Help, there's a dead body in the garden!

Here's how to bring a dead turf back to life

This is the cry for help that a lot of garden contractors were hearing around mid-August. Just about every lawn in Belgium was struggling for its survival. The lack of precipitation in the spring had reduced the water reserve in the soil to a minimum level. Much grass had faded before summer was even supposed to begin in earnest. Consequently, the heat wave that came on top was too much of a good thing and made grass death inevitable. That is why just about every Belgian with a garden has a view of a barren plain of withered grass.  

As a landscaping contractor and expert on greenery, you are expected to provide the desperate lawn owner with the solution. Of course, the damage is done. You can't resuscitate the dried-up grass stalks and in that state, they are actually a contamination in the turf. This dry grass is poorly degradable and forms an inert suffocating layer. 

Scarifying

The advice is to remove it as soon as possible to allow the lawn to recover. Thorough scarifying is the message. It is best to do this the day before it rains. Because of the large amount of dried grass, you will have to drive over the lawn at least several times to carefully rake it all loose. Of course, in addition to the drought, this operation is another strain on the surviving grass. 

However, you can limit the impact of scarifying. The latest generation of ELIET ZR scarifiers has been specially developed to clean the lawn very intensively but with a minimum of damage to the lawn. These self-propelled machines have many ultra-thin, closely fitted blades (15 mm spacing) that also rotate overtop. Thus, they rake up to half as much dry grass in one pass. The number of passes required to clear the field can thus be significantly reduced.

Overseeding

After a thorough cleaning, the surviving grass is given free rein to grow again. It is amazing how a seemingly dead plain comes back to life after some rainfall. Of course, the drought has taken its toll and the grass vegetation has thinned out very much. It is important to restore grass density in the fall to prevent an invasion of weeds. Overseeding is the preferred technique. The months of September and October create ideal conditions for this. During these months, the soil generally has a temperature between 15 and 20°C, and with average rainfall around 100 mm/m², grass can germinate in record time. 

The condition to benefit from this favorable situation is that you can nicely deposit the grass seed in the soil when overseeding. ELIET overseeding machines have a patented seed distribution system that succeeds in depositing the grass seed very accurately into the soil to a depth of 1 cm. Moreover, the machine will also immediately cover and roll the injected grass seed. Timing is also everything when overseeding. A natural rain is what the grass seed needs to ignite the germination process. Next, make sure the soil does not dry out again; thus, irrigation may be necessary. After that, it is a matter of days before the first blades of grass stick out above. 

When overseeding, you may be generous with the grass seed. Dose 25 g/m², then the young grass will turn the plain green very quickly after emergence. The older grass that survived the drought will be able to hold its own amid this young violence because it can fall back on a better-formed root system. Re-seeding in late summer has several advantages: you can still enjoy the fresh green lawn after emergence, but you also give the young grass a few more weeks to develop its roots properly. A well-developed root system is your life insurance to survive a dry period in the following summer unscathed.

To maintain an ornamental lawn, renovation in the form of scarifying and overseeding is the fastest and budget-friendly way, which also offers a quasi-guarantee of a successful result. Put your customers out of their misery and advise them this approach.