lawns - input please

[puntloos]

I'd note that depending on how long you intend to stick around, grass is one of the weirdest, arguably stupidest crops in the world, keeping it watered and maintained will, over time, certainly outpace your carbon footprint of some sturdy fake grass...

[lizzie]

3 minutes ago, puntloos said:

I'd note that depending on how long you intend to stick around, grass is one of the weirdest, arguably stupidest crops in the world, keeping it watered and maintained will, over time, certainly outpace your carbon footprint of some sturdy fake grass...

@puntloos I would say I am nearer the finish line of my biblical allowance than I would like to be so good point!

[Bitpipe]

We had about 400m2 of our old back garden levelled, covered with topsoil that we'd piled up from earlier in the build and then turfed in October 2017.

 

Quite wet that winter so the turf got well established but after the dry summer last year it's now very patchy. I've been over it twice with the electric rake to pull out the thatch and have just hired a petrol driven hollow spiked garden aerator for next week, the type that pulls plugs of earth out of the ground to let air and water in.

 

Will see if it makes much difference - £85 to hire it for the day inc. delivery and VAT.

 

Not sure if I should also treat with some builders sand (I have a jumbo bag going spare).

 

May also do a scattering of seed in early autumn.

[lizzie]

I am very heartened at all this feedback on lawn problems, nice not to be alone!

[newhome]

I think your garden would look good with artificial turf @lizzie but you need to embrace the look of it and not constantly compare it to real grass because otherwise you can’t make it work for you. 

[CC45]

9 hours ago, lizzie said:

We seeded a new lawn last year....it is beyond awful this year.  Lumpy and half dead (may be leatherjackets), full of weeds and generally a big mess.

 

I am about to embark on the final round of landscaping and will be taking up some of the lawned area to make planting areas but I will still have a lot of lawn left.

 

It may be a whole load of wasted effort to try and bring the existing up to standard so the question is do I try or do I have the whole lot dug up and relaid with turf.....or do I dig it all up and lay artificial grass.

 

We have the dog so do need 'grass' we are also surrounded by fields that are grown for organic hay, pretty at the right time of year but they are basically huge weeds flowering and spreading seeds all over our garden so plenty of weeding.  For those reasons we will never be able to have a 'perfect' lawn and thats fine but it is really frustrating to have to do it again after a year hence the thinking about artificial grass.  

leave the grass for now - its too late to put seed down now & turf will need a lot of water with the summer coming.  Wait until mid August and then spray the lot off with glyphosate (buy on line and not in a garden centre).  Mow to get rid of as much of the grass as poss after 2 weeks or so.  lightly cultivate to create a tilth.  Get hold of some dressed seed (to kill the leatherjackets) from an agric merchant and spread this by hand at ~ 500g/100m2.  You may want to mix it with some sand to bulk it up a little - there's no harm in using more seed.    wait for rain.  Patience.  It may be worth checking out soil pH - it should be about 6.5 for grass.  You can apply a bit of Phosphate and potash fert if you like - the agric merchant will have some of that  (its used in the autumn by arable farmers).  Stick to fescue grass mixtures.  We will follow the above this autumn - we want to see some wildlife in our garden & artificial grass won't tick that box.

Edited May 17, 2019 by CC45
addition

[Oz07]

Don't understand why everyone has so many problems perhaps I've just been lucky. Let topsoil settle for 3 months or so before turning with good quality turf. Areated de thatched overseeded and fertilized each year jobs a goodun. Last lawn was quite heavily shaded too

[Jenni]

Note of caution with artificial grass and dogs - make sure it's suitable, ie don't use sand underneath, or the grass that has latex backing. As both of those will hold urine smells and make being out there invariable! 

https://www.topdogturf.co.uk/

 

I hope to be able to afford artificial grass at the end of my project. (3 dogs). Though with improvements in robotic mowers I have been wondering if real grass might be bearable! 

[Construction Channel]

1 hour ago, newhome said:

I think your garden would look good with artificial turf @lizzie but you need to embrace the look of it and not constantly compare it to real grass because otherwise you can’t make it work for you. 

