In The Garden: Lawns

0:00Flair FM's in the garden with Glen Road Garden Center, Glen Road Business Park in the heart of Enves, whether you're a seasoned gardener or just starting out. Our friendly staff are here to help your garden grow. Open seven days a week, Monday to Sunday. And I am joined as ever by Judy back from Glen Road Garden Center. Judy, good morning to you. Good morning, Alan, and another lovely day outside today. It is indeed natural to lovely day, but it strikes me as an ideal gardening day. I'm sure there's plenty of people who took the opportunity over the weekend. I might be able to continue that way things are going. You are talking this week about lawns. Yes, I suppose we're entering that time of year where the likes of myself have to as much as you don't want to drag the lawn more out and tackle them again. That's it, absolutely. And the good weather has brought lots of gardeners into the garden center over the weekend. And one of the big things that we were being asked about was lawns. So it is that time here when people are looking at their

1:02out in their gardens and I have to do something about my lawn. And the probably biggest problem that we have in this country is mass on the lawns. Mass of course is caused by damp conditions, shady conditions and there's not many lawns around would out a bit of mass and some would an awful lot of mass by what our customers are saying. So with the lawn care I suppose now it is time to start thinking about cutting your lawn as you were saying. And from now on for the summer we will be starting maybe once every two weeks and going into once a week. And that will definitely help with keeping the weeds and the moss down. And of course a regular lawn mowing. It makes your lawn stronger which will help to control those weeds and moss as well. OK. And just to remind people it is 8, 6, 8, 109, 6, 4, 4 your gardening questions. I'll put those to Judy a little later on.

2:04But what else Judy do people need to be aware of in terms of attacking their lawns? So compacted ground which means our ground that's been walked on that prevents the grass from growing and can lead to bear patches in your lawn over the summer and very muddy lawns in the winter. So to prevent that compaction or to help relieve the compaction you can aerate your soil by using a garden fork. There is a particular tool you can get far but most people won't you don't have to buy that. You can use a fork and go along your lawn every six inches or so, put your fork into the lawn, lift up the soil and let the air into it. If you have a very wet heavy soil you can brush sharp sand or fine horticultural grit into the soil and that will help improve the drainage and also helps to get rid of moss. But of course what most people use to get rid of moss there

3:05well there's two main ways you can use a product either called weed feed a muscular or else you can use a product the colmo backter which is based on a bacteria. And to go through the first one the weed feed a muscular that's a three and one it does contain a chemical contains a weed killer and it contains sulfate of iron and the sulfate of iron turns your moss black. The moss then needs to be raked out of the lawn or you can let it die away though it's a bit unsightly and then as it dies away you can reseed your lawn. The mo-backter works on a different type of science. It works on a bacteria. You spread the mo-backter over your lawn. It's no chemical so it's safe if you kids are pets. They don't need to be kept off the lawn and this is becoming very popular now to use it as it's more organic way of controlling the moss. So you put out the mo-backter on the lawn and it gradually dissolves the moss and as the moss dissolves then it feeds your

4:07lawn. So it not just acts as a getting rid of the moss it's also a feed for your lawn. So two different methods of using it both very popular and it's up to people which they would prefer to use themselves of course. You can then also get a weed just a pure weed killer if you don't want the weeds in your lawn. It is nice to maybe leave the dandelions for those bees coming out. There's not a lot for them at this time of year but I know that some people just like they want to try and get the the Augusta golf looking lawn which is easier said than done. You're very much easier said than done but it's supposed to be all of aspirations so how you can always try but yet you can get a pure weed killer if you want to get rid of the dandesies and dandelions. Okay what about people Judy and their garden and the brown areas that they just can't seem to get rid of what is causing

5:08that and how can they tackle it. So brown areas would usually be caused by drought and it's usually in areas of the lawn maybe that are under overhanging trees. The other reason it can be caused is by an over application of fertilizer and so less is more really when it comes to fertilizers and you say oh my gosh my lawn is terrible and you'll just add a little bit extra on which sometimes is counterproductive so and it can cause brown areas in the lawn and giving it a good watering does help a lot and then overseeding us with new lawn seed and what kind of lawn seed is people are asking what's all the difference with all these different lawn seeds now if you have you know high traffic on your lawn the kids are playing football you should go for a pretty hardy lawn seed if you have dogs out on the lawn a lot there is an extra tough lawn seed and you know there if it's like a front lawn that's not walked on the lawn and you like that very fine kind of a lawn you can get an extra fine lawn seed but generally

