Grass – again! A week or so ago, I highlighted the problems the SRU are having with the Murrayfield pitch – reason is a significant infestation of Nematodes which appear to be devouring the roots faster than the plants can replace them.
This week it is our turn to face the inevitable.
Well, not all of us.
One of my chums, who lives on the Moray coast, was telling me that he cut his grass last week!
He says it has never really stopped growing all winter and before it became too tousy, he thought he would just nip the tops off.
Another chum in the conversation lives in Glasgow and he was ‘thinking about it’.
Meanwhile I have to say straight away that our bit of lawn is looking dire at the moment, it has not wintered well. I guess there might be a few of you out there in the same boat.
I have often referred to the land on the Moray coast as similar to the Land of Goshen – that land (in the NE corner of Egypt) mentioned in the Bible as being fertile and very productive for crops and livestock.
In other words, if you can’t grow anything on the Moray Coast, you have little chance of doing so elsewhere.
Any kind of gardening should be a bit of a dawdle because of the climate and soil conditions, so my pal’s grass needed cutting.
His nibs in Glasgow has a fine garden, in a sheltered spot, he is further south and if you combine that with an extraordinarily mild winter, there’s no wonder his grass might need topping too.
Many of us in these parts might well have a bit of work to do on our own little bit of hallowed turf.
My sequence will be as follows, so long as the forecasted ‘colder spell’ of weather doesn’t last too long.
Firstly, when it dries out a little more, a gentle rake with a springbok rake, picking up the debris that has collected over the winter.
Scratching the surface in the process can also be classed as a light scarifying.
Our lawn is on a bit of made-up land; it is slightly compacted and is therefore slow to drain. I suspect that other people in comparatively new houses will have a similar problem.
In autumn 2012, I managed to hollow-tine spike the area and top-dress with gritty sand.
That made a significant difference, it looked quite reasonable last summer. Despite best intentions, I did not manage to repeat the hollow-tining in Autumn 2013. Is it too late to do it even now?
On decent established turf, it is quite in order to spike the surface in the spring, using an ordinary garden fork.
This serves to aerate the surface layers and speed surface drainage.
As a result root growth is stimulated. As you will know, the hollow-tining process removes cores of soil to a depth of 10cm so should there then be a spell of really cold weather, allowing frost to penetrate to a depth of 10cm, the lawn will suffer a severe shock and that will set back the growth by a month or thereby.
So it is a bit dodgy to use this technique at this time of year. I will however try to spike the lawn with an ordinary garden fork, penetrating to about 5cm.
Next job in the process is to apply a spring fertiliser and as I remind you (almost) every year, a balanced lawn fertiliser is all you need.
Leave the Mosskill/ Weedkill treatment until later when the temperatures have risen a bit. In other words, in my view it is tantamount to a waste of money putting these treatments on now, they are liable to be ineffective.
I guess all that might take you to the end of the month! Only then will it be time to consider a light trim. That should give you time to check out the lawnmower.
Compost bins
We have two bins now: A Hotbin and Bio-Orb.
The Hotbin is now empty so the top un-composted material from the Bio Orb gets moved over to the Hotbin, allowing me to get to the older stuff in the Bio Orb which is going in to one of the raised beds.
Got it?
This two-bin complement is enough to absorb our compostable material nowadays. When we have an excess, it is bagged and goes off to the municipal facility.
As I have said before, this style of ‘cold’ composting suits us and I accept that it does not kill weeds.
Knowing that, our compost is not used for mulching, it is always buried thus maintaining the organic matter levels in the cropping beds.