Great job! I don’t know if your area is prone to cranefly/ leatherjackets? Did you notice any during your ground prep? You might consider applying nematodes in September. I’d hate to see all your efforts be of no avail if the little darlings end up feasting on your grass roots through the autumn, winter and spring.
Hi Dave, I wouldn’t say we do have many, if any. I’m on the Devon coast and while I’ve seen a few I genuinely mean I might have seen 2 insects in total in the last 2 years.
I only know a nematode is a worm classification (?) but I’m interested to learn more. What kind of worm, where do I get them and what is it?
I have TONS of earthworms. And I mean in every spade of earth you move since I did all the rotavating you will find 2-3 earthworms. Never seen so many in my life! They come to the lawn surface every night at the moment to mate. Hundreds of them. (I know they’re hermaphrodites but you know how they climb into each other)
They are microscopic organisms (worms) that attack specific targets such as leatherjackets, slugs etc. The chemical approach has been outlawed so this biological approach is the only real option. The ‘worms’ eat their way into the host and kill it.
I can't tell you how happy I am with this lawn! We are pretty much living on it full time already and it has met and exceeded my expectations!
Now cut 3 times it's getting fuller and thicker by the day. Where before we were seeing weeds largely out-compete the grass, the Weedol has thumped the weeds back and given the grass a massive boost. I took a bit of a risk by using weed killer on a 3 week old lawn but my tests suggested the grass was tough enough.
A very special mention needs to go to Jono at A1Lawn who sent me a free bag of seed when I enquired about buying more to fill in the few areas that need reseeding. He has been informed, patient and above all the quality of his product speaks for itself. I have no desire to make noise where it is unnecessary but if you are looking for a grass product that works I have my own proof that his stuff works. Thank you again Jono.
Previously you could see a pretty even split of weed/grass but the grass has absolutely taken over. It's full and thick and already puts up with us walking all over it, lying on blankets in the sun and the dog retrieving tennis balls. Really good stuff.
Finally, while I would not advocate for anyone to use Weedol on a lawn younger than 2 months (mine was barely 3 weeks at the time) the area on the left was treated with a 50% dosage of weed killer and the results speak for themselves. The weeds on the right have left dead spots and still flourish while on the left the grass has continued to grow and take over the weeds. Really great product.
Thats it for now, not sure how much longer to do this, I doubt anyone is getting very much value (if they ever did! ) but I shall update once the lawn has had it's first cylinder mow.
DAY 42: (Just short of 6 weeks) So today I tried for the 'Wembley look'...
The little brown patches are where the couch was killed, they have been top dressed with new seed and topsoil and have already grown shoots about 1cm above ground...in 6 days! So try to ignore those please...
I have had a little think, given my initial frustration at an infestation of couch grass and the lack of a clear strategy to remove it. Lots of advice from scoring with an artists knife (didn't work for me), mowing frequently (didn't work for me) right down to complete removal of the offending area and a complete replant. This I just was not prepared to do.
I found a simpler, easier, more effective solution myself through trial and error and so I thought I would share it.
I present Neo's Simple Guide To the Removal Of Couch Grass In A Lawn:
Couch grass, also called twitch grass is an unsightly, lighter coloured and broader leafed grass that is very common in UK gardens. The root system is tough, resilient and grows at all sort of depths making it really quite hard to eradicate.
I noticed, particularly on my new lawn that the couch grew MUCH stronger and faster than my new finer grass. The upside of this is it was really easy to seek out and identify. The down side is it was really very unsightly and quite ugly and impossible to ignore.
I tried slicing it using an artists knife. This had no effect. None. I tried mowing all the way down to setting 3 on my cylinder (about 1.4cm) and I even tried using a long screw driver and a sodden turf to wrench them out one at a time. This was partly successful, but truly backbreaking and slow and since I missed plenty, along with leaving a fair bit of root structure in the ground, they just grew back anyway. So not really a sustainable fix for couch grass in your lawn.
This is how my lawn looked at one point before my treatment:
That's right. Every single one of those long, broad strands is a couch grass shoot. Some from a cluster of roots, some from individual roots and some even from seeds. A complete mess and really dominating my new lawn.
Even in areas where they were less dense, they were still visible. And ugly. Like here:
AFTER!
And here is the second area, again taken a moment ago:
No more couch grass!
(It's raining so I didn't do a great job!)
