Garden

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Moss & Scarification

According to Don McLean’s 70’s classic, American Pie, ‘moss grows fat on a rolling stone’. According to my experience, moss grows fat on a winter lawn.

Many suffer moss growth in their lawns. It’s easy to spot, lush and green amongst the grass. Thriving as it smothers its less vigorous winter bed partner. The good news is it responds well to treatment and can be brought under control with specialist lawn-care. The bad news is, left untreated it will thrive and it encourages infestation from chafer grubs which can cause a huge amount of lawn damage. From a distance moss gives the impression of a green, lush lawn. The grass it is smothering struggles to survive, the percentage of moss in the lawn increases and the grass gradually dies away.

Why is this a problem? Wait until the drier summer months and you’ll soon see. Moss thrives in wet conditions, but unlike healthy, well maintained grass, which is far hardier, moss dries out and dies in dry, warm summer weather. At the height of summer, when you want to be enjoying your garden at its best, you are left with brown, scorched areas of lawn and areas of dead moss. Most unsightly and far too late in the season to treat. Spring is the ideal time for dealing with moss issues. Mowing too short, too infrequently or not following the correct mowing height for the time of year can be a big contributor to moss growth. As can incorrect nutrition, not dealing with thatch or compaction and not removing leaves from the lawn regularly. Bare areas should also be dealt with promptly so as not to leave space for moss spores to germinate. A healthy dense grass sward leaves little room for moss or weeds to take up residence.

Killing and removing moss If you already have moss in your lawn this can be treated. Some people try this themselves with lawn-sand but the results can be hit and miss with the grass often being killed at the same time as the moss. Our approach is a liquid treatment combined with a wetting agent that helps penetrate deep into the thick matting of moss. Ensure your lawn has the correct nutritional plan in place, so it’s receiving the right nutrients at the right time of year. Healthy grass, like healthy people, is in a better position to fight off invaders. Once the moss has been killed it’s time to remove it. This can be hard work over a large area where a petrol-driven scarifier is essential equipment for the job. It’s time consuming and pretty hard work but it’s important to get the dead moss out and will reduce thatch at the same time. Scarification vigorously rakes the surface of the lawn with spinning blades. These blades rip out moss and thatch and open up the surface of the lawn.

Top-dressing It’s often beneficial to top-dress your lawn after scarification. This addition of organic matter helps to level uneven hollows in the lawn surface, improves soil structure, drainage and helps the general health of the lawn.

Over-seeding to infill The final process is over-seeding - introducing new, healthy grass plants to in-fill the gaps left by the moss that’s been removed, creating a stronger, healthier lawn that’s more capable of dealing with the challenges nature throws at it.

Scarification creates ideal surface conditions for over-seeding.

Unlike re-seeding, where the existing vegetation is removed completely and a new seed-bed created for the sowing of a new lawn, over-seeding works with what you already have by adding new grass seeds to your existing lawn and helping to blend areas of weak growth into other areas of your lawn more naturally. It’s also far less labour intensive, uses fewer lawn seeds and is much more economical. It is however really important to deal with any weeds before seeding begins. New grass plants are susceptible to the treatments used to kill lawn weeds. Older, existing lawn grasses are robust enough to withstand these treatments. Therefore manage the weed issue first and then get new grass plants growing. Remember that once germination begins your new grass seeds need moisture to survive. They won’t be able to manage times without water until they have established roots. If it doesn’t rain then you need to remember to keep them watered for the first few weeks but regular rain is almost guaranteed at this time of year. Planning ahead is the way to create superb outdoor spaces you can enjoy all year. Now is the time to treat lawn moss problems, if you don’t want to do this yourself call in the professionals and get on top of that moss problem before it’s too late.

Ian Kenyon sits on the committee of the UK Lawn Care Association and owns Shrekfeet Professional Lawncare. He is always happy to offer friendly, professional advice and help: 01962 460146 www.shrekfeet.com

