really helpful

[wiggy001]

dhutch said:

danny0001uk1 said:

Hi All,

Just 2 quick questions,

Does anything work to stop burn patches from my female lab? Seen dog rocks etc you put in drinking water but do they work.

Also is there any grass seed I can chuck on the lawn which would take or would I have to rake and sow etc

Thanks

I've not used dogrocks, but everything I have seen or read about them makes it sound like snake oil, and I dont really want to put random stuff I dont understand in the dogs water either. Plus one of them mainly drinks out of ditches and puddles anyway.

At which point I think the options are.
- Train them to pee elsewhere, which is something we have had mixed success with, but does work with time and energy.
- Take them elsewhere to pee. When we (my partner) got in a routine of walking them first thing, without letting them out first, the lawn improved greatly.
- Follow them around with a watering can. I don't do this fanatically, but I do dump a gallon of water on the ground if I see them do a large mid-lawn piss.
- Grow some additional turf elsewhere in the garden, which you can use to patch in the burnt part quickly when needed. Is actually a thing apprently!
- Give it a bit of a rake, chuck some seed+soil mix into it, ad other than right now when its dry and a dry thing, it will take and look fine within a month.
- Sigh, rub their ears, and breath deeply!

Our lawn was in a state. Partly because of our puppy but mostly it was very uneven and had a lot of moss in it. It's only a small area (5m x 5m) so I got a firm in to take up the lawn and lay some new turf 2 weeks ago. For the past 2 months I've been using Dog Rocks and the new lawn has been watered several times per day and each pee has been diluted with water from the hose.

There are currently at least 4 or 5 brown patches of dead grass which I can only assume are due to the dog.

Frustrated and annoyed in equal measures.