I won't go too much into what I did wrong the first few times, other than to say this method of couch removal is about the most refined and quickest positive outcome out of all them. If I learn anything new I shall certainly pop it up here.
These are the steps I took to remove the couch grass, I shall list them with a little detail and discuss why I think they were, or weren't significant. I apologise if some of it is not new for you, dear reader, but something I say may help shape your thinking where it may not have before.
If you are in a hurry, you can skip immediately to step 4.
1) I fertilised. I did this because in truth its a new lawn and demands food. But it had the obvious effect of making everything grow, good and bad and of course this meant the couch grass was growing like bonkers and thus much easier to spot. In hindsight I think this really helped as the couch grass is simply tougher and faster growing than the finer, more desirable grasses. So feed it. In my case I used a pre-seed mix of 6-9-6 as it's what I had left over from prepping my ground for the seeds. My guess would be anything with a higher N number, or the first number which indicates concentration of Nitrogen is the one you want to look out for. Again, mainly as it encourages everything above the ground to grow like mad. Mainly the leaves. Which is what we wanted to see.
2) Wait. Water. Wait. I know we have had a dry spring (the warmest on record) but I have been surprised at how infrequently my fellow countrymen actually water their lawns. Yes, with a new lawn there is a risk of the root system not seeking out moisture and establishing shallow, but my choice of tetraploid grass meant my root system is already nearly 50% deeper than your average, so I was not scared to get things wet. Water your grass! Grass loves water!
3) You will notice the grass getting a deeper/darker green within about 2 or 3 days. At this stage, go to step 4.
Neo's easy guide to removing couch grass from your lawn. New or existing
4) I mowed down to a height of about 2.5cm. Couch grows in all directions, but being much denser and thicker a lot of it is growing out horizontally and you can't get to it if a bunch of your own grass is layered on top of it. So nice and short, but not 'burnt'. So you can see a good blend of vertical and horizontal leaves.
5) Keep an eye on the weather when you are confident you have at least one day of no rain. The glyphosate herbicide we are going to use is a great deal more effective than we assume. But is rendered less effective if it rains. The results do take a fair bit longer, for me they took at least 3-4 days to see visible changes and the assumption is they aren't working. They are working. Glyphosate is very good and it does what it says on the tin.
6) I wanted about one cup, or about 250ml of liquid so with a glass of cold water I added the tip of a teaspoon of xanthan gum to the water and stirred. Why did I do this? The xanthan is a food additive designed to help thicken fluids. You need a very small amount to dramatically thicken up liquid and it came from previous efforts to coat the weeds and grass I didn't want in herbicide, in a way I could control so it didn't run everywhere and cover everything. Trial and error left me needing a very small amount, about a 3rd of teaspoon for a whole glass was enough to stop the liquid being runny, but not so thick that it becomes hard to apply to the leaves you want to kill. I did say trial and error, I used gloves, cotton buds, swabs, cotton taped to the ends of gloved fingers. I used paint brushes and fine haired brushes and calligraphy brushes. I used thick gel finishes and watery. In the end, a small amount added to a glass and using a cotton bud was all it took. You are welcome to try yourself but you will save yourself a great deal of trial and failure and big yellow patches of mistakes. Xanthan is cheap, available online from most herbal remedy stores and you need a tiny amount. Can you do without it? Absolutely. But be aware that what you apply WILL run down the leaves you are treating and onto the surface and it WILL kill everything it gets near to. Using a bit of xanthan reduces the size of 'dead zone' (the dead patch after this is done) by about 70%. This may not bother you so you are free to exclude the gum.
7) Then I added food dye. This was an important step as it is very hard to determine what grass you have already treated. Simply adding about 4-5 drops (more than enough) to the slightly thicker water (there's no toxin in it yet so you can play around) means anything you treat you can see. Again, I tried using a line of garden string between two stakes and working methodically along a line. It ends up being frustrating. Just use dye and a bit of thick water. Red food dye. Not great. Blue food dye. Great. Mixture of red and blue, not as good as just blue. Look in the cake aisle of your local supermarket. Its cheap.
8) Next I mixed up a quality dose of glyphosate weed killer. I am repeating myself but this stuff is deadly to anything it gets near. Including humans. I understand it's linked to cancer so wore breathing apparatus and gloves. One time I did not, while experiment and was left with a cracking headache for 2 days. I don't get headaches. So please protect yourself. You will need about a glass of about 250ml to tackle most areas. My lawn is a total size of around 175sq/m and one 250ml glass of weedkiller was enough to treat the entire area. DO NOT LET THE MIXTURE TOUCH ANYTHING YOU WANT TO KEEP! IT WILL KILL IT! I mixed up the batch by simply carefully adding the concentrated roundup to the thick water I made in step 6. I used a capful. So probably too strong but it worked.
