help on how to improve my lawn

Hi All,
I'm relatively new in experience to looking after the garden and gonna appreciate some help on how best to do things with advice on tacking weeds on lawn, moss and bare patches and whether to bother using the stuff in granules that feeds and weeds the lawn.
Here's the scenario - Lawn is a bit distressed and want to tackle it. it's got yellowish straw looking bits + bare patches. I never realised you need to put lawn feed in once or twice a year so never done that. I laid a new lawn myself (well with help from a friend 2 years ago). Since then it's developed bumps as well as bare patches. Do bumps/uneven areas develop? I had almost a flat surface of soil 2 yrs ago when I seeded the lawn. In hindsight wish I researched earlier how to care for the lawn :-(.
Want to also get advise if I should aerate the soil with an aerator or not?
I get full on sun in the afternoon which I now understand means the garden generally faces West, (good for sitting out in the evening). I don't know what type of soil I have I am based in north west London if that makes a difference to soil type.
Appreciate any advice to get me started.
Thanks Much
Bob

 

Adding some photos

 

I would recommend lawn seed and then a week after that i would put some lawn feed on it then. Try a cheaper lawn seed (i find it works sometimes better than the leading brands) and see how that goes. hope it helps

 

thanks - do you think I should aerate the soil before over seeding? Never aerated before and wondering if an advantage to do this before overseeding. I was thinking of buying one of these small aerators. Going to review on one of the posts here on aerators as well as on amazon.

 

i didn't aerate mine and just put seed on it and it came up as good as new when fertilized

 

ok thanks I'll soon get started- is the order the following:

1. rake out all the dead looking grass. I think that's what's called thatch. I have a lot of yellowish straw looking bits on the lawn.
2. Mown the lawn to about 1.5" high

 

btw: a lot of the grass areas have yellowed, - curious why that occurs.

 

How did you prepare the soil when you originally laid the lawn?

What I'd like to hear you say is that it was dug over to a reasonable depth, and then levelled. (Same whether you sowed grass seed, or laid turf)

Is the house a New Build? Typically (gawd knows why it is allowed) builders bury the rubble in the garden, that wrecks the drainage, and then nothing grows "properly" on top of it.

If you get serious rain / a prolonged wet spell - how quickly does it drain when the rain stops? 30 minutes or so? or does it hang about for a day or more? (I am guessing it drains OK otherwise I would expect to see moss etc.)

Might have been the grass seed mix that you used - although hopefully not if it came from somewhere reputable.

You don't have to fertiliser the grass twice a year - but if you want a spivey looking lush & dark green lawn then you will and in that case you'll also need to do the Aerate, Thatch removal, top-dress and over-seed things too ... some or all of those will be needed periodically even for a non-spivey lawn

Right: lets try and diagnose what the problem is first. Answers, to above questions, on a postcode pls

 

here's my answers:
The house is 1930's semi detached. I originally laid the lawn summer of 2011. It was bumpy at the time and we had builders who finished some work so there was timber, rubble bags and plastering dust all over the lawn - lots of mess basically, although builders put most on top of a dust sheet to "protect the lawn" . After getting all that off the lawn it was in a bad shape and definitely no grass in the large area with building material over it. I used a garden fork and forked out the top of the lawn esp where I had clumps of soil with plastering dust all over the grass surface. Whenever I saw this is I removed that top section with the fork and put it in bags and took this to the local recycle centre. I was then left with a mostly soil surface. with most of the old grassy top taken away. I am not sure the depth of what it was dug to - it would have been the depth of using a garden fork and lifting out the top surface.

The next manual intensive job started. I raked and raked removing all stones the rake found. There were a few half bricks that came up from the raking and I got rid of those as well. (I am trying to recall accurately and i think i did get liquid weedkiller on the soil to get rid of all weeds prob after I raked and levelled.) Anyway after the raking I levelled with the help of a friend - had a long timber board and used that to level as well as a garden roller I hired from hire shop. So I think the level was ok, suppose I could have called someone in but was trying to save some money and do it all myself. In terms of the levelling - as i had lost a lot of the top surface as I threw that away I used many bags of wickes top soil (esp for lawns) + multipurpose compost and mixed these. This was to get the top surface upto level again as I prob lost 3-4 inches in height of the lawn. After rolling wherever i saw dips in the soil level I patched it with extra of this topsoil.
Now to applying the new seed - I bought grass seed from B&Q. I think it was their high quality stuff for a durable lawn (esp to cope with people traffic and kids and ok for shady areas). I have a shady area at the end of the garden where I have conifer trees and grass never grown well there. I do remember I did also buy some grass seed from Wilkinson and used a combination of the 2 - prob when i ran out of the B&Q stuff. I researched with my friend Google and mixed grass seed with the wickes topsoil and sharp sand (can't recall what ratio I used). I then applied the seed and made sure soil was kept watered regularly. Quite quickly the new grass established and i think I did the right things, i.e. wait a good while till 1st mowing at highest level. I remember i had a party at home around Oct 2011 and my friends commented How the lawn looked a nice dark green. So it started off good.

I did not fertilise the lawn or aerate since the new seed was applied back in Summer 2011. I did have moss on it at times and I used the mosskiller granules via the plastic box with spreader on top from B&Q, I think it was evergreen moss and feed. I cant recall when I did that - poss 2012. I've also had weeds take over dandelion and clover (not sure of the other names of weeds I saw, but those are the ones I recognised). One bad thing I have done is cut grass too short. I did at times cut it to literally almost like a bowling green. From researching I now found out that this weakens the grass and moss and weeds can take over if you mow too short. So that may have contributed to the downfall. I also have dips and bumps now on the lawn which were definitely not there when i levelled back in Summer 11. Someone at work told me dips appear cos of problems with the grass and the fact that it's never had a feed so the soil loses support of the grass roots underneath. The comment from the guy at work was "yeah the lawn will go to pot if you don't maintain it and even the dips in the level relate to not looking after the lawn" It was a chat while making a tea :-) Does that make any sense?

