Hi I'm Austin Jarrett from Allett Mowers, this is episode four of our seed trial.
It's about a month now since we started this seed trial and you can see behind me now that the grass
is really coming along nicely. We sewed these tubs as well and these tubs were sewn three weeks ago
and we wanted to try out a few different things and see exactly close up what we were getting
from these different seed mixtures. So you may remember but the seed mixtures that we used we
called this one Fine One and Fine One is a 90 percent Fescue and 10 percent Browntop Bent.
Fine 2 is similar we just changed the percentages slightly so we've got
80 percent Fescue and 20 percent Browntop Bent so we'll get a lot more bent in this one.
Then we went to Quality 1 and Quality 2 which we expect to be normal high quality turf type
for lawns. When we're looking at the fine ones we're expecting to generate a
lawn that's more like a golf green and we're going to have a look at how the maintenance of
that is affected as the season goes on but quality one we've got 70 percent ryegrass
and a thirty percent slender creeping red fescue and the quality 2 is a 40 percent rye grass,
35 percent slender creeping red fescue, a 20 percent chewing fescue and a 5 percent
browntop bent. This one is a hundred percent ryegrass and we wanted to try this one as well
because we know that this is going to give us stripes and with the newer
varieties now with the rye grasses we're expecting to get a much more slender leaf
and there are a lot of advantages to this ryegrass and then finally we've got a grass mixture here
which is for shady areas we all have that shady area in the garden 80 percent fescue it's
15 percent smooth stalk meadow grass and we've also got a five percent browntop bent in there.
So what have we learned so far? Well absolutely and really clearly what we've got is the three
with the rye grass are really romping ahead more so we're getting more coverage and more plants
are in this 100 percent ryegrass of course we know that ryegrass one of the big advantages
is that you get much easier establishment and so far our tubs are absolutely proving that.
The finer varieties here they're not struggling the plant populations are lower and of course
you can see that the blades of grass are already so much finer than they are on the the ryegrasses
here so it will be interesting to see how that progresses. The one that's not germinated quite so
well is the shady mixture here where which is the 80 percent fescue but it's coming along nicely and
we'll see how that thickens out. The other thing that we did with the tub trial was
we sewed each one of the seeds on top of the indigenous topsoil that we have in this garden
and then what we did was we covered the seed up with three different mediums;
the closest third to me on all of these tubs was a compost, the second one was a sand soil mixture
so very very sandy and then final third there was with the same soil that we used in the base.
One thing that's become really clear on that we had the very earliest germination from the
compost topping on this and both the sand and the indigenous soil were much slower.
The only weeds that we've got are in the indigenous soil we didn't get any weeds in the
compost or the sand or certainly not to date but you can see some of the small weeds that there are
in here so that of course is one of the risks with using the the indigenous soil and we'll just talk
briefly about the weeds that are appearing when we go and have a look in the lawn a little bit later.
So we're really encouraged by this compost topping and we're going to have a look at it in another
video of how we're going to do that to thicken up your lawn by using a compost top dressing
in combination with a re-seeding. So let's go and have a look at the actual
lawns themselves. So here we are on the actual lawn itself we're four weeks in from
seeding and you can actually see the whole lawn showing the five main mixtures that we've got;
the sixth one being the hundred percent ryegrass and we're going to have a look at that on
another lawn in a minute but it's without doubt 'fine one' which i'm standing on right now is
pretty thin as per the tubs themselves. The grasses are coming through strongly in the
slots that we used in the overseeder but we're not yet getting strong covering. We are getting some
weeds the slits that of course have been cut into the ground will have revealed weed seeds in in the
actual soil which it would have exposed them and so we are starting to get some of the grass weeds
which I'm really keen to spot treat those and kill those off while i've still got access to
them without killing off great big spots of the grass that we're trying to grow as well.
We'll move on to the other grasses and you can see how those are performing too.
'Fine Two' it's at 80 percent
fescue and 20 percent bent grass again a bit like 'fine one' a bit thinner than i
was really expecting especially when I compare that with the mixtures with higher rye grass.
Again i've got weeds which i want to take out on a spot treatment or maybe even with a pen knife
but you know the plant count is definitely there it's just going to take more time to thicken up.
When we move on then to 'quality one' remember now we've got 70 percent ryegrass with a
30 percent creeping slender red fescue so this is probably the one that i would have chosen if
i was going to choose one with the limited amount of knowledge i have it would have
given me the striping the disease resistance that ryegrass would have given me but would also have
given the creeping red fescue underneath which will fill in all the gaps. So once creeping red
fescue really starts to come in on this one i'm really hoping this is going to knit up as well.