9) Then WORKING BACKWARDS I just got on my knees and painted the couch grass one at a time using a cotton bud or ear bud. Why work backwards? Because I made the mistake in one area of working forwards, of course my knees then dragged over the grass I had just treated and I was left with 10cm wide yellow snail tracks of dead grass in parallel wherever I crawled after. Stupid, idiocy. But you learn. So crawl backwards folks! You may think this takes ages and in my case it took the better part of about 2 hours. So not crazy long. The beauty of the sticky liquid as you only really need to partly coat about 1 leaf in 3 to see a good result. And that leaf you hit you only really need to coat about 1/3rd of the leaf. So if you miss a few as you go don't worry. As long as you coat some of it, the herbicide will do its work. Be prepared to write off anything around the leaf that you coated in a near little radius of death. This can't be avoided. But cutting the grass dramatically reduces the size of this little circle of death. Again, I tried doing this on long grass and it was a disaster. Not only did it kill a significantly larger area around it, but as the grass died it continued to kill anything it came near to. So a short grass stalk to start with is the answer, ergo my instruction to cut!
This is what the couch looks like about 11 days after treatment. A few things to point out.
Notice the thick dead couch grass in the middle. Clearly where I treated. And you can see it is completely effective. All 5 or 6 shoots attached to that root are completely killed. Note where my finger is on the left, thats a shoot that I hadn't noticed or treated at the time, but on the same root system and it too is dead. Proof that you don't need to hit everything to get a brilliant result.
If you have a pretty heavy growth of couch you're going to lose more lawn, but the good news is you can repair this in about 2 weeks with a good quality seed.
This is how the last area of heavy couch looked after treatment. I unfortunately do not have a 'before' which is a pity but the whole area was pretty thick with nasty couch.
So you'll have patches of dead.
10) I then mixed a little of the 6-9-6 fertiliser along with my seed, in a few spadefuls of topsoil and I just over dressed the area that needed repair. Here we are getting into a new aspect of lawn care but thats all it took. WATER WATER WATER!
Today I have no visible couch anywhere in my lawn. From one, approximately 2 hour job and a little slightly thicker herbicide and a few cotton ear buds the couch is gone. Start to finish it took about 2 weeks.
I hope this has proved useful for anyone actually reading this. Happy to answer any questions I am capable of answering and thank you all again for your help or attention when I was learning this stuff!
Posts
I have TONS of earthworms. And I mean in every spade of earth you move since I did all the rotavating you will find 2-3 earthworms. Never seen so many in my life! They come to the lawn surface every night at the moment to mate. Hundreds of them. (I know they’re hermaphrodites but you know how they climb into each other)
I’ve always believed earthworms are good?
https://www.greengardener.co.uk/
We have a problem every year with both leatherjackets and chafer grubs.
I can't tell you how happy I am with this lawn! We are pretty much living on it full time already and it has met and exceeded my expectations!
Now cut 3 times it's getting fuller and thicker by the day.
Where before we were seeing weeds largely out-compete the grass, the Weedol has thumped the weeds back and given the grass a massive boost. I took a bit of a risk by using weed killer on a 3 week old lawn but my tests suggested the grass was tough enough.
A very special mention needs to go to Jono at A1Lawn who sent me a free bag of seed when I enquired about buying more to fill in the few areas that need reseeding. He has been informed, patient and above all the quality of his product speaks for itself. I have no desire to make noise where it is unnecessary but if you are looking for a grass product that works I have my own proof that his stuff works. Thank you again Jono.
Previously you could see a pretty even split of weed/grass but the grass has absolutely taken over. It's full and thick and already puts up with us walking all over it, lying on blankets in the sun and the dog retrieving tennis balls. Really good stuff.
Thats it for now, not sure how much longer to do this, I doubt anyone is getting very much value (if they ever did!
A lot of effort has resulted in a fantastic lawn. Most of all you can get on and enjoy it now. Great job.
So today I tried for the 'Wembley look'...
The little brown patches are where the couch was killed, they have been top dressed with new seed and topsoil and have already grown shoots about 1cm above ground...in 6 days! So try to ignore those please...