"If you get serious rain / a prolonged wet spell - how quickly does it drain when the rain stops? 30 minutes or so? or does it hang about for a day or more? (I am guessing it drains OK otherwise I would expect to see moss etc.)" - Hmmmm I don’t think the lawn is waterlogged but i think the soil will still be damp to walk on but nothing excessive. I do remember I used to get wet patches on the lawn, i.e. a puddle after heavy rain that still seemed to be there a day later (cant recall if that was old lawn or not). I am sure we can rely on rain - so i'll check this again.

Looking at the lawn again now - just to add it's like most of the lawn (apart from the very bare patches) has blades of grass that grow taller than the rest. Besides those taller blades of grass look like yellowish grassy thatch with some grass blades (hope I’m describing it ok). So basically the density of grass does not seem to be adequate. I suppose the end goal is I would like to try for a "spivey looking lush & dark green lawn" :-), but I need it to be hardwearing with kids playing on the lawn and I have a trampoline which the kids regularly use. Hopefully it's doable for a beginner like me. I'll have to do it gradually a couple of hours weekday evening + weekends. Hope this helps to describe everything.

 

Sounds fine. (Only issue would be if, previously / when the house was built, all the builder rubble was buried in the garden. You clearly got rid of the junk that your recent builders left behind)

Also sound fine. One trick is to use a ladder, rather than a board. Tie a rope to the rungs at each end and tow it front-to-back and left-to-right. If it skates across the surface stick a few blocks on it for weight. You need it so that it "tows" and inch or so of soil, and then drops that into the hollows, and scalps the "rises".

A pallet might do instead of a ladder:



But sounds like what you did was certainly good enough.

Also sounds fine. "High quality" can mean "no ryegrass" but that is NOT the same as "hard wearing", so hopefully "High quality & hard wearing" did include ryegrass.

All sounds goo

OK. I'm not sure what the long term effect of that would be. If you carried on mowing it that short for a prolonged period I expect you could have killed some of the grasses, and then what you had left would have only been the ones that were able to survive being mown short.

That's a new one on me, but either way it is now bumpy.

If the bumps are not very high/deep you can cover the area with topsoil (actually adding some sand would help, unless your soil is already very sandy, but I am guessing that in London you have a clay soil). 50:50 top soil and sharp sand (not builders sand) will be fine. If either top soil or sand is cheaper use more of that but ideally "more sand" would be better.

Spread it about so it fills in the hollows (you can start with the Ladder trick, that will get it pretty smooth for starters)- if you work it in a bit the grass should peep through (except where it is very deep). The tool you need (good luck trying to find one!) is a lawn lute.



(I can't get the Lawn Lute picture to show - I've had this problem before, here is a link to the image [LINK])

back of a rake is a reasonable substitute.

Its a good idea to mow the grass pretty short first, makes the job easier. Then over seed the whole thing with a suitable grass seed (you want one that includes perennial ryegrass - ones that have no ryegrass are suitable for bowling greens etc., but are a lot more work / skill to maintain, and not really suitable for kids treating it as a football pitch!)

I expect that B&Q etc. "quality" brand will be fine, or we can recommend online suppliers (but if you don't need much the carriage for an online purchase will probably be "a lot")

"Overseed" is normally about 50% of what you would apply for a new lawn.

This would be easier done in the Autumn, as rains will come, and weeds will be shutting down for Autumn, and hopefully the kids won't miss the lawn being out of bounds for a couple of months - but you can do it now it you like.

If you are going to leave it until the Autumn I would use a selective weedkiller to kill any weeds in the lawn between now and then. They won't then be causing trouble as the grass is germinating.

Sounds all right. I expect you would remember if you have a lake, instead of a lawn!!, every time it rained hard over the winter.

Be interested to hear what others say, but I think:

Top dress with soil / sand, smooth into the hollows, and over-seed

 

Thanks v much for the detailed feedback. I'll be going through it a few times. I just realised if I do tackle this in the summer would I need to partition off areas that were overseeded from the kids running over them? I expect the answer is going to be yes. If so i never actually thought of that. Also If yes - how long before you can walk on new grass. I could possibly move the trampoline to the middle of the lawn and work on the area of lawn behind it. I suppose part of me wanted to see a nicer lawn this summer but maybe i need to be more patient. Will give that more thought.

 

Also wondering any advantage if i want to think about aerating as it's not been done before. I saw a spring tined aerator on amazon for some £15.

 

Yup

If you water the new grass seeded area each day (not to flood it, just to get it nicely wet) that will make the grass germinate more quickly (than if you just wait for rain). I expect it will still be neigh on 14 days before it germinates.

I'd be inclined to roll it after another fortnight (no sooner). That will settle the soil down, and get the grass to "tiller" (thicken at the base). Itwould take light foot traffic after that (only when dry - when wet it will "pick up" on shoes/boots), but kids doing emergency turns and the like would rip it up.

So basically it will be out of [serious] action for a couple of months

The lawn will appreciate that, but given that yours doesn't flood when it rains hard I don't think it is urgent.

 

ahh ok thanks. So if i was to wait till autumn what is the best month to start. I prob mistakenly thought the autumn would be too cold for grass to germinate and grow