A sick lawn...

[Scuzi]

Up until mid-November my lawn was in excellent condition. It looked really healthy and showed no signs of any problems. It was initially turfed in April with Rolawn Medallion. It was fed on schedule and the last feed was in early October with Aftercut Autumn lawn feed. At the same time I aerated it with a hollow tine.

The neighbours lawn has been looking terrible from July and looked like my lawn does now since around August. I don't know if it's related?








Here is a pic of the neighbours garden where it joins mine:



One of the pics shows what I think are earthworm casts. There's loads of them in the bare patches. I haven't read anything to suggest that this could be the cause though - if anything it should help with drainage and aeration.

Any ideas what is causing this and can it be saved before it deteriorates any further? My lawn is like a voodoo doll - I feel it's pain!

 

[Scuzi]

Possibly leather jackets. It looks very like what happened to ours. They eat the roots, but not sure they would be active over the winter.

I think we have a winner! I've researched leather jackets since seeing your post and managed to find a lovely one with sheepskin lining. I also found lots of pictures of lawns which have been attacked by the buggers and they look very similar. Around about August the lawn was absolutely covered in crane flies. If you walked on it hundreds of them would fly up.

It looks like there are no chemical treatments available. The only solutions are to cover the lawn and manually pick them when they rise to the surface, and nematoads, the latter being only viable in the warmer months.

I'm glad that a fairly confident diagnosis has been reached. Treatment looks like it may take some time.

Many thanks

 

[Scuzi]

Yup I found a supplier that would sell it to me but the bottle was the same price as getting a pro in to do it and there's less chance of me unleashing chemical warfare in the neighbourhood. A guy from Lawn Master is coming tomorrow to apply the treatment.

Next step will be to scarify and seed later in the month. Do you think it would benefit from a top dressing? Hopefully it will recover by summer.

I was thinking of applying nematodes as a preventative measure since all the neighbours lawns are infested and they've shown no interest in getting it treated. Thoughts on this?

 

[Scuzi]

Success!



There are thousands of them scattered across the lawn. This selection was picked from a area of about 3" square. I managed to catch a few in the process of surfacing and took out my rage on them with the heel of my boot

A good third of the lawn is completely bare now and what remains is very thin and looking in poor health. I'm hoping a reseed will save it.

 

[Scuzi]

I got a chap from Lawn Master to treat it with Chlorpyrifos. Could have bought a bottle of the stuff for £35 but it appears to be quite tricky to handle and Lawn Master were charging £35 for the treatment. With kids and all neighbours having animals in their gardens I didn't want to risk killing anything other than the leatherjackets!

It appears to have been money well spent so far. When the temperatures rise I'm going to apply Nemasys nematodes as a preventative measure since the neighbours aren't interested in treating their lawns.

Reseeding in a couple of weeks. I'll report on progress.

 

[Scuzi]

Did you neighbour have the same treatment performed on their lawn?

No, and despite explaining the problem and the cure they're not interested. I'm hoping that Nematodes can keep the leatherjackets from their lawns at bay. I'll be pretty annoyed if my lawn keeps getting infested because they won't treat theirs.

 

[Scuzi]

The most peculiar thing happened last week. I haven't treated the lawn with anything this time round, didn't bother with nematodes. This was evident as the lawn is quite thin. Not as bad as last time when it disappeared though.

I was eating dinner one evening and what seemed like fifty starlings descended on the lawn. Each of them was lifting 3-4 leather jackets, taking them onto the paving stones and beating them to death before heading off with them. This continued for about an hour - they took hundreds of the things.

Hopefully that'll mean they won't hatch out as daddy long legs and lay more eggs in the lawn later in the year!