Gardening / Landscaping

[Calaber]

Edals

Native couch tends to burn pretty easily. I think it's due to the very fine leaf which holds little water so the heat hits it pretty hard. Yes it will recover quickly after watering but will continue to brown off badly the next hot day. I'm not sure how to keep it from doing that.

Our lawns are a bit of a mixed bag and its interesting to see how the various grasses
respond to the heat. The buffalo holds up well and seems to thrive in the hotter weather if kept watered. Kikuyu has popped up on the footpath in a number of spots amongst the couch and isolated buffalo patches are also present.

The couch browns off quickly but the others remain green so the footpath is patchy. If you want a permanently green lawn regardless of heat, you probably need something other than couch.

 

[VS 5.0]

Any tips for keeping grass green. Already here on the gold coast the few hot weeks have burnt all my couch, not matter how much it's watered, its just wasting water now, its not dead just burnt. Im half tempted to use the lawn paint to keep it green now.......

Liberally wet an area, preferrably where there is exposed soil.

Does the water soak in staight away or does it pool on top ? Or gradually appear to soak in ?

Once the water disappears, scrape away the soil to see how damp it is beneath the surface.

If it is only damp a few mm below the surface and dry thereafter, the soil will be hydrophobic. If that is the case, you will need to apply soil wetter. If using the dry form, it needs to be well watered in to activate it, ie it will turn white with the application of water. Alternatively, there is also a liquid form available in a container that you connect to your hose and spray over the lawn. Depending on the severity of the hydrophobia, you may need to make multiple applications.

If the soil is hydrophobic, no amount of water will make any difference to a plant's growth habit.

After rectifying the hydrophobia, I always apply seasol. Same application method as the liquid soil wetter. The seasol helps
the lawn (or any other plant for that matter) build stroger cell structures to assist in drought & disease resistance.

Finally, a decent lawn food to feed the beast. Nothing survives without food. I'm using Baileys Brilliance at the moment which works well.

It is possible to have green, healthy couch in hot weather. You just need to spend the time giving it some ongoing TLC.

I expect you have pretty sandy soils on the Goldie, as we do here in Perth, so any plant needs all the help it can get.

 

[edals]

Thanks for the input guys.
The house is built in a new estate, and its on very hard rocky clay.
The land scapers did a **** of a job with the turf. The back yard is on a bit of a slop then flattens out. The grass on the slope struggles the most, no doubt due to water run off. The flat areas are ok and still greenish. The soil is damp a little underneath but soon as it hits the clay it won't soak in much. Its about 1 inch of top soil on top of the rocky clay.
I did 2 weeks ago feed it with lawn builder and lawn grub killer.
Ill look into a lawn wetter and see if that helps it out. but as mentioned the hot sun burning the leaf might be a loosing battle and a waste of water and $$

 

[Sheldon Cooper]

From what I know, couch doesn't like the heat and isn't as drought tolerant as others. But I don't know much about it. A friend of mine put couch at the front of his place down here and it died despite him watering it just because summer got so hot! He was always complaining about how much effort the couch was just to keep it alive, let alone looking lush.
He replaced it with buffalo like he has out the back.

I do agree with the comments about where the water is going. You need to make sure it's soaking in. It's the root system that needs to get the water and nutrients.

In terms of green, I use dynamic lifter once a year and Seasol a few times a year. I couldn't be happier with mine at the moment. Just a few small patches of the new turf that died off that I've ripped out and filled with soil and runners are already closing over them. This is right now!

 

[VS 5.0]

Thanks for the input guys.
The house is built in a new estate, and its on very hard rocky clay.
The land scapers did a **** of a job with the turf. The back yard is on a bit of a slop then flattens out. The grass on the slope struggles the most, no doubt due to water run off. The flat areas are ok and still greenish. The soil is damp a little underneath but soon as it hits the clay it won't soak in much. Its about 1 inch of top soil on top of the rocky clay.
I did 2 weeks ago feed it with lawn builder and lawn grub killer.
Ill look into a lawn wetter and see if that helps it out. but as mentioned the hot sun burning the leaf might be a loosing battle and a waste of water and $$

Ahhh...that is an issue then. The clay will prevent the roots getting any real depth.

In my experience, couch has a reasonably deep root structure. I expect the roots being too shallow would be effecting its ability to cope with hot weather.

Apart from ripping it all up and dealing with the clay issue by either removing that to a greater depth and placing a deeper layer of topsoil &/or applying gypsum to the clay and toiling it through with soil I'm not sure what else you could do.

 

[kiwicon]

Maybe pitchfork the **** out of it and rake over some sand??

 

[Sabbath']

Not my place, but some shots of a recent job i did. Shed slab cut, laser is an awesome piece of kit to use.

 

[Sandman]

So crappy pics but pics none the less. Cars are in, junk is in, driveway was done Friday. Just need to get rid of a bit more junk and get a beer fridge and I'm set.

 

[Sheldon Cooper]

Nice Sab! How's the new business coming along?

 

[VS_Pete]

Sandman that is great enjoy