Hello my name is Austin Jarrett from Allett Mowers. Today I want to talk to you about
something that's very close to our heart at Allett Mowers and that's thatch. I'm going to split this
into three sections; I'm going to talk to you about what is thatch, I'm then going to talk
briefly about why we don't want thatch and then the final section I want to talk to you about
is the ways and things that we can do in order to reduce thatch. So first of all I'd like to talk to
you about the thatch itself and what I've got here is just a half moon and this grass actually isn't
very thatchy at all, it's very well looked after. We're at at a cricket club and if I cut through
and take a slice you need to do this with your lawn so you can understand the profile of your
lawn and once we get this sample out you'll be able to see what what I'm talking about. So this
is the profile of soil that we've just lifted out from this hole here and this is a good thing for
you to do to understand what's going on in your soil profile. This isn't a very thatchy soil but
actually what I'm going to do is I'm still going to recommend that they're going to do some thatch
reduction program and what I'm talking about here is you can see the brown soil and it's not
very closely defined but when I pull this off like this you can see there is a line here where there
is organic matter before I get to the bottom of the grass plant and it's this organic matter here
that I call thatch layer and this thatch layer is something that we don't want to see in turf. This
thatch layer is created quite naturally as part of the plant growing and renewing itself so there are
things in the crown of the plant there are stolons and there are rhizomes which are runners which we
want within our grass system because from those stolons and runners that run horizontally off come
new shoots and new crowns to give us a nice thick sward like you can see we've got here but what
happens is they don't rot very quickly and as they die out and we get new stolons and new rhizomes
and new growth in the plant sward then you end up with this thatch layer that forms just above
the soil level below the plant height. So that is the thatch layer now why don't we want that thatch
layer? So I'm saying that if you have quarter of an inch six millimetres of thatch that's okay if
it goes up to half an inch thick and this is over half an inch to three-quarters of an inch then
you will you really need to start working on your program you can't eliminate this thatch overnight
it takes time to reduce it that's what you need to be onto it as soon as it starts. If it's very thin
it's not a bad thing it gives the lawn a little bit of cushioning and it also prevents evaporation
when it gets very dry because it's like a mulch like the bark mulch you put on a flowerbed and
the reasons you might try and put that on to prevent moisture loss but when it starts to
become too deep it causes all sorts of problems. So on a sports field it would cause divots if the
ground very easily the turf very easily tears up but really one of the big areas and the big
problems that we have is that this thatch absorbs fertiliser and water and prevents it getting down
into this root zone you can see the soils quite dry here because it actually acts just like a
sponge and prevents it going down into the soil this means that when the roots go down to the
soil they don't find the nutrients they need and if you have a very thatch lawn and you put
fertiliser on it you'll see the fertiliser has very little effect and that's because the thatch
is absorbing it all so that's not good for us the other thing that happens is is that thatch gets
deeper and you may do this and find four inches of thatch that's quite easy to do four inches of
thatch or less then what will happen is that the roots themselves would just sit where the moisture
is and the moisture always sits in the thatch and not in the soil when it then goes dry in the
summer the thatch very quickly dries out just like a coconut husk the roots are all in the thatch and
so you end up with a very drought prone lawn so as soon as it dries out the roots are devoid of
any moisture at all and the grass dies back very quickly rather than a healthy lawn with no thatch
and roots that go into the soil they can go nice and deep and that way they will find more moisture
and your lawn will be much more drought resistant. So now I want to talk about how we actually reduce
the thatch ayer and it's pretty much a mechanical exercise that we've got to do we need to be
cutting into that thatch a little bit at a time as I say we can't get rid of it all in one go
but what we want to do is gentle and aggressive at different times of year removal of the thatch
and in its very simplest format this will be what we do it with but if you have a lawn of any size
this is going to be hard work because this is about thatch reduction. By raking the grass I
can start to remove thatch and also introduce air into the thatch so that it's more likely to break
down rot down as well. I have to say where Allett mowers have come up with some other solutions in
order to not only rake and and mechanically remove the thatch but also to collect it simultaneously
to make this job much more exciting and give us much better results more quickly so let me show
you what Allett mowers have done with their mowing system to help reduce the thatch layer. This is my
Allett Mower this is a Kensington 20 but there are various sizes of mower that are available and you
can look at other videos on our Youtube channel which talk about these products in detail. What
I can do with this machine is I can mow with a cylinder mower which will give me the greatest
lawn results but because we need to keep in control of the thatch layers even the most
