Department: Turf
Honda mowers out to cut the Bowles Lyon Rose Garden. I started from the bottom middle section that was like a rough semi-circle. It was a large patch with paths going off it. I did the paths first light and dark, then I went round the edges of the main section. Then striped it from the straight bottom edge.
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| Photo 1: Bottom middle of Bowles Lyon Rose Garden |
After we did some turfing, patching bare areas in the marquee area in Wilson's Wood. Simon gave it a quick once over again with the Toro. In winter turf can take 3 months to root in this weather (around 20°C), with irrigation it will take only around 3 days. Turf can be used to overlay existing turf to thicken it. But for this one we were just covering the barest of patches, then it would be top dressed with Wisley's rough compost and seeded. Some patches were very sandy, as they were holes that had been filled, sand dries out the hole, but one has to be careful to irrigate when laying turf over it so that doesn't dry out too much. Wisley gets their turf from a company in Yorkshire - who grows fields of it and has big refrigeration units to keep them cool if necessary. As they are frequent big bulk customers they are only charged £2 per roll.
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| Photo 2: Area that needed the lawn mending. The area has already been scored and seeded, but the grass will take a while to grow with this method. |
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| Photo 3: We laid them different directions, as professionally the turf will knit better if more like a jigsaw, including having side pieces cutting into long lengths. Trying not to have cross gaps, knitting them together as much as possible by curling the edges a bit each other |
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| Photo 4: Afterwards we tamped down with a spade |
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| Photo 5: Turf lifter for overly protruding patches that need laying over. |
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| Photo 6: To meld the turf into the ground a bit more, first we cut around the outer edge with a half moon/ turf cutter. We then fork the same areas, lifting the soil around the edges upwards. Then tamped down with a rake. |
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| Photo 7: A section laid. |
Other notes of interest
- Giant leaf blowers used on golf courses to keep grass cool, this keeps the grass stomata open and prevents it from falling into drought. Plus irrigating grass when it's too hot can scorch it.
- Roll out meadows - around £10 per roll.
- No snow is great for boosting greenness of turf - has 46% nitrogen.
- For connecting info to turfing -
http://rhs-wisley.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/7th-october-2014.html
