re stones. Small ones will get pressed in to the lawn soil by walking and mowing. Big stones I would have picked out early and used as base layer. Too late for that.
The "level rising over time" effect (noted by Darwin) will sort out the stones you have left. (In fact the worms get the soil they bring to the surface from deeper down - from under the stones - so no net rise.
The tennis bit came from my imagination, and reading a long essay too quickly.
location: Surrey Hills, England, ex-woodland acidic sand. "Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
I'm with Fairy and Debs. I would bite the bullet and go with turf. Turf comes on its own roots, which will be like placing a duvet over the stones, although some will still work their way to the surface. You'll have to irrigate it but that's also true if you intend to reseed it. Either way, writing off this summer's lawn and waiting for early autumn will vastly reduce the effort, water and potential wasted expense of having it all fail as the weather heats up. (Who knows, maybe your existing effort at a lawn will come good by Autumn anyway).
"What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour".
I agree, make do with what you have until autumn. Even if it doesn't look great, if you know you're going to dig it all over and turf or seed again in autumn you'll be able to let the children play on it for the summer, until you re-start the preparation work.
Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
So we've settled on a two-pronged plan: try to sustain the existing growth, but also thoroughly amend the soil in the yet-to-be-touched part of the garden over the summer in preparation for autumn sowing.
(For those who suggested it, turf remains a non-starter, I'm afraid, for financial reasons...)
On the "sustain" front: as shown in the photo, the area sown earlier this year is doing... variably. Some parts are actually pretty lush and green, others are still very sparse and distressingly pale. Oddly, there's no particular correlation between where the grass started to grow best at first, and where it's now strongest.
A week or so after my last post I had a go at scratching up and re-seeding all of the patchy areas; I have seen a little bit of new growth in some of them, but really very little (although there was a spell of hotter weather a few days after that attempt, which I fear may have brought the soil temperature just high enough to stop germination).
With hotter weather rapidly encroaching, I'm trying to think of anything I can do to fortify the less developed grass before the sun murders it...
I've done a host of pH tests (Garden Tutor test strips) across the whole area, including points where the grass is doing best and those where it's resolutely failing. Without exception the result is pH 7.5-8, so clearly that's not helping matters - but equally clearly, that can't explain the variation between different areas.
Question 1: I can address the pH issue easily enough while amending the soil of the to-be-sown area, but is it possible to acidify the soil of a young lawn without killing it? If so, what is the best/safest approach?
The only thing I've been able to think of that may explain the variation in growth is that the sparsest region corresponds pretty well to the area that was excavated for the soakaway, and the trench leading from there to the gutter downpipe (bottom right quarter of the photo, and diagonal sweeping across to the top centre). The soil there must include quite a lot of dirt dredged up from anything up to ~1-1.5m down, mixed in with what was previously on top.
I'm wondering therefore whether that mixture is significantly lower in useful organic material than the areas that are doing better.
Question 2: I've read many warnings against feeding a newly-sown lawn too soon, and I'm sure that makes sense if the soil was properly enriched with compost etc. to start with, but I'm wondering whether in these circumstances it might actually be sensible to try some fertilisation - maybe with a product like Empathy Supreme Green. I'd dilute it very heavily and apply it gradually over time, to minimise the risk of burning roots etc. Is that a daft plan, or worth a shot? If it's not daft, is there a better product to use?
When I said take soil samples, I was thinking of your doing a sedimentation analysis. That means shwishing yor sample up with water and then letting it settle. Bottom will be stones, next sand, next silt, next clay. top organics, floating not-yet-decomposed organics. For cost reasons you will not be able to change this radically.
But ... Have the stones at the bottom and the sand at the top.
John innes compost would be a good target, ca Grit/clay / silt/sand/peat-substitute all about equal. Buy a bag of quality stuff. Put it in a pot. Wtaer it thoroughly, drain for about 1hour. Grab a handfull and squeeze. It should cling together but otherwise appear quite "open". Do this test on samples from your garden.
I wanted to come back to this to say thank you for this tip in particular - it's extremely useful to have a standard to calibrate against when we come to tackle the amendments of the area we've yet to touch.
Regarding the seed-lines in your existing lawn. These might be due to overlapping. Keep what you've done and work from there.
I think you've probably worked it out! If the excavation for the drainage works brought subsoil up to the surface instead of first removing the topsoil, then doing the work and refilling and then putting the topsoil back on top, that will have made the area pretty poor. Subsoil has no life in it. If you paid someone to do the work they should have known how to do it properly.
All I can think of to try is top dressing with organic matter every year (ie trying to speed up the natural topsoil formation process) and hope that will gradually improve matters over a number of years, or in the autumn dig out those areas, put in new topsoil and re-seed. Neither of those is a quick fix for this summer though. I don't think liquid fertiliser will do much if the soil itself is just (or mostly) subsoil.
Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Soil type: sandy, well-drained
I can't see that adding a bit of fertiliser could do any harm. Growmore should do. If you are more organic, then chickem manure. In the autumn, or anytime really, a slow-release fertiliser (Scotts?) is worthwhile, if a bit pricy.
location: Surrey Hills, England, ex-woodland acidic sand. "Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
Posts
The "level rising over time" effect (noted by Darwin) will sort out the stones you have left. (In fact the worms get the soil they bring to the surface from deeper down - from under the stones - so no net rise.
The tennis bit came from my imagination, and reading a long essay too quickly.
"Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
So we've settled on a two-pronged plan: try to sustain the existing growth, but also thoroughly amend the soil in the yet-to-be-touched part of the garden over the summer in preparation for autumn sowing.
(For those who suggested it, turf remains a non-starter, I'm afraid, for financial reasons...)
On the "sustain" front: as shown in the photo, the area sown earlier this year is doing... variably. Some parts are actually pretty lush and green, others are still very sparse and distressingly pale. Oddly, there's no particular correlation between where the grass started to grow best at first, and where it's now strongest.
A week or so after my last post I had a go at scratching up and re-seeding all of the patchy areas; I have seen a little bit of new growth in some of them, but really very little (although there was a spell of hotter weather a few days after that attempt, which I fear may have brought the soil temperature just high enough to stop germination).
With hotter weather rapidly encroaching, I'm trying to think of anything I can do to fortify the less developed grass before the sun murders it...
I've done a host of pH tests (Garden Tutor test strips) across the whole area, including points where the grass is doing best and those where it's resolutely failing. Without exception the result is pH 7.5-8, so clearly that's not helping matters - but equally clearly, that can't explain the variation between different areas.
Question 1: I can address the pH issue easily enough while amending the soil of the to-be-sown area, but is it possible to acidify the soil of a young lawn without killing it? If so, what is the best/safest approach?
The only thing I've been able to think of that may explain the variation in growth is that the sparsest region corresponds pretty well to the area that was excavated for the soakaway, and the trench leading from there to the gutter downpipe (bottom right quarter of the photo, and diagonal sweeping across to the top centre). The soil there must include quite a lot of dirt dredged up from anything up to ~1-1.5m down, mixed in with what was previously on top.
I'm wondering therefore whether that mixture is significantly lower in useful organic material than the areas that are doing better.
Question 2: I've read many warnings against feeding a newly-sown lawn too soon, and I'm sure that makes sense if the soil was properly enriched with compost etc. to start with, but I'm wondering whether in these circumstances it might actually be sensible to try some fertilisation - maybe with a product like Empathy Supreme Green. I'd dilute it very heavily and apply it gradually over time, to minimise the risk of burning roots etc. Is that a daft plan, or worth a shot? If it's not daft, is there a better product to use?
Any suggestions very gratefully received!
"Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."