Question about grass care?

Hi Aberdeenshire Quine

I know how frustrating in can be having more weeds than grass, I personally don’t mind having some weeds as this brings an added bonus of attracting more insects to the garden.

However if you want a better split of more grass than weeds, there is a few things you can do.

This depends on how much time and effort you can devote. There is no real quick fix just hard work, blisters, blood, sweat and tears.

I speak from experience having treated many lawns and laying new ones from seed and turf.

You can use two types of weed killer available, the simplest is the contact type used as a general weed killer. Especially useful for the control of moss, normally called lawn sand it is a mixture of iron sulphate, nitrate sulphate and sand to bulk up the material.

It works by burning the weeds.

This is possible because weed plants such as daisies are often broad-leaved; the lawn sand once spread sits on the leaves burning them to death.

The grass leaves are normally thin and upright so that the lawn sand bounces off during spreading and does not burn.

The systemic type weed killers works because weeds and grass plants are from two different plant groups, monocotes and dicotes. In simple terms the chemical contained in the weed killer acts on the chemical growth clock in the plant and causes the plant to outgrow itself to the point it can no longer sustain growth and dies.

The two different types of plant ( monocte and dicote ) have different growth clocks and so it is possible to kill the dicotes (weeds), with out killing the monocotes the grass plants. The key to using a weed killer is to make sure the weeds have enough leaf growth. This is achieved by not cutting the grass several days before, and make sure the weed plants are growing and not dormant at the time of spraying.

Soil pH control - control of soil pH can help to control weeds. This is because most lawn weeds grow best at a pH around 6.5 and the finer lawn grasses grow best at a slightly lower, more acid pH at around pH 6. The lower pH normally accrues in the course of normal feeding with high nitrogen feeds.

Watering programmes - by adopting a watering program that soaks the lawn once a week rather than watering the lawn lightly every day during the summer. It is possible to encourage deeper grass rooting and limit the availability of water to the shallow rooted weed seedlings.

Feeding - It is important to feed you lawn in small quantities "little and often" as this helps restore the nutrient that have been removed by cutting. If the grass becomes weak from lack of nutrients this creates a thinner grass cover and allows weeds to establish themselves.

Scarifying - light scarification through the spring and early summer helps to remove the existing weeds from the lawn.

Mowing and removing the clippings - helps to control weeds by removing the growing tips to stopping then from spreading.

Regards Buzzard

That's great advice. Now, should I be bothered about using chemical weedkillers?. Normally, I try not to.

The only other alternative, is what you said you didn't want to do!

Hand weeding and ensuring the roots come out!!!

Certainly a lot of sound advice from buzzard! I would say that its important to bear in mind that although a garden should be asthetically pleasing its important to reach a compromise for both man and beast if it's to function as an effective wildilfe garden. One mans weed is another mans flower!

The use of pesticides in gardens is increasing. About 20% of all pesticides sold in the UK are intended for garden use. According to the Crop Protection Association, in 2001, British gardeneners bought 4,893 tonnes of pesticide active ingredient. This is an increase of 76% form 1998.

The RSPB wildilfe enquiries team are often asked for lawn treatment or insecticide thatw ould be safe for birds. On bottom line, pesticides are designed to kill, and hence none can be considered to be totally safe for any living organism. Clearly, some chemicals are more toxic than others, and different formulations of the same chemical can have a different impact on none-target wildlife. Rather than recommend a chemcial, the RSPB encourages minimal garden pesticide use, or preferably use none at all.  

PAN UK (Pesticides Action Network) states that a particular chemical is toxic, or that a particular  organisation recommends a given product as the least harmful alternative. The PAN UK (tel: 020-7065-0905, www.pan-uk.org) will be able to advice on specific garden chemicals.

Thanks for that. Very helpful

Hi AQ

While I most certainly defer to Buzzard's experience of lawns, I'm in the 'minimal chemical' camp. If you want to try the chemical-free route, I'd recommend increasing fertility using some organic lawn feed (grasses thrive on fertile soil, outcompeting other plants), but I see that you also say the lawn is wet and mossy, so I'd probably do some aerating or even hollow-tining of the ground in autumn, and then top dress with a very sandy mix to improve drainage and allow deeper root growth of the grasses. It may not make for a completely weed-free lawn, but there will be creatures that will thank you for that :-)

Did a lot of moss raking today, and topped up the leaf mould thingie.

When would I do the top dressing? Presumably feed spring and summer? What feeds grass but not moss (or daisies:( )

You have been busy!

Top dressing is most certainly an autumn thing. And if you topdress with plenty of sand (and do everything you can to improve drainage and aerate your soil), that will be what will help sort your moss.

Thanks again. I'm feeling very needy here, but whilst I do ask questions at the RHS site, I don't (often) get wiildlife friendly answers.