Quality 2 is a bit more complex mix we've got 40 percent ryegrass we've got
30 percent slender creeping red fescue (35 percent in fact) and we've got 20 percent chewing fescue
and 5 percent brown top bent so a bit more complex in terms of the mixture itself. I'm told
that actually this is probably the real luxury lawn that we're going to say actually is going
to really respond well to the mowing and also the cultivation it should give us a very thick sward
and give us a lot of advantages of each one of the varieties that we've got in there. One thing
that's interesting in this this is 150 square metres in this particular trial plot for 'quality
two' and it actually straddled a five-year-old lawn which we overseeded and a lawn that was
sewn and wasn't actually particularly successful that we added on at a later stage perhaps just one
or two years later and this has got a good strong thatch build up and this barely had any
thatch at all and when we've over-seeded into this section it's now becoming very apparent
that the over-seeding that we did into the the more thatchy lawn five years old
is actually the germination is significantly less and also the growth is significantly less on that
whereas on this side if you can see the plants are much taller. This one is the 100 percent ryegrass
so this is the very oldest lawn that we've got the thatch is very thick on it and so we were taking a
risk there anyway but there's no doubt although it was sown slightly earlier the ryegrass (the
100 percent ryegrass) is really romping ahead in terms of the germination and the growth
just proving that the ryegrass really is much easier to get established.
I've got weeds that are appearing as well and I've done some already done some sample trials
just in certain areas where the weed grasses are starting to pop through and they're much easier
to spot because it's 100 percent ryegrass so the weed grasses are really sticking out
so i can give them a spot treatment with a little spray without killing off much grass around them
and i'm hoping to stay on top of that because i'd really like to get a very strong 100 percent rye
grass sward here that we can get striped up nice and strongly. This is the shady mix
we've got in an area where there's some large trees so we're really interested to see how this
responds to being in the shade the mixture in this 80 percent fescue, 15 percent smooth stalked
meadow grass and five percent browntop bent. It's been much slower to establish actually in the lawn
here and that was demonstrated and supported by the results were getting in the in the tubs.
This particular area of the lawn the bane of this garden's life here is i've got
mare's tail which i'm going to have to find a way of treating because i don't want it
spreading but at the same time it will mow out so it's not going to be a problem as with a lot
of the other weeds that are coming through as soon as we get mowing then those will come out.
So really interested to see how this responds and how it's going to thicken
up it's got lots of grasses in there that will creep and this will fill up over time.
So what are we going to do next? This is the ryegrass it's now 50/60 millimetres high
and i need to now start to to train that to be mown at that height and i need to get the
plants to tiller out to get the thickness of the sward. You can still see the lines very clearly
where the over-seedeers been so i need to create now more tillering to fill out all the gaps. I'm
going to use a rotary mower for the first mow i'm setting the rotary mower 40 to 50 millimetres high
so i'm taking probably 20 percent 15/20 percent of the plant height off. So i'm just going to be
taking the tips off i've already sharpened up the blades so they are absolutely razor sharp and the
reason for that is is now is that as the rotary blade comes and cuts the blade of grass of course
because it's a machete action it will tug at the blade of grass and the sharper that blade is the
less tugging it's going to give and so the less root breakage or disturbance i'm going to get.
I'm going to do it regularly and by cutting a little and often then it's going to give
less disturbance to the grass plant and by mowing it much higher than I intend it to be
by the time we get into full growth the longer the grass leaves are then the longer the roots are
and i really need the roots now to be going down deeper into the soil so as we start to approach
summer the sun's shining now can i keep this irrigated well enough now to keep the growth going
and not to allow these young plants to die. This was sewn two months ago actually
right at the end of March and April this year i think has been the coldest in the UK for about
60 years it was also really dry we were having frost every night so that first month actually
very very little happened in the month of April and it's only since we got into May and it started
to get up above 10 degrees centigrade regularly and then now in the last couple of weeks as it's
really warmed up and now we're up into the 20s the grass is starting to grow really quite quickly so
now is the time to start mowing. So rotary mower set nice and high blades really sharp razor
sharp and i'm also collecting all of the grass clippings i don't want those to be disturbing
anything.
The next thing which I'm also going to do today is to put a fertiliser dressing on. We need to get
some feed now we need to get the plants really growing very vigorously.m The reason I do the
fertiliser spreading straight after the mowing is it's much easier to get the application rate even
so i'll have wheel marks from this four wheel rotary and they'll all be spaced out nicely
and i'll be able to work to the wheel marks. I normally work to to two or three widths of the
mower for one run then of the fertiliser spreader depending on the application rate that i'm working
on. I've just got a little older spinning disc spreader here it's pretty regular and
I get good results for that I know how to use it now in terms of the overlap on the left hand and
the right hand side. We're going to be putting a 21-0-6 down at about 30 35 grams per square metre.
I'm hoping to see in the next couple of weeks then this really starting to get going really green up
really thicken out and i'm going to keep mowing this regularly probably at least twice a week to
keep up with just taking 10 ml of growth off at a time. So hopefully in the next video we'll see
this lawn is really filled in and the fertiliser will have done its work. Thanks for watching!