Lawn issues

having moved into my house at the end of the summer I now have about 11m x 10m lawn to look after. When I moved in the grass was full of weeds, moss and other stuff. I scarified the grass in the autumn nut the wet mild winter filled it with moss and weeds again. After a couple of runs with the scarifier the moss and weeds are going but I'm left with patches of something. Can anyone identify what it is or what I can do to get rid of around 6 patches of it?

 

Did you use a weed and feed product before scarifying?

It's hard to zoom in to get enough detail to see what the mysterious brown patch could be; looks like moss with a serious FeSO4 hangover.

 

Hi, thanks for your reply.

I'll try get a close up tomorrow (in daylight)

I did not use a weed and feed product.

I was planning on using a seed and feed but don't have a weed killer in it. I thought I would be best to lift out the moss that's in the grass before applying it so once I had scarrified I assumed this would lift out but it was missed by the machine.

There is also some fungus in the grass that the scarifying has broken up.

I was planning on forking the ground to get some air into it before I used the seed and feed

 

Hi, I have managed to get a close up picture of the problem area

Any advice is appreciated

Andrew

 

I could be wrong but the brown stuff looks like dried "stove pipes" i.e. spore bearing tips of a forthcoming Field Horsetail (Equisetum arvense) uprising

The pipes look like a mysterious kind of fungus and to have so many in a small area means that you could be in for somewhat of a battle

Do these look familiar?

 

Hi,

Nothing has been allowed to grow that big but here is a close up of ones pulled from the ground just now

 

Thankfully it's not Horsetails as they are almost the worst-case scenario for many gardeners.

It could just be red thread. Here's a link that may be useful for diagnosing and treat this grass issue: Red thread/RHS Gardening

 

Thanks for the info mowerman, I have already forked and scarified so will look at getting nitrogen into the soil before trying the chemical route

Thanks again
Andrew