Gardeners - what's up with my soil?

[poppet27]

My lawn is in full sun but suffers from moss creeping in from all sides. We even pulled it out last year and resowed with grass seed, but this year it's back again.

The soil at the borders is also really poor: pale in colour, terrible at retaining water and only daffodils will grow.

The thing I can't understand is why the lawn also suffers from desertification in summer. Huge crevasses appear across the middle and must be 8cm deep.

I have ordered a soil pH testing kit but any green fingered advice welcome!

[Lynne]

Sounds like mine. I assumed clay

Lynne

[nxjen]

A lawn has three requirements which need to be carried out over the summer months to keep it lush and healthy:

regular mowing

regular feeding (many commercial foods contain ingredients that will keep moss and other weeds down)

regular watering, especially if the lawn is in full sun. Easiest way is with a sprinkler.

If you do already maintain your lawn in this way, am at a loss of other things to suggest. If you don't, I promise your effort will be rewarded next year.

[Sue]

poppet27 Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> My lawn is in full sun but suffers from moss

> creeping in from all sides. We even pulled it out

> last year and resowed with grass seed, but this

> year it's back again.

>

> The soil at the borders is also really poor: pale

> in colour, terrible at retaining water and only

> daffodils will grow.

>

> The thing I can't understand is why the lawn also

> suffers from desertification in summer. Huge

> crevasses appear across the middle and must be 8cm

> deep.

>

> I have ordered a soil pH testing kit but any green

> fingered advice welcome!

xxxxxxx

There has been a lot of moss around generally this year, I've noticed, even in sunny places. But if you don't remove absolutely every last bit of moss from a lawn, it will just grow back again. You can buy chemicals to treat it specifically I think if you are desperate, but usually people use scarification, as you would for getting rid of thatch in a lawn.

This is quite backbreaking but I believe you can get electric lawn raking things these days (I'm an old school gardener :) )

Obviously you have to make sure you actually remove all the moss once it's raked up.

Your border soil - possibly consists of c**p dumped there by builders in the past? If it won't retain water, it's probably very sandy, and since as Lynne says the London soil round here is clay, again, I suspect builders.

Does it look the same all the way down? Could you dig a quite deep hole and see if there are layers? Whatever, you need to build it up with stuff like compost (not the stuff you buy in bags at the garden centre, the stuff you make from rotting down vegetable matter in a compost bin ......) to give it back body and nutrients.

Worst case scenario, and depending on how much soil is in your borders, you could remove the top part and replace with bought-in (or donated) topsoil, however that will cost you.

Your lawn crevasses in the Summer are almost certainly because this part of your soil is clay (which makes it even more likely that someone has f***ed up your borders). That's what clay does when it dries out (and goes horribly claggy when wet). The great thing about clay is that it's very fertile.

Whereabouts do you live? I'll come and have a look if you like. If I can't help I have a friend who is a professional gardener who would probably be willing to have a look next time she's in ED.

A soil testing kit will help to some extent, but it only tests for the presence of certain nutrients (particularly Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium) and will also test the acidity, but you need to look at other things like texture. And in any case, if nothing will grow in your borders, you already know there's something wrong!

The daffs are growing because they get their nutrients from the bulb.

ETA: Free-draining soil, like sandy soil, leaches away nutrients with the water it is losing, which is why many things don't grow well in it.

[Loz]

Sue - I thought lawns liked good drainage and hated to be too soggy?

[Sue]

Loz Wrote:

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> Sue - I thought lawns liked good drainage and

> hated to be too soggy?

xxxxxx

Sorry, not sure what point you are making?

I (and I thought the OP) was talking about "too" good drainage in her borders, where nothing will grow except daffodils?

If the lawn is on clay, then it is likely to get very waterlogged in the Winter (which wouldn't help the moss) and dried out (as it is doing) in the Summer.

I didn't think anybody had said anything about drainage re the lawn, though? Have I missed something?

You can use a thing with hollow tines on a lawn to help drainage, and brush sand into the holes.

Haven't watched this, but it's probably OK as it's on a BBC site:

http://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/projects/basics/how-to-improve-your-lawn/179.html

ETA: From the information given, there seem to be two separate problems:

1. The lawn (apparently laid on clay soil) which has moss, plus crevasses in Summer.

2. The borders (apparently consisting of nutrient-free very free-draining "soil" )