In case you haven’t heard of then, “snow moulds” are a group of fungi that can attack your turf – and in extreme cases kill areas of grass. Luckily it’s fairly easy to treat, but here is a pretty comprehensive overview of the disease and its treatment.
Archive for March, 2008
Leatherjackets in Turf
If, like me, you are a bit of a dunce when it comes to things with either too many legs (like centipedes and their fellow soily denizens) or not enough legs (worms and such like) then you’re probably alarmed to see things squirming through your soil and generally eating your grass and/or comestible vegetables.
Leatherjackets are one such creepy crawly that personally make me go all squeamish and girly. They are the larvae of the crane fly – which you may know better as the Daddy Long Legs. Although they may mainly appear to be a nuisance when banging noisily against your lights and inciting horror in all of those for whom dangly legs are an anathema, their most irritating phase is actually when they are still babies.
These little suckers like to chow down on the roots of your turf, damaging or killing the grass plants. The solutions are:
- Try pick them out by hand – in the early evening they are often visible at the surface crawling about in their grey-skinned, nightmarish way
- Apply nematodes. Nematodes are little worms that are parasitical on certain kinds of insect and bug. Specific species of nematode are available that purely eat leatherjackets. Buy a box, drop them on your lawn and let them eat the leatherjackets. Job done!
So, now you know!
Returfing…
Well. The time is nearly upon me when I finally get around to doing something about the lawn. Those of you who’ve been keeping up with things will have noticed my periodic, self-pitying moans about the tawdry state of my grass and my constant vows to sort the bloody stuff out.
It might not seem like the best time of life to be undertaking it – for I have a bun in the oven (or rather: The Wife does) and a 2 year old who you can be assured will be up to his neck in anything that takes place in the garden but I can procrastinate no more!
The first step is, of course, to figure out what the hell to do with the 45,000 tonnes (est.) of turf and topsoil I’ve already got in the garden. I’m guessing it will be a job where I’ll need to hire a skip (rather than skip higher) and be prepared for a few days solid graft with a spade.
Then, I’m guessing, I will have to put in some new topsoil in order to give the lawn a decent base… before finally buying some fricking turf and laying it. I can’t imagine it’s that hard a task but I shall – as ever – let you – the gentle reader – know how I progress. (Did you like all those sub-clauses and extraneous punctuation? I did!) I’ve been hanging round a few gardening forums to pick up some tips about where to buy turf, what I need to do to make it work, how long it will take and all that. Apparently, I’ll have to do the turfing part of the operation in a single day – so I might tell my dad to forget about his dicey back and get down here to help out!
The only remaining question is whether to persist with the veg garden. Currently, this takes up the top helf of the garden on a raised level. We discussed making all of this bit into a veg patch – but that was before pregnancy curtailed my wife’s ability to weed/rake/sow and hoe. Currently we should be well into planting season and I ain’t done nish.
Ah well. I’ll think on and you’ll be the first to know when I’ve decided.