Hello GW'rs...(this is a long one!)
I have had a little think, given my initial frustration at an infestation of couch grass and the lack of a clear strategy to remove it. Lots of advice from scoring with an artists knife (didn't work for me), mowing frequently (didn't work for me) right down to complete removal of the offending area and a complete replant. This I just was not prepared to do.
I found a simpler, easier, more effective solution myself through trial and error and so I thought I would share it.
I present Neo's Simple Guide To the Removal Of Couch Grass In A Lawn:
Couch grass, also called twitch grass is an unsightly, lighter coloured and broader leafed grass that is very common in UK gardens. The root system is tough, resilient and grows at all sort of depths making it really quite hard to eradicate.
I noticed, particularly on my new lawn that the couch grew MUCH stronger and faster than my new finer grass. The upside of this is it was really easy to seek out and identify. The down side is it was really very unsightly and quite ugly and impossible to ignore.
I tried slicing it using an artists knife. This had no effect. None. I tried mowing all the way down to setting 3 on my cylinder (about 1.4cm) and I even tried using a long screw driver and a sodden turf to wrench them out one at a time. This was partly successful, but truly backbreaking and slow and since I missed plenty, along with leaving a fair bit of root structure in the ground, they just grew back anyway. So not really a sustainable fix for couch grass in your lawn.
This is how my lawn looked at one point before my treatment:
That's right. Every single one of those long, broad strands is a couch grass shoot. Some from a cluster of roots, some from individual roots and some even from seeds. A complete mess and really dominating my new lawn.
Even in areas where they were less dense, they were still visible. And ugly. Like here:
AFTER!
And here is the second area, again taken a moment ago:
No more couch grass!
(It's raining so I didn't do a great job!)
I won't go too much into what I did wrong the first few times, other than to say this method of couch removal is about the most refined and quickest positive outcome out of all them. If I learn anything new I shall certainly pop it up here.
These are the steps I took to remove the couch grass, I shall list them with a little detail and discuss why I think they were, or weren't significant. I apologise if some of it is not new for you, dear reader, but something I say may help shape your thinking where it may not have before.
If you are in a hurry, you can skip immediately to step 4.
1) I fertilised. I did this because in truth its a new lawn and demands food. But it had the obvious effect of making everything grow, good and bad and of course this meant the couch grass was growing like bonkers and thus much easier to spot. In hindsight I think this really helped as the couch grass is simply tougher and faster growing than the finer, more desirable grasses. So feed it. In my case I used a pre-seed mix of 6-9-6 as it's what I had left over from prepping my ground for the seeds. My guess would be anything with a higher N number, or the first number which indicates concentration of Nitrogen is the one you want to look out for. Again, mainly as it encourages everything above the ground to grow like mad. Mainly the leaves. Which is what we wanted to see.
2) Wait. Water. Wait. I know we have had a dry spring (the warmest on record) but I have been surprised at how infrequently my fellow countrymen actually water their lawns. Yes, with a new lawn there is a risk of the root system not seeking out moisture and establishing shallow, but my choice of tetraploid grass meant my root system is already nearly 50% deeper than your average, so I was not scared to get things wet. Water your grass! Grass loves water!
3) You will notice the grass getting a deeper/darker green within about 2 or 3 days. At this stage, go to step 4.
Neo's easy guide to removing couch grass from your lawn. New or existing
4) I mowed down to a height of about 2.5cm. Couch grows in all directions, but being much denser and thicker a lot of it is growing out horizontally and you can't get to it if a bunch of your own grass is layered on top of it. So nice and short, but not 'burnt'. So you can see a good blend of vertical and horizontal leaves.
5) Keep an eye on the weather when you are confident you have at least one day of no rain. The glyphosate herbicide we are going to use is a great deal more effective than we assume. But is rendered less effective if it rains. The results do take a fair bit longer, for me they took at least 3-4 days to see visible changes and the assumption is they aren't working. They are working. Glyphosate is very good and it does what it says on the tin.
