Lawn Thatch and Under Watering
Original Lawn |
Thatch is defined as an accumulation of dead and living plant material (stems, roots, and shoots) that develops between the soil surface and the green leaves of a lawn. Thatch development is a natural process that occurs during normal growth of a lawn, but under watering a lawn can have serious consequences. Although some thatch is desirable, thatch becomes undesirable when it exceeds a depth of 1/2 inch. |
One week later |
I was called out to see a client who had once had a beautiful lawn. This was 3 or 4 years ago. And since then the lawn had been getting worse and worse. It was clear from first inspection that the law was dry, the subsoil was dry and there was a thatch problem. This particular type of grass produces thatch that closely resembles finely chopped up leaves or sawdust.
Anyway the lawn was patchy and the wrong colour. It was also suffering from the tips of every blade of grass being brown.
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how easy it is to recover from this situation. Read
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When a lawn is under
watered, then the leaves that grow immediately after watering, begin
to draw nutrients from the older parts of the plant. This results in
older leaves being sacrificed for the new growth. Basically a balance
in achieved that every time you underwater then more thatch (dead
leaves) is produced. This cycle continues and gradually produces a layer of dead leaves
on the surface of the lawn. But the situation gets
worse, because the deeper the layer of dead material the more you have
to water, and unfortunately under watering more frequently only makes the
situation worse. So you have to break the cycle, get rid of the thatch
and completely alter the way you water. So the first thing we did with the old lawn was get rid of the
thatch. This was achieved by a combination of raking
it up and vacuuming it up.
Then it was immediately soaked with about
1/2 inch of water to penetrate to the roots.
The next day it was fed with our Lawns in
Spain Summer Mix fertiliser (2 Kilos per 100M2)
After the fertiliser was applied it was watered again.
We now had a lawn which had food to grow and water down to its roots.
Three days later the lawn was visibly growing back.
It was then mowed to 2 inches.
And the above photos show you the lawn 1 week later and due to Holiday clients arriving in less than 3 weeks, was
given another application of fertiliser and watered again.
The photos above speak for themselves!!
For more tips on de-thatching a lawn, see our Custom Lawn Repair Project it contains step by step advice on repairing your lawn. Each project is tailored to suit your lawn and lists each product and step by step processes that are required to get your lawn back to tip top health.