Browse Forums Landscape & Garden Design Re: Plugging lawn 5Jan 21, 2009 10:13 am Fu Manchu :lol: gee whiz I am sure your mum was pretty hot in her day but I hope I don't look like her because I am not a girl the turf generally has soil attached (or in WA sand ). because it dries out so easy and then you water heavily the soil from around the roots can wash away. pulling it up will only increase this happening as you pull it up too. Just don't pull it up? sometimes turf harvested in heat will have very little soil around the roots because it drys out and falls away Making matters worse you bought it from a nursery. Nurseries have about 3 days at the most to sell turf. Normally delivered to retail outlets on a Friday so weekend warriors can smash it down quick. If the turf is left in sun and it may have been handled many times and that makes the soil fall away. even you transporting it will do it. It will be fine, lots of water and lots of seasol Zoysia is available in SA but you don't get it from nurseries call around to turf farms Nah, know your not a woman - but my mum is a garden guru and she says that sort of thing to me allllll the time. Yeah, don't make a habit of pulling at the grass, just gently at the start looking at if the roots had gone down yet - as I said, there were some arguments re not watering enough - so it all stemmed from there..... ofcourse me being the wife, was right, who would have thought! Our nursery guy said when we ordered it that he was going to hold off for a while on ordering it until we had a cooler spell. He said the same thing, it gets cut one day, then delivered to wherever the next day, then he doesn't get it til the third day. He said it being wrapped up in plastic for a coupld of days, can make it sweat and yellow. Seasol, might buy shares in that stuff! Thanks Fu Manchu - you are a gem!! Re: Plugging lawn 6Feb 01, 2009 1:35 pm Just wanted to update on this incase anyone was interested as I know I couldn't find much info on this when I first started looking into it, so this might help someone else.
We received 10sqm of Sir Walter roll out last saturday. I am in SA, so you can imagine how pleased I was to then see the forecast for the next week....as everyone is no doubt aware it's been FRICKING BOILING here for the last week and set to continue for this week too.! The nursery guy wasn't actually going to order it til we had a cool period but don't spose he could have known the weather was going to be as bad as it has been, so although we are really angry, we don't blame him (well just a little bit). When we got it home saturday morning it looked nice and green, really healthy, didn't stay that way. We put wetta water crystals over the entire area. We cut it into squares to cover the area we wanted to do, as we are going to do it in sections and wait til each section is established so doesn't require huge amounts of water, then we will move onto the next section, so each section can get adequate water as it is growing. We had about 3sqm left over, so rolled that out as it was and that is looking really really happy again now despite the 40+ weather we have had non-stop since it was in. It died back a bit the first day or two, but now is looking a lot greener than any of the other lawns around the town, and has already set roots down. The sqaures aren't looking as happy, but still every square has new bright green blades, so I'm hopeful. We have been watering quite heavily, about 30min soaking at night to give it the best opportunity to get to the grass rather than drying up as soon as it comes out of the pop ups during the day which it feels like it's been doing with the heat!! We have then been giving it another 15 mins or so early morning, and then 15mins at lunch and again after I get home from work about 4. Before anyone says anything about water restrictions - we are usually totally reliant on rainwater and have a biocycle to reuse every drop of water not just the grey water, (and have only just now started carting water for the house from our meter 1km away as we have had no rain), so restrictions aren't a problem. We have now strung up shade cloth over the lawn squares to give it a bit more of a chance. We almost gave up a couple of days in when we saw the lush green lawn we got turn to dry dusty looking dead patches of lawn, but are really glad now that we didn't and we have put the effort in, because we think it is going to be fine. Been a lot of effort, there has been a lot of carting water (which we needed to do anyway for the house, but still a pain), and some hand watering individual squares too, but hopefully it will be worth it. Must say I am amazed the way it has coped, two thumbs up for Sir Walter. Re: Plugging lawn 7Feb 01, 2009 11:34 pm Just keep the water up to it, and use seasol weekly on it. Nothing else is needed. the leaves that are now underground go yellow, the tips that poke through photosynthesise and have chlorophyll, same reason they grow rhubarb in the dark. 5 5131 |