Anyone got any recommendations for lawn weed, feed and moss killer? I've used Evergreen in the past but always seem to end up with burnt patches (probably me being clumsy). Are Verve or Westland (from B&Q) any better?
I buy the sacks of westland from amazon and refill a dispenser. Much cheaper than the garden centres/sheds And yes you do need to dose it carefully whichever you use as wellas paying attention to the timing re cutting and rain.
I can put up with a few weeds, but I hate moss because it just seems to take over. So all I ever buy is ferrous sulphate off ebay. It kills the moss in less than a day, and is much cheaper than the 3-in-1 stuff.
I haven't been able to buy straight ferrous sulphate for years in normal shops (other than in piddlingly small quantities, and at ridiculously high prices). The last 25kg bag I got was at least 10 years ago (for about £10), and I was led to believe that, for ordinary folk, there was an EC H&S restriction on the purchase of large quantities (risk of a hernia?). However, I now see that you CAN get it at a reasonable price.
I currently have a sack of westland from Costco, probably 5 years old - I don't use it heavily, and mainly only in necessary areas rather than the whole lawn.
It's nowhere near as good as the stuff you could buy 8+ years ago. I presume some more effective chemicals have been banned. Dosing is a fine line between killing the weeds and killing the grass.
I find it works best in the spring and lawn will look bad for some weeks afterwards, but eventually recovers much better than it was before. You will need to rake out the dead moss though.
If you only want to feed the lawn, forget all the commercial products. Piss in the watering can, fill with water, and use that to water the lawn. Tip came from Radio 4's Gardeners Question Time some years ago, and it works well.
There are bags of all sizes on ebay. No cheaper than the one you found on Amazon, though. But, oddly, mixed in with the search results are ferrous sulphate tablets for the treatment of anaemia.
The Westland stuff we're talking about works fine on dandelions, although it's not fast acting - many plants will still be able to flower and seed successfully whilst they are dying. It struggles on some of the more robust weeds though.
I often see cut dandelion heads on the lawn after mowing (I leave the cuttings on), and sometimes they still manage to produce seeds over the coming days. You can't help admiring the tough little sods.
Same with bluebells. My house came with a bed of Spanish bluebells, which I don't mind, but they spread given half a chance. I now pull all the flower stems off when the flowers start turning into seedpods. Still have to bin them carefully, as they still develop fully and eventually release the seeds.
I do that but there always seem to be some that escape and go to seed, to deal with those I go around the garden with a reasonably powerful cordless vacuum cleaner and suck the seeds off before they have a chance to spread. Started to doing that 3 years ago and the number of Dandelions around the garden are much fewer now.
Often its not your garden that is the problem. You only need a near neighbour to have a garden full of Dandelions for yours to be infested in the next season.
It will always look "burnt" if it has an ammonium ferrous sulphate based lawn sand component - the trick is to get it evenly distributed. The moss turns black when its chlorophyll is damaged by the mix.
It also need to be rained on or watered in within a couple of days to avoid damage even if you apply it correctly. Timing is everything so you can put it on just before some rain is due.
If it is burning the grass as well then you are not spreading it evenly enough (which is easily done if you are not careful). Also beware that it will stain concrete paths with rust marks very efficiently.
Usually the grass comes back pretty quickly since the stuff behaves as a high nitrogen feed after killing of most of the moss.
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