6:11for family lawns we would recommend what we call number two lawn seed and that is for you know it the kids playing football and it'll stand up to drought it'll stand up to good bit of rain which we all are used to so using the right lawn seed is important when you are reseeding your lawn. Okay another point you want or not the thing you want to talk about in terms of problems is leather jackets on new lawns and you know what I'm going to ask you what does that actually mean because obviously I'm just picturing a bunch of leather jackets a load of bikers have pulled up to your garden and they've thrown their leather jackets on your lawn what exactly is a leather jacket in law a gardening term so leather jacket is the larvae of the daddy long legs so it's it's a larvae that lives in the lawn and now it's normally a problem with new lawns so it could be if you've built a new house and you're turning the field into a lawn then these larvae tend to be in the old meadow and it's always the worst in the first year though the second year

7:11can be pretty bad as well and it's not just new lawns that get leather jackets there's no chemical control for them they do eat the roots of the grass there is what we call a nematode and nematode is a natural occurring little living creature that basically will eat the leather jackets and get rid of them but there's no chemical control and it does tend to improve as the years go on and they're not very common in older lawns okay that answers my question anyway I think I prefer actual leather jackets to the sound of larvae from daddy long legs any final points you want to make on lawns before we get on to the jobs you've drawn up for our listeners and so I suppose the main thing is with if you're starting to mow your lawn remember to have it up on a fairly high setting so you don't want to go too low at this time of year have it fairly high and then slowly lower your lawn more onto the as we dry out and if you cut

8:16it too low you'll get big brown patches and just looks a little bit on sightly it will recover it's not the end of the world if you go too low but it better started high and then you can slowly lower over the next month or two okay before we get to the jobs for the week actually I want to ask you about a man who's you know maybe it's no surprise he's got really gotten into gardening given his entire career involved starting about on grass but David Beckham you would think he'd be busy enough judy with being a big investor in Inter Miami over in MLS and obviously he has loads of all the things going on things generating money in his life but he's a keen gardener not only that at the world famous Chelsea flower show he's going to be hosting a garden at it with Alan Titchmarch as a part of a project with the King's Foundation I don't know where you were aware of David Beckham's love for gardening or have you seen any of his handy work is he any good at it he is actually one of the so I don't follow a lot of people on social media but I

9:19would follow him a little bit because he has a beautiful garden now it's a doesn't do all the work himself but he come on now are you telling me your man who's practically a billionaire is not doing all the hard work himself well maybe Victoria gives him a hand but he has a beautiful garden it is well worth following him and he has hands he has bees and he's quite well known for his gardening actually he does seem to have green fingers and there's another very famous monster sportsman who's big into gardening too Peter Romani follow him on social media as well and he loves his lawn so if you do like lawns he might be one that you'd be worth following and he has plenty of time now like David Beckham is retired so you can tackle his garden well that good to know that I wonder you know David and Peter I'm sure you're listening so Judy has some jobs drawn up for the week ahead you can get stopped him and David if you're not doing it your many helpers on your your your country's days can do this so what jobs have you drawn up for our listeners and for David and Peter for the common week I forgot to say one thing actually just when we

10:19were going through that I forgot to say just to people if they aren't doing their jobs just to be careful using their streamers because the hedgehogs and the frogs just to keep it in mind and not a lot of injuries caused to hedgehogs at this time of year and when people start taking out their streamers but to go on to the jobs for the week and ericaceous ericaceous shrubs that's the roaded endurance as alias, camellias, pieras they're all plants that like boggy soil they're like a lime cream compost we call them ericaceous and it now is the time to feed them with an ericaceous fertilizer also good time now if you're looking to plant up climbers around your walls such as a climatus and honey suckle lots of different types of climbers and shrubs now is a really good time to buy them and plant them in the spring and lots of new ones coming into the garden centre over the next few weeks and a favourite