healthiest lawn we need to stay in control of this then we have a range of implements here that will
help us do this mechanically and easily. What were able to do with this mower is we can take
the cartridge out of the machine that is mowing and we can insert these different cartridges and
let me just briefly talk you through what these are able to do. So this is my verticut cartridge
this rotates in this direction it's powered by the engine of the machine and you can see they
resemble sword blades so what we're going to do with this verticut cartridge is it's vertically
cutting as the name would suggest into the sward and so it's cutting down into the thatch layer
what it's able to do then is remove thatch but what it's doing is cutting the rhizomes and
stolons to encourage new growth so in much the same way you might prune a bush and you see new
growth sprout out of where you cut it then that very much happens with your lawn turf as well so
the verticut does that extremely effectively the grass box is on the front of the machine so as I
cut I collect as well so I don't leave the lawn in a terrible mess and if I only have time to do half
of the lawn then I've done it and everything's collected I don't leave half the lawn in a mess
so that's the verticut cartridge. If I need to go deeper and get more aggressive than what I
have here is the dethatcher cartridge you can see this is a much more aggressive blade it's hooked
it goes deeper and what this does is really go in and hook out thatch out of the cut that it makes
it takes a much bigger bite at the time it will remove some of the plants and thin out the lawn
altogether I will more likely use this one either in springtime and I've got a lot of moisture so
the plants can recover I'll apply fertiliser again to help the plants recover and I'll use it
in autumn time as well when I know that I've got the moisture for the plants to be able to fight
back to this quite aggressive treatment. The other cartridge I've got is a much more gentle one this
is one of my favourite cartridges this will be about a little bit about little and often in terms
of removing thatch it will remove dead leaves as well that are on the surface that's when the grass
has a brown look I can fetch out that material and I can prevent material that is at the top
from becoming thatch later so it's a preventative tool this will also pick up leaves, pine needles
and put those all into the grass box as well and those all help create quite an acidic feel
to the grass as well which is not good in terms of depleting the thatch layer that we have but this
one's a very versatile cartridge which I can use it pretty much all year round because it leaves no
damage to the sward like the two previous more aggressive cartridges. So this is the verticut
cartridge I'm going to use first so remember this is about cutting into the sward and cutting the
stolons and the rhizomes we will see some material come out as well very much depends on the thatch,
the moisture on the day that you're actually doing the verticutting on as to how effective and how
much material might come out but let's just see what goes on here I'm going to leave the grass
box off so you can see what's happening there. So I've changed the cartridge from the verticut now
to the detacher-- it takes about two minutes and this is the more aggressive blade if you remember
and we're going to see now the difference in the material that we take out. I'm not going to put
the grass box on again just so that you can see what's happening. So finally this is the scarify
cartridge with the wire tines so we're expecting to pick out lighter more surface material with
this dead leaves of grass that will become thatch if we don't keep looking after them and taking
them out of the sward so I'll leave the grass box off and let's see what comes out of this one.
So this is the material that's come out of the grass boxes for each of these three turf
cultivation cartridges that we've just used and you can see the differences in the material. I
cultivated the same area different areas each time so the piles are representative of the
amount of material that was lifted out either the amount of thatch material that was lifted
out. The verticut cartridge was the first one you can see it's a smallest pile there's brown
material in there and if you see it against the pile of grass clippings taken off the same
area that would look much greener and this has got a lot of more Brown material in it so we'd
expect smaller material because this cartridge is designed to slice into and cut the rhizomes
and stolons to get that new fresh growth going so you can see that material the darkest material is
coming out of this dethatcher cartridge with a much more aggressive bigger biting blade and you
can see there's actually almost entire plants sort of come out at the same time but this materials
really opening up the sward and allowing the thatch to degrade as well as pulling thatch out
of the ground and then finally this lovely little scarifier cartridge with the little raking tines a
lot of grass clippings rather Brown grass leaves which are loose and have been fetched out of the
sward and it's keeping the sward clean and it's probably preventing the material becoming thatch
as it works its way down the sward so that's a good job done still so you can see there's
an armoury of cultivation tools here for your lawn all to be used at different times a year
to create different effects to help us in this battle against thatch so we can achieve a really
great lawn. So I hope this short video is of some use to you if you need to know more information
about when to scarify when to dethatch and when to lawn rake then you can go to our website which is
www.allett.co.uk where you will find resources there available to you. Thankyou for listening