What about you! Today's the day I'm gonna have a go at fixing the biggest problem that is in my lawn today, and that is ugly weed grasses. Let's go .......
Today we're going to be focusing on one particular type of grass called poa. Now depending on where
you are in the world you might be from the UK, you might be from Ireland, Canada, Australia,
New Zealand - a lot of places, it's all poa, but you might also know it as annual meadow grass,
amg, annual bluegrass poana that's what we're dealing with today.
If you look up "weed" in the dictionary, it's an unwanted plant or a wild plant
growing in competition with a cultivated plant.
To put that simply, it is a plant in the wrong place at the wrong time.
A lot of my problems come from this field. It's covered in a lot of different grasses. The seeds
blow into the lawn. Whenever the poa anna seeds blow in there then it turns them into a weed, but
whenever they're grown here in the field it's not a weed. Some might say i'm an expert
in my field.
poa is easy to identify in your lawn , as it lies down, it doesn't sit up straight
like the other grasses. but that's how we're going to defeat it. But more on that later.
If you want to identify poa anna in your lawn, it'll be lighter in color. In May it'll
be seeding and it'll be seeding like mad. You'll see little seed heads everywhere on your lawn.
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that button and we'll get on with it - let's go - boom ...... So before we do anything, let's get the grass cut.
So to explain to you what weed grass is and how we, how we stop it - we'have our tuft of grass here
out of the lawn. Now as I explained, the poa lays flat, or amg , it lays flat and our normal grass
it all stands up. So what we want to do is, we either want to try and lift the the amg up so
we can get it cut, but that's a lot harder to do. You can do it with a brush.
What's considered better is to cut those stems, is to take a knife and cut those stems.
Now this can be done with a rake or a verti cutterr, or scarifier. Verti cutting and scarifying are very
very similar, but there's one distinct thing whenever you're scarifying, you're nearly, you're
more or less scarifying right down to the soil profile. Sometimes you're touching it. Verti cutting
we're just looking to take the top off. Verti cutting I'm not looking to go right down to here.
We're just looking more just to go across here, we're just looking to tickle the surface
just enough to cut those lateral stems. If we look at our profile, we just want to
run the blades along here. Now depending on your lawnmower, there's a lot of cylinder mowers where
it you can pop one head out and put a scarifying or verticutting unit in. Unfortunately I don't have
that, so I'm just going to use my scarifier for it. Because i'm going to use the scarfier, I'm going to
make sure that it's lifted well out of the ground, and I just want to tickle the surface, and we
just want to cut those stems. We're not looking to get into the thatch and take the thatch out.
I'm going to show you three different ways to do this, so I'll just show you the first method now.......
Well you can see there the brush is lifting all this rough grass up.
What I'm going to say ah the same thing I always say !
If you're neighbours see you out brushing your lawn - they're going to think you're nuts. Don't blame me.
And then the second method is going to be our springtine rake.
And then the third method we're going to use the scarifier stroke verti cutter.
So you can see how much - it's very effective.
It's this is doing two things, it's lifting the stalks up, and it's also cutting them.
Okay so there you go. Now the rake also pulled some material out and it cut the stems, so the
rake did a much better job, and whenever we take a close-up of the grass you'll
see that it's all standing up so there are all the lateral stems that it's cut, much like our
scarifyer. We'll have a closer look between the brush and the rake and see which one did better.
So this is the area that's been brushed and I don't think you can really see the difference .
But whenever we come over and have a look at the area that we're raked, there's a big
difference. We'll have a look at it now. So you can see a lot of grasses just standing up, and if you
were to cut that now you would be able to cut all those bits that are are standing upright.
Before we'start into the scarifying, I'm going to talk about other factors that can
play into you having too much amg in your lawn. If you want to know where else you can get the weed
seeds from that come onto your lawn, they come from a variety of places. Brds literally put them out.
You can carry them on the soles of your shoes when you're walking on the lawn. If you top dress your lawn,
I think a lot of mine came from the sand that I put on my lawn last year.
Regular aeration, amg has shallow roots and a compacted lawn will favor weed grasses
that will grow. If you keep your lawn aerated, you're going to encourage
the grass that you do want over the grass that you don't.
Watering your lawn properly will help. If you have a dry spell lots of light soakings will
encourage amg , it's much better to water the lawn for longer and less frequently.
This gets the water soaked down, and the grass has to use its roots to get the water.
We've tried the brush and the rake. The brush did a not a very good job the rake did a pretty good
job - will only get you so far because it's not cutting the lateral growth, it's just really
lifting it up and you can cut with a lawn mower. Now for anybody that has an attachment on their
lawnmower that if you have a cylinder mower and you can take the one head out and one head in - you ideally want to be doing this in May and June that's whenever you start to see all the
seeds you'll start to see all the seeds popping up in May and that's why the lawn looks so bad as
you've seen earlier it was just a sea of white because of all the puana seeds so that's whenever
you want to do it. Now if you're going to be doing it as I say, little and often is key, Keeping the
units, or the blades high so as the verti cutting units are just just really scratching the
surface, cutting those lateral growth and lifting the grass up and then just give it a cut afterwards.
Okay folks - now something that surprised me the area here this area here that way this was the
area that we raked, it's all sitting up, it's sitting up a lot higher than the rest of the lawn.
I don't know if the camera picks it up, but that grass isn't really sitting up,
whereas the bit that we raked it's all just sitting lovely and proud.
Get the lawnmower out and give it a cut. Whenever you're doing it it's important to follow the
stripes that you cut with the verti cutter because all that grass is sitting up and you want to get the
best cut you can on it. If you start going across it, you're not going to get as good an effect.
After a few stripes you can see the amount that came out and it's all the thicker grass all the
horrible ugly weed grass I want to get rid of you, can really see the difference there.
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