Disappearing lawn

With attention to services and utilities, a 6ft by 1in breaker bar will get you through this much quicker. You may be able to hire one?

Raise and drop. When you get down you drop the bar and give it one large circular movement for each drop. You can be three foot with minutes and have a good 9 inch or, whatever size, taper.

...Ray.

I think I'm only now seeing the true picture. You dug down below the clay level in which case, given the surroundings, your garden is in a clay bath?

...Ray.

As a kid, I loved how those things felt in my fingers. We had a good garden condition firm in wet weather and hardly ever watered in the summers.

I think we would find these creatures when we lifted the house bricks around the perimeter as kids exploring?

Though beneath the surface the soil is darker, it was never really what you call wet. For this reason, I don't imagine the Leatherback to be a creature of the wet conditions, whether or not they can be.

...Ray

Local bowling club spent all weekend last september drilling 2 foot deep holes all over their green. They had a an 8X4x18mm plywood panel predrilled with an array of 20mm holes which they moved around the green and then used an sds drill with a 2 foot long bit to make deep holes. The plywood collected the dross which they discarded, and then they poured sand and grit into the resulting tubes. Not sure if they plugged the top of the hole with precut turf though.

Arable farmers on clay used to use things called pan-busters many years ago. Like a special plough that goes down 2 foot pulled by a very powerful tractor.

They still do, but its called 'subsoil ploughing' these days or something like that.

They also will mole plough at a foot or two down and that with installed land drains (porous pipe) allows pretty good drainage

I was involved with a project to drain a school playing field. It was soggy. I private contractor was brought in. He had a tractor machine with a wheel cutter and pipe layer. It would very often jamb to a stop.

Progress was slow and the conditions meant his wheels created plough lines in some areas of the otherwise flat field. I didn't get to see the results.

Under different conditions this method would be quick and cleaner.

The catch is that phrase 'With attention to services and utilities'

NT

Mathew, This has been an interesting discussion. I do hope you will report back, in six or even twelve months time. Would love to know the outcome.

Will do - hopefully with good news! :-)

I hope to scribble down a drawing for a drainage idea this weekend and will scan it in to see what the panel think.

Mathew

Not quite 6/12 months just yet but I do have a bit of an update:

Someone suggested getting in touch with the turf+topsoil supplier (Rolawn) for their opinion so I did. They even passed on my photos to the Sports Tur f Research Institute and they both believe, caveated by the limited informa tion to go on, that the primary issue is a leatherjacket infestation.

The mild autumn/winter has been suggested an aggravating factor and they ha ve suggested a nematode application once the soil warms up. I plan to do th is in April and will also apply again in Sep/Oct when the new eggs start to hatch.

I plan on looking at drainage too and will post back tomorrow with a drawin g to get thoughts from the panel on an idea!

Mathew

) for their opinion so I did. They even passed on my photos to the Sports T urf Research Institute and they both believe, caveated by the limited infor mation to go on, that the primary issue is a leatherjacket infestation.

have suggested a nematode application once the soil warms up. I plan to do this in April and will also apply again in Sep/Oct when the new eggs start to hatch.

ing to get thoughts from the panel on an idea!

Having looked at my lawn I noticed in a large area the grass is disappearin g and moss has taken over due, yes due to unusually high rainfall. Would it be prudent to suggest your grass should have been replaced with mo ss if drainage was the main problem and therefore the leather jackets may w ell be the main suspect?

That thought did cross my mind. Surely if my grass couldn't survive due to excessive water then it would likely have been replaced by other growth fro m matter more suited to the environment like moss as you say?

All that said, I am concious that I have the *potential* for drainage issue s given the clay subsoil and garden layout. With this in mind I am wonderin g what others think me taking advantage of a rainwater sewer inspection cha mber that I happen to have under my decking?

A picture speaks a thousand words:

The decking sits in a recess (to minimise the step up from the lawn) and so as a result I am assuming it is well located for draining the whole garden .

The easy (lazy) option (Option A in the drawing) would be for me to perfora te the chamber walls - perhaps to nearly full height - however I am mindful that this could cause silting up of the outflow pipe over time?

Option B would be to dig around the top 250mm or so (access isn't all that easy given the surrounding decking hence not doing this for the full height ), wrap it with permeable weed-stop fabric and infill with gravel. Only thi s section would then be perforated.

Any thoughts on this idea? I recognise that the ideal (aka 'should have don e this in the first place') option would be to provide channels from across the lawn to the chamber as the clay subsoil might not allow free levelling /distribution of the water without these however I am mindful that I don't have a confirmed drainage issue and also want to minimise effort by digging the whole lawn/soil up if at all possible!

Mathew

Until you've ensured you no longer have a leatherjacket problem (assuming you had one in the first place), I'd do absolutely nothing, otherwise you might find you've put in a lot of work for nothing.

and still it kept on raining.....

The thing is I can only really tackle the leatherjackets in anger in Sep/Oct and so don't want to sit back until then. Besides which, the proposed plan isn't much work and I don't see any downsides (I just want to ensure there's an upside though!).

School rugby pitches are regularly walked all over by children with neither concern for footwear or school property. If i was the OP I would tell myself to leave the worms alone for a few weeks and every winter regardless of the regardening.

But the OP is obviously a bit simple so I would be talking to myself for all the wrong reasons. Just how much trampling does the fool think a practically new lawn is capable of dealing with in an exceptionally wet winter?

How many times do I have to say this? The lawn gets virtually no use at all. Indeed it hasn't been walked on for over three months now!

It certainly has never been 'trampled'. The main footfall is two cats, and they rarely deviate from their well defined paths as mentioned.

Having heard all the opinions, including that of Rolawn and the STRI, I am quite convinced that it is a leatherjacket issue and so that will be my focus going forwards.

Mathew

I'd read that leatherjackets make the grass go yellow and die. It looks like yours is actually disappearing.

Starlings dig up the grass to get at the leatherjackets. So the grass does dissapear. Had that happen 3 years ago.