6) I wanted about one cup, or about 250ml of liquid so with a glass of cold water I added the tip of a teaspoon of xanthan gum to the water and stirred. Why did I do this? The xanthan is a food additive designed to help thicken fluids. You need a very small amount to dramatically thicken up liquid and it came from previous efforts to coat the weeds and grass I didn't want in herbicide, in a way I could control so it didn't run everywhere and cover everything. Trial and error left me needing a very small amount, about a 3rd of teaspoon for a whole glass was enough to stop the liquid being runny, but not so thick that it becomes hard to apply to the leaves you want to kill. I did say trial and error, I used gloves, cotton buds, swabs, cotton taped to the ends of gloved fingers. I used paint brushes and fine haired brushes and calligraphy brushes. I used thick gel finishes and watery. In the end, a small amount added to a glass and using a cotton bud was all it took. You are welcome to try yourself but you will save yourself a great deal of trial and failure and big yellow patches of mistakes. Xanthan is cheap, available online from most herbal remedy stores and you need a tiny amount. Can you do without it? Absolutely. But be aware that what you apply WILL run down the leaves you are treating and onto the surface and it WILL kill everything it gets near to. Using a bit of xanthan reduces the size of 'dead zone' (the dead patch after this is done) by about 70%. This may not bother you so you are free to exclude the gum.
7) Then I added food dye. This was an important step as it is very hard to determine what grass you have already treated. Simply adding about 4-5 drops (more than enough) to the slightly thicker water (there's no toxin in it yet so you can play around) means anything you treat you can see. Again, I tried using a line of garden string between two stakes and working methodically along a line. It ends up being frustrating. Just use dye and a bit of thick water. Red food dye. Not great. Blue food dye. Great. Mixture of red and blue, not as good as just blue. Look in the cake aisle of your local supermarket. Its cheap.
8) Next I mixed up a quality dose of glyphosate weed killer. I am repeating myself but this stuff is deadly to anything it gets near. Including humans. I understand it's linked to cancer so wore breathing apparatus and gloves. One time I did not, while experiment and was left with a cracking headache for 2 days. I don't get headaches. So please protect yourself. You will need about a glass of about 250ml to tackle most areas. My lawn is a total size of around 175sq/m and one 250ml glass of weedkiller was enough to treat the entire area. DO NOT LET THE MIXTURE TOUCH ANYTHING YOU WANT TO KEEP! IT WILL KILL IT! I mixed up the batch by simply carefully adding the concentrated roundup to the thick water I made in step 6. I used a capful. So probably too strong but it worked.
9) Then WORKING BACKWARDS I just got on my knees and painted the couch grass one at a time using a cotton bud or ear bud. Why work backwards? Because I made the mistake in one area of working forwards, of course my knees then dragged over the grass I had just treated and I was left with 10cm wide yellow snail tracks of dead grass in parallel wherever I crawled after. Stupid, idiocy. But you learn. So crawl backwards folks! You may think this takes ages and in my case it took the better part of about 2 hours. So not crazy long. The beauty of the sticky liquid as you only really need to partly coat about 1 leaf in 3 to see a good result. And that leaf you hit you only really need to coat about 1/3rd of the leaf. So if you miss a few as you go don't worry. As long as you coat some of it, the herbicide will do its work. Be prepared to write off anything around the leaf that you coated in a near little radius of death. This can't be avoided. But cutting the grass dramatically reduces the size of this little circle of death. Again, I tried doing this on long grass and it was a disaster. Not only did it kill a significantly larger area around it, but as the grass died it continued to kill anything it came near to. So a short grass stalk to start with is the answer, ergo my instruction to cut!
This is what the couch looks like about 11 days after treatment. A few things to point out.
Notice the thick dead couch grass in the middle. Clearly where I treated. And you can see it is completely effective. All 5 or 6 shoots attached to that root are completely killed. Note where my finger is on the left, thats a shoot that I hadn't noticed or treated at the time, but on the same root system and it too is dead. Proof that you don't need to hit everything to get a brilliant result.
If you have a pretty heavy growth of couch you're going to lose more lawn, but the good news is you can repair this in about 2 weeks with a good quality seed.
This is how the last area of heavy couch looked after treatment. I unfortunately do not have a 'before' which is a pity but the whole area was pretty thick with nasty couch.
10) I then mixed a little of the 6-9-6 fertiliser along with my seed, in a few spadefuls of topsoil and I just over dressed the area that needed repair. Here we are getting into a new aspect of lawn care but thats all it took. WATER WATER WATER!
Today I have no visible couch anywhere in my lawn. From one, approximately 2 hour job and a little slightly thicker herbicide and a few cotton ear buds the couch is gone. Start to finish it took about 2 weeks.
I hope this has proved useful for anyone actually reading this. Happy to answer any questions I am capable of answering and thank you all again for your help or attention when I was learning this stuff!
How much do you charge?
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.