A very good point. Personally artifical grass just reminds me of pain playing hockey 

[lizzie]

1 hour ago, Jenni said:

Note of caution with artificial grass and dogs - make sure it's suitable, ie don't use sand underneath, or the grass that has latex backing. As both of those will hold urine smells and make being out there invariable! 

https://www.topdogturf.co.uk/

 

I hope to be able to afford artificial grass at the end of my project. (3 dogs). Though with improvements in robotic mowers I have been wondering if real grass might be bearable! 

Wow thats an eye opener on the dog turf thank you!

 

I was contemplating opening up a new robot mower thread too! Might well do that tomorrow.

[joe90]

You can’t get stripes on artificial grass ?.

[Declan52]

6 hours ago, joe90 said:

You can’t get stripes on artificial grass ?.

You can.

https://www.goartificialgrass.co.uk/artificial-lawn-c25/10-00m-to-19-99m-c44/wembley-stripe-30mm-artificial-grass-p867

[lizzie]

Stripes on dog friendly artificial grass I wonder.......

[joe90]

7 minutes ago, lizzie said:

Stripes on dog friendly artificial grass I wonder.......

Depends what colour the stripes are ?

[eandg]

A very interesting discussion. Picking up on one of the points made, there's about 2m of made ground on our plot - does that make getting a good lawn (even with good topsoil laid) much more difficult and would artificial then be a better option? 

[ProDave]

28 minutes ago, eandg said:

A very interesting discussion. Picking up on one of the points made, there's about 2m of made ground on our plot - does that make getting a good lawn (even with good topsoil laid) much more difficult and would artificial then be a better option? 

I think the message is don't level it and turf it straight away. Give the made up ground some time to settle, then level it and seed or turf it.

[eandg]

5 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I think the message is don't level it and turf it straight away. Give the made up ground some time to settle, then level it and seed or turf it.

Thanks. Settle from? My plan was to do some digging and get a roller in to level then seed once the structure is up - the lawn will be at the back and separated from the house by a patio which will wrap round the house so it won't or shouldn't be affected by construction. 

[newhome]

14 hours ago, Jenni said:

Note of caution with artificial grass and dogs - make sure it's suitable, ie don't use sand underneath, or the grass that has latex backing. As both of those will hold urine smells and make being out there invariable! 

 

I used sand under my AstroTurf (as most people do I believe) and it was fine with dogs. My dogs (I had 9 at one stage ) weren't on it 24 x 7 but I used to spray it with Odourfresh on occasion and that seemed to sort out any issues. A hose end sprayer is perfect for that. I use Odourfresh here for spraying the patio area where the dogs go now. They're not allowed on the lawn here as one of my 2 dogs digs the lawn making it even worse than it is! She never dug the Astroturf . I also use Odourfresh in the laundry when I wash their beds, pretty much anywhere I want to freshen up as it's a disinfectant as well as a deodoriser. 

 

Odourfresh,

 

Some people use diluted biological washing powder in a watering can to clean their Astroturf although I haven't tried that (guess it might work for patio areas too), and there seem to be a load of specialist cleaners now but I haven't tried any of those. 

 

Artificial Grass Cleaner 

 

For some people moss and algae seem to be an issue but we only got a tiny bit of algae in one corner in winter where there wasn't much sun. Using an algae remover soon sorted that out. Never had any moss. The odd weed used to grow in the astroturf but I'm talking a handful a year, not the millions that seem to appear in my gravel and are a never ending job to address! 

 

There are a ton of posts about Astoturf and dogs in the Facebook group linked below as many people with dogs have swapped to AstroTurf, mostly to avoid the mud issues in winter. Our Astro actually came from the main ring at Crufts. Crufts used to have a deal with the company they used whereby the company would supply new Astroturf to use at Crufts and then they took it back after Crufts each year and sold it off at a discount. I think we got a third off the normal price.  

 

Link to Facebook post

 

As others have said however the key to success is in the prep. Don't cut corners on preparing the ground before laying the Astroturf or it will end up an expensive mess. 

 

[Jenni]

Good fb group share newhome, I read AgilityNet a lot, there's an artificial grass tread every couple of months. As I'm kinda mildly obsessing about wanting it I read them with interest. 

