Thread: Straw-like grass ruining my lawn!
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Old 07-05-2014, 04:18 PM posted to alt.home.lawn.garden
Bob F Bob F is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: May 2007
Posts: 762
Default Straw-like grass ruining my lawn!
wrote:
On Wednesday, April 30, 2014 3:37:26 PM UTC-4, MattC76 wrote:
Dear All,

I have a bit of a problem with my lawn! 4 weeks ago it was looking

really green and lush as you can see in the picture. I had mowed it
on a

high setting as recommended for the first few mows of the season -
about

1 notch from top on my Honda IZY which I think is about 6cm. We've
had

good weather here so I started gradually lowering the height to what
I

normally cut it in the summer which is 3 notches from lowest on the

Honda (about 4cm). And you can see the result! I've posted some

close-ups. Basically it's very coarse, brown a bit like straw. I
raked

some of the bad areas to get this long coarse grass to stand up and
then

mowed again. Studying the whole lawn it seems that the majority is
made

up of this coarse grass - there were a lot of seed heads on it
earlier

in spring all over the lawn.


You should have mowed it short back then to prevent the undesirable
grass/weed from going to seed. And put down pre-emergent crabgrass
control, assuming they have that in the UK. It will prevent most
anything from germinating and that could work to eliminate it, if it's
an annual. But, IDK what exactly it is that you have there. It looks
like something that has completed it's lifecycle and is dying. What
happens later in summer?

But if it's a grass, it's a real problem. There are very few
herbicides that will kill weed type grass without also killing the
desireable grass. And the few that are, only work with a very few
undesirable grasses and aren't available to homeowners.

I'd try to get someone locally to identify it for you and then you
can google for possible solutions.

He let it grow long and healthy, then scalped it, leaving nothing but stem -
most of the leaves are gone. What can he expect? If he lets it grow long again,
it'll gradually begin to look good again. Cutting a long lawn really short will
just end up this way.


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