Scarifying the lawn.. photies included :)

NickK

NickK

NickK

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13 Jan 2003
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So our lawn was 80% moss.. I bought a scarifier/rake (Einhell electric from the rainforest) and applied a liberal amount of 4-in-1 moss killed, lawn fertiliser about a week ago. This could be down for longer but given the amount I put down it did a great job quickly with nightly waterings to drive the chemicals home.

We have some shaded areas and some direct sun areas.

First highest level pass scarifying:



Look at that moss appearing!

Now.. after completing the first pass and manually raking together:



Boot and rake in there for size reference.. this is all dead moss from the first pass only..

Here's the scarifier (top) and rake (bottom) attachments:



Now the next step was to switch over the attachment to rake and give it a once over... lots more moss appeared...

Then switching back to the scarifier again for a second pass at 30deg from the last pass - even more moss..



Now you can see the brown patches of earth minus the moss...

So just having lunch, then second pass rake before aerating with a fork.. and then over seeding with sharp sand and lots of grass seed later on once the sun has dropped.. water... and keep watering each day..
 
Hehe, when we used to do that commercially on large sites we had piles of moss 5ft high or more, we used leaf blowers to blow it into a heap, backpack blower preferably. Raking is hard work.
 
Well it looks more like a building site now with the sharp sand and grass seed. I've given it a good soak with the sprinkler too.

I put down 100m^2 of grass seed.. but I may put down a second type of seed for the sunny area.

Lucky the mrs is a daughter of a builder.. she said "Wow that looks good - as I know what it will look like"!


I now have seven rubbish sacks full of moss and old thatch to take to the tip tomorrow!
 
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Just put some moss killer down on my lawn after neglecting it for the best part of two years. Raking to come and then re-seeding and going to put a fair bit of sharp sand down too. Most of the lawn sees a lot of sunlight apart from one side that is always shaded, hence the moss. It doesn't help that most of my garden is sodden clay with terrible drainage.
 
funkyphantom said:
Why sharp sand and not a nice loamy top soil?
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The problem is todo with drainage. Adding top soil would result in additional heavy settlement.

There's not much sand - just enough to keep the seed put with the wind.

The entire garden is on sand for a good meter, on top of natural sand.
 
Sharp sand is not a drainage medium. The particle shape is prone to lock together, which, in time will create drainage problems. Also sand is inert. I would much sooner get a nice loamy dressing in because of the goodness that comes with it. If you must use sand make sure it has a round particle shape, and for God's sake do not buy it from a builders merchants!!
 
funkyphantom said:
Sharp sand is not a drainage medium. The particle shape is prone to lock together, which, in time will create drainage problems. Also sand is inert. I would much sooner get a nice loamy dressing in because of the goodness that comes with it. If you must use sand make sure it has a round particle shape, and for God's sake do not buy it from a builders merchants!!
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True - although there's only one pack down. The garden is larger than 360m2 so it should be ok with less than a centimetre depth in the shaded area.

Need to pop to B&Q for 200m2 of additional grass seed for the non shady areas that get lots of food work. I'll probably go for the fast growing stuff too.

Next step will be the border separation - just looking at stone separators between the boarder, the garden and the garden and path. Later I'll redo the path.
 
tried to recover the lawn when i bought the house. after getting all the moss out there was pretty much nothing left. decided then to just clear everything and buy new turf
 
NickK said:
True - although there's only one pack down. The garden is larger than 360m2 so it should be ok with less than a centimetre depth in the shaded area.

Need to pop to B&Q for 200m2 of additional grass seed for the non shady areas that get lots of food work. I'll probably go for the fast growing stuff too.

Next step will be the border separation - just looking at stone separators between the boarder, the garden and the garden and path. Later I'll redo the path.
Click to expand...

Ahh so your using the sharp sand as a carrier for your seed.
There are some great mixes of dwarf rye about nowadays. Look out for them :)
 
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