 

From what I recall, not everyone with sand has smell issues, but everyone with smell issues has sand. 

 

Given the effort involved in sorting out the base for artificial grass, I like to minimise risks of future issues / possible disappointment, I'll be avoiding sand. 

 

The Crufts grass is very good for running on (I was there this year), but not sure it necessarily makes the best garden lawn. It's rather short to look natural imo. 

[newhome]

17 minutes ago, Jenni said:

The Crufts grass is very good for running on (I was there this year), but not sure it necessarily makes the best garden lawn. It's rather short to look natural imo. 

 

The astroturf has changed since we bought the ex Crufts stuff. We had the earliest version when they changed from real carpet to astroturf. Must have been something like 2003 ish from memory. I actually went with my hubby to choose the surface for Crufts when they swapped from carpet. We ran our agility dogs on samples of a variety of different Astroturfs along with Mary Ray who tried it out for obedience, and chose the longer piled 'premier' turf as the dogs slipped less. As always however things change and new things come along and about 3 years ago the surface changed to Juta Grass that had been used at the World Championships. So it's different stuff these days. Not sure if they still sell it off afterwards. It's a different company so maybe not. 

 

Juta Grass

 

 

[scottishjohn]

I remember going round hampden court gardens and i heard another visitor one ask one of the gardeners how they got such a good lawn

"simple he says just keep  cutting it for 500 years !!"

LOL

[lizzie]

9 hours ago, scottishjohn said:

I remember going round hampden court gardens and i heard another visitor one ask one of the gardeners how they got such a good lawn

"simple he says just keep  cutting it for 500 years !!"

LOL

Good tip!!!  The lawns may survive but sadly the heritage of the buildings most of us are spending so much time and money lovingly constructing will in the main be one great blob of polystyrene in the ground.  The Time Team of it's day in 100 years or so will look at it in amazement that we could have used so much environmentally unfriendly stuff......the 21st century equivalent of Saxon post holes on timber framed buildings just not as kind to the planet.

[ProDave]

This is topical perhaps.

 

Our south garden was the ground just as we found it. We cleared it. Strimmered it, and them mowed it into submission.   It resembled a lawn from a distance but it was very lumpy with lots of dips and bumps.

 

Well now, as a fill in job (pun intended) I have been using up some off the last pile of spare soil to level it out a bit.  Nothing fancy just spreading soil over what is there to fill in all the low spots.

 

I hope because the infill is not thick the grass will just grow through but anywhere it doesn't will just get re seeded.

 

[Bitpipe]

On 17/05/2019 at 19:56, Bitpipe said:

We had about 400m2 of our old back garden levelled, covered with topsoil that we'd piled up from earlier in the build and then turfed in October 2017.

 

Quite wet that winter so the turf got well established but after the dry summer last year it's now very patchy. I've been over it twice with the electric rake to pull out the thatch and have just hired a petrol driven hollow spiked garden aerator for next week, the type that pulls plugs of earth out of the ground to let air and water in.

 

Will see if it makes much difference - £85 to hire it for the day inc. delivery and VAT.

 

Not sure if I should also treat with some builders sand (I have a jumbo bag going spare).

 

May also do a scattering of seed in early autumn.

 

Just attacked the lawn with the aerator - now have a series of holes about two inches deep by 1/2 inch wide every 4 inches on the lawn. Machine (looked brand new) made a sound like a bag of hammers hitting a bucket but was easy enough to use.

 

Apparently best practice is to leave the cores on the lawn and to feed & weed immediately  - doing that tomorrow. Then will let the rain later this week wash everything in.

 

Best part was the hire co screwed up with the Weds delivery so dropped it off yesterday and will get it Tuesday, so been round a mates garden already and will probably do a couple more before it goes back

[newhome]

I used the electric lawn raker yesterday and it got out a ton of thatch and moss. I then mowed it and now it's raining and I guess that's good as it may encourage the good grass to grow hopefully. Is there any merit in sowing seed into the existing lawn to try to get some better grass coming through? If so how should I do that and what seed would be best? I did try sow some seed last year but none seemed to germinate despite me watering the lawn every day for a couple of weeks.