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Covering my lawn in burlap
tuffnelljohn
Posts: 284
Hi,
Im trying to stop brown patches on my lawn. I have loads of burlap, so I thought I would lay that on the lawn so the grass is firly shaded from the worst of the heat.
But then I thought perhaps it would make the ground even warmer, and also cut out most of the light. So maybe not such a bright idea!
Im just curious, has anyone else tried laying fabric/hessian/burlap on the ground to protect the grass?
I have the sprinkler on for an hour every few days (in the evenings when its cooled a little), but Im not sure if its making much of a difference.
Thanks
Im trying to stop brown patches on my lawn. I have loads of burlap, so I thought I would lay that on the lawn so the grass is firly shaded from the worst of the heat.
But then I thought perhaps it would make the ground even warmer, and also cut out most of the light. So maybe not such a bright idea!
Im just curious, has anyone else tried laying fabric/hessian/burlap on the ground to protect the grass?
I have the sprinkler on for an hour every few days (in the evenings when its cooled a little), but Im not sure if its making much of a difference.
Thanks
0
Posts
Covering it with burlap or other material will simply aggravate the problem as you will prevent any light and even any small amount of moisture from reaching the grass. A sure way to hasten its demise I think.
However, there are posters here who know about lawns so hang on and see if there is any advice on your best way forward
This is my first summer of having a lawn (it was laid last autumn) so trying to care for it as best I can.
Interesting what you say about not needing to water it. I had my doubts that having the sprinkler on was actually doing much (becuase the ground is so hard).
I suppose - given Ive never had a lawn before - Im being overly precious about it!
Thanks
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
If you go to a grassy campsite with a caravan and awning, many do not allow groundsheets or awning carpets because they are so bad for the grass. The grass goes yellow within a few days and persistent covering will eventually kill it.
For the last few days we've had very warm days but relatively cool nights. Have woken most mornings to quite dense mist - even fog. It soon burns off but any plants (including grass) which stay in the shade for a few hours have a lot if condensation on them. It's not much in the way of water but I'm sure every little bit must help.
Im definitely not going to sprinkler it for a couple of weeks and see what effect that has on it.
If yours is fairly young (ie less than a year old) I wouldn't let it get as bad as @Dovefromabove 's and mine. You can let it go a bit yellowey but I wouldn't let it go completely brown. From experience I can tell you that you'll probably end up with bald patches and weeds seeding in it.
You'd be better off giving it a thorough soaking once a month - but only if you really need to (& subject to water restrictions of course).
If your grass is green now, you don't need to do it until we've moved in to September - and by then you may have had some rain to do the job for you anyway. By then we'll also be moving into (hopefully!) cooler temps / shorter days / lots of dew first thing - so you're unlikely to need to water after that.