september
Autumn Renovation Master Class
- by John Quinn, Master Greenkeeper
Here are September’s lawn care tips from Greenmaster’s Managing Director and Master Greenkeeper John Quinn.
Moss Control
Apply 70g/m2 of a good quality lawn sand (lawn sand is the name given to a fertiliser product containing just sand and ferrous sulphate) to kill off unwanted moss. 7 days later the moss will have turned black and you can scarify the lawn to remove the dead material and excess thatch that has built up over the year.
Top Tip: don’t confuse lawn sand with straight ferrous sulphate. A 70g/m2 dose of straight ferrous sulphate would kill off your lawn completely.
Scarifying
Scarifying can be done effectively with a spring tine rake for small lawns but to get to grips with excessive amounts of thatch and dead moss it is better to go mechanical. Hire, beg or borrow a good quality machine as the electric, domestic types are rarely strong enough to do a good job. Don’t try to do it all in one go, set the blades lightly at first and aim to complete the job in 3 or 4 passes, each in a slightly different direction.
Top Tip: hire the best machine you can afford and set the blades progressively deeper until the desired effect is achieved. Don’t do it all in one go.
Hollow Tining
Hollow tining is the most beneficial work you will do to your lawn this autumn. This method entails physically removing small cylindrical plugs of thatch and soil from the lawn. The resulting holes can be left open if your soil is free draining and light. This will allow the winter frosts to penetrate the surface breaking up compaction, and allowing air to permeate through the top layer of soil.
If your soil is less than perfect the holes can be filled with a more desirable material. Over time this is a very effective method of exchanging and improving your soil. For major soil overhaul, you should vary the depth each year. For heavy clay poorly drained soils it is a good idea to fill the holes with a sand only topdressing.
Again, like scarifying, hollow tining can be done by hand using a hand hollow tining fork, but again if your lawn is bigger than say 10m2 you won’t want to do this and might need to hire a machine for the job. After you have tined the lawn it will be littered with cores (soil plugs) which will have to be removed and a snow shovel is the professional’s weapon of choice hear. Use this to push into piles and then lift away to the compost heap or spread liberally over flower beds or the veggie patch as a good source of nutrition to be dug in for next year.
Top Tip: You’re going to need a snow shovel sooner or later anyway so get one now and make core lifting easy……it’s the professional’s choice for core lifting.
Top-dressing
On clay soils it is wise to top-dress with a medium coarse, uniform and round particle sports grade sand. Don’t be tempted to buy cheap concrete or building sand as the two are fundamentally different. I also cringe every year when I hear TV gardening pundits enthusing about “sharp sand” usually accompanied by shots of them dumping liberal amounts of the aforementioned sharp sand on top of the lawn with a shovel.
Top dressing can be applied by shovel, but it is a very skilled job and requires a lot of practice to get it right. It is better to use a proper top dressing machine for bigger lawns or if it has been kept dry prior to use it can be applied through a normal spinner type fertiliser spreader.
Top dressing is carried out for two distinct reasons: soil improvement and lawn levelling. On lawns that require soil exchange and improvement, use a sand as described above. Sharp particle sand locks together and creates a barrier to roots and moisture, the opposite effect to the one we are looking for.
On mature lawns with good drainage and rooting characteristics, small undulations and hollows can be re-levelled using a top dressing mix made up of sand and peat. An essential part of any top dressing work is to ensure that the material is properly worked in to the sward by drag mat or brush, so that the grass is not smothered. Smothering will cause bare areas to appear and encourage disease and weeds through the autumn and winter months.
Overseeding
If you are overseeding your lawn it is best to do this before the top dressing is applied. For fine lawns, use a fescue/bent mix with no ryegrass. This can be applied by hand or better still by fertiliser spreader at around 20g/m2.
Top Tip: Specify “no ryegrass” for the finer lawn.
Nutrition
The final operation is to apply a good quality autumn fertiliser. This should be high in Potassium(K) and low in Nitrogen(N)
Top Tip: N and High K will keep winter problems at bay.