11:19one especially with the kids is planting strawberry plants and putting them in hanging baskets to keep them away from the slugs and strawberry plants grow really well in hanging baskets so and strawberry plants begin to come now into the garden centre too. Yeah and I think I nearly might start growing strawberries myself as well Judy given how little time the ones you mind the supermarkets seem to last so if you grow them yourself they'll last a bit longer. And they taste so much better. And they taste so much better like everything else if you grow with yourself. Right let's get to the listeners questions 08680964 is the number for your gardening question and Brian is first up he says good morning we planted a laral hedge a year ago and while some has progressed and grown slightly a lot of it has gone yellow and it is not thriving I guess Brian is wondering why is that? I would say it could be a couple of reasons most likely is that possibly it's the soil is very wet and laral hedging hates wet soil so that could be causing it to go yellow and make it black spots as well.

12:21If it's hard now once it's planted to drain the soil but there are other hedges that do better in wet soil than that. Now the other reason it could be in parts of the soil could be very stony and the roots have nowhere to go. So if you dug down a little bit and it comes across a lot of rocks if he's on rocky soil the laral hedging is probably not thriving because the soil is just too poor in certain areas are you know if there's one or two that are just doing really poor under those particular plants there could be a big rock that's just preventing the roots from going anywhere. Okay we'll move on and a question here. It's quite apt given what you were talking about a while ago. A listener saying hi Alan and Judy what do I do if I find a hedgehog in my garden? Well I guess don't use a streamer around it it will be the first bit of advice from Judy. Yeah absolutely and they'll be coming out of hibernation now. So well we do have a hedgehog rescue in the Claire and the food they say never give hedgehogs milk for a star. I think it's dog food actually is what they will eat

13:22but I'd say leave well alone and dogs think I can't tend to go after a hedgehog so try and not let your dog near the hedgehog because they can cause a lot of damage to them but I mean I would love to have a hedgehog in my garden so I think that person is very lucky. Yeah just be careful around them as Judy says they've just woken up from long hibernation so they'll be tend to be a little prickly so I just... Approach. Approach with caution. Jair in Shannon is asking what fertiliser would one use on a lawn? So it depends if you want just pure fertilizer if you're lawns in pretty good condition otherwise you don't have a lot of moss and you don't have a lot of weeds you can just get a pure lawn feed and actually one... you can get a particular lawn feed but you can actually use fish blood and bone as well is like a really good fertilizer for lawns and you can buy that... you know lawns I'm very nice. I'm just trying not to think of that one. I remember my launch later. It is actually really good for lawns so if you have that already in the shade you could use that but you can buy liquid fertilizers for lawns

14:23you can buy granules as well and you can buy child safe granules that are non-chemical based so again if you have kids and pets on the lawn you can get products that you can use for feeding the lawn but lots of different products for lawn feeding in the garden centres so a really good time if you want to come in and see me I can show them all his options. She's very helpful. So do that. Head down to Clown Road Garden Centre. The last one for this morning Judy is from Mary Gibson from Cross Tidy Towns. Good morning to you Mary. Mary says, I'm thinking about sewing wild flowers for our Tidy Towns project. Is there some that come back every year and do well in... Oh, I presume that's a wild location I think is what you're saying here. Or maybe it's a wild location. I'm not 100% sure on that. Okay, so there is lots of different options when it comes to the wild flower seeds. The most important thing when you're doing the wild flowers is to make sure it's clear so you can put wild flowers seed down on grass and some people do make that mistake.

15:24They just want to throw it out on a straight onto grass. You can't do that. You need to have clear soil. It needs to be bare soil. It doesn't need to be good quality soil but it does need to be clear of weeds and grass. So you can get perennial wild flowers that do come back every year. You just cut them every... Once a year in September, take away all the cuttings and by then the seed should have dropped and they'll come back up next year. You may need to add a little bit extra every year because you will find that some species come back stronger than others and will take over the patch so you can supplement that by adding in extra. But there are perennial ones that you can use, yes. Okay, brilliant stuff. Thank you for all your questions. A bit disappointed Dave Beckman, Peter Romani didn't send in a gardening question. No, maybe next week. Maybe next week. Until then, we're until we hear from them. Judy, thanks as ever. Thank you very much for being with us. Judy, back there from Clonerode Garden Centre.