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Q. We had a new lawn (about 1000 sq.m) laid in November, from turf containing 25% Smooth stalked meadow grass, 25% Chewings fescue, 20% Slender creeping red fescue, 20% Strong creeping red fescue and 10% Browntop bent. This is a mix for fine ornamental lawns. The problem is that some of the grasses (the meadow grass?) are relatively coarse and long-leaved, with short seed heads that tend to lie close to the ground. The cylinder mower merely rolls the long grass down so that it's not cut. A wheeled rotary mower tackles some of the stalks, but short of getting down on my knees with scissors, I don't know what to do. Is there a cylinder mower with a rotating brush immediately in front of the cutter, so that it raises up the grass to meet the blades? A. It can be a problem to keep the flower stalks down. The usual way is by a regular mowing regimen, if you mow the grass every 3 days through the summer, this should be enough to deal with any potential problems before the stalks can get long enough. If you have them at the moment, it's probably because you've not been mowing so often in the cool months? Is there a brush or device of any kind? No, not that I've ever heard of. Maybe a strimmer could deal with the problem in the short term if there's a lot of them, but the regular mowing should overcome the stalks in the longer term. Q. We have a massive garden with around 12 conifer trees. Because of this we haven't got a lawn. Now we are planning to cut down all the trees down to ground level. Do we need to take the roots as well? The tree cutter suggests to leave the roots as they may rot. After cutting down the tress if I make lawn using seeds will it grow well. Or will it cause any problems? I have no idea about these things. Please provide me more ideas about the cutting trees, making a lawn after that. A. Are you saying you want to lawn over the area where the conifers were? If so you definitely need to remove as much of the roots as possible. As they rot, they will sink giving you and uneven lawn, they will also provide the food for many years worth of fungi that will happily pop-up all over your lawn until the roots are completely gone. As it is this is likely to happen as you'll never remove all the roots and you're bound to get some fungi growing anyway, it's a question of the more you dig up, the less the sinking and the less fungi. Q. Three months ago, we laid 1500 square feet of sod (turf) on a terraced area around a mountain cabin. We installed an automatic watering system that runs morning and evening for 15 minutes so the grass immediately took hold and looks beautiful. Unfortunately, our large draft mule got over the electric fence surrounding the lawn and now there is a huge hoof print on approximately every square foot of the area. Some of the depressions are 3 or 4 inches deep because the soil was so moist and the animal weighs 1400 pounds. Is there any hope of repairing the damage before the ground freezes this fall? A. You have no idea how foreign that all sounds by comparison to my home here in rural Cambridgeshire! Anyhow the answer is pretty straightforward if a pain in the butt (hey - I can speak American) to implement. Mix a load of 50:50 mix of sharp sand and peat or fine compost together in a wheelbarrow - you'll need more than you think! Then use it to fill the ruts with. The grass will eventually (pretty quickly) grow back over the ruts. The extra compost and sand will help drainage which sounds like it could do with a help. Don't know when winter arrives where you are, but it may not properly repair until the spring when the grass starts to actively grow again. Q. I recently applied an autumn feed weed & moss killer (granular). Despite my best intentions & working within the guidelines of application, the grass is showing a distinct blackness. The lawn is now resembling a chocolate lime. Is there anything I can do. A. It's actually working like it should. The chocolate bits are dead moss and the lime bits are live grass, it's probably a shock as you've a lot more moss than you thought! Your next step is to rake out all of the moss or use a scarifier to get rid of it. Dispose of it down the tip rather than on the compost heap. The lawn will look awful for a while, but should recover. If you don't want the moss to come back you need to aerate the grass with a hollow-tine aerator ideally or a fork as a poor second choice and fill the holes with a 50:50 peat:sand mix brushed in. If you don't do this, the moss will return - it may return anyway if your drainage/shade problems are major. There's a lot of work ahead to sort the problem properly, sprinkling the chemicals is just the start and by far the easiest bit. Q. How can I sort out patchy grass? A. Feed and weed, overseed if appropriate (if the patches are more than 6" across), aerate with a hollow tine aerator and sweep 50:50 peat and sand into the holes, collect and remove mowings, rake to remove thatch in the autumn and apply an autumn feed. Mow little and often, twice a week preferably, certainly go no more than a week between mowings. |
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