Winchester Council update February 2022

A very Happy New Year to all. Let us hope for a better year than 2021

The Lido We all love open air swimming. Back in 2008 or thereabouts a lido was top of a wish list for residents in Alresford. At the time there were grants aplenty and we had hopes of some free land. The Town Council make a preliminary estimate of running costs for limited opening hours, which came to about £70,000 a year, (about £1,000 per adult in the Alresford catchment). The idea was reluctantly, abandoned. An enthusiastic group of Winchester residents recently brought a petition to Council asking that we consider a lido at North Walls, on the site of the now redundant River Park Leisure Centre. While we welcome the enthusiasm of the residents and are aware of the health benefits, this idea has to be seen in its wider context: The WCC is struggling and will continue to struggle to balance the budget and are not in a position to spend an estimated £10 million on an open air pool, particularly since they have just completed a state of the art, leisure centre and pool complex at Bar End. The high water table at North Walls makes construction of a pool at ground level structurally problematic. There are ways in which the lido idea or perhaps open-air river swimming might be made to work with a lower-key approach. The levels of effluent in the rivers has to be recognised as a challenge to be overcome. We’ll be working with the lido group to try and move the potential for open air swimming forward

Why is Recycling Plastic so hard here? The existing system is that WCC collect our household waste, and Hampshire County Council dispose of it. Alongside doorstep glass collections, Winchester Council has introduced carton bins, electrical appliance recycling and battery recycling to make an increase in our recycling rate – so have ended up as the Hampshire council with the lowest residual waste and 2nd highest recycling rate – but all in the context of Hampshire as a whole, which has the lowest recycling rate of any county council in the country. We want now to increase other recycling, our aspiration is for all plastic pots, tubs and trays to go into a single recycling bin with glass, tins, cartons and other containers. Paper and cardboard will go in a separate container. We also want to introduce weekly food waste collections. The County Council do not have the facilities to process many different types of plastic pots and tubs. A new materials recycling facility is needed to separate the different materials when we deliver them for disposal. There are challenges for WCC too, to solve the problem of those with limited storage space and to provide clear instructions on what goes in different bins.

Central Winchester Regeneration The council has agreed after a gruelling full council debate in the evening of 12th January and the early morning of the 13th, that the procurement process to secure a development partner of a suitable calibre for the Central Winchester Regeneration shall be started. This is an important opening move. There can be no doubt that development of sensitive city centre sites is a difficult process, from inception through to implementation. The truth of Robbie Burns’s immortal lines: “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men, Gang aft a-gley,” has been made very clear to all after the events of the last two years. The City Council has taken the best economic and legal advice it can. Many foreseeable problems have been addressed, but no doubt unforeseeable matters will appear that will have to be solved as the project progresses.

For twenty years the regeneration of Central Winchester has stalled, with two failed attempts. The reasons for the two failures have been learned and many safeguards built into the development process, so the WCC remains firmly in the driving seat. The easiest and most financially rewarding course of action would have been to sell off the land to the highest bidder. This course would not gain the full socio-economic benefits that are needed, as gleaned during the consultation process with the people of the city. Reaching this stage has taken much investment in officers’ and councillors’ time and financial resources to seek the best advice from a range of economic, legal and design consultants. Why the effort and what is the relevance to the Itchen Valley? Our wonderful ancient city, although no longer as pre-eminent as a millennium ago, remains the county seat and the administrative hub for a large district. It is still the economic and commercial hub for the northern part of the district and to a certain degree the remainder. It is still a magnet for many of the rural settlements along the Itchen Valley. It is with its heritage, the cultural centre of the district. The investment in time, effort and money to reach the first step in creating a vital, thriving and attractive centre to Winchester has been huge. The alternative of debating the issue for another decade or worse still, doing nothing are, let us hope, now behind us.

Tree Planting If you promote a Tree Planting guide, you become a clearing house for land owners with space and trees needing a home. Always happy to help! The last of the free bare root trees from the Woodland Trust are gone, but they still have some native cell grown trees, which with lots of care, could still be planted. https://shop.woodlandtrust. org.uk/trees

SHELAA sites and the Local Plan The mischievous and alarmist idea that all 3,700 Hectares of land put forward in the SHELAA list are to be covered in houses, continues to be circulated. The call for sites is a legal requirement under the National Planning Policy Framework and part of the lengthy process to establish the Local Plan as a valid legal instrument. Landowners and/or their agents can put forward their land repeatedly at every SHELAA call. It is worth repeating that the SHELAA does not recommend which sites are most suited to meet any remaining requirements and it is not a policy document and does not allocate sites. The housing needs of the district are currently estimated at 700 per annum. (This is an estimate as the housing needs algorithm is subject to change by the Government and the number is also subject to variables such as ’windfall’ sites). Housing density varies between about 30 to 90 units per Hectare so that the total land take to accommodate 700 units per year would between 8.0 and 23.0 Hectares. A very small fraction of 3,700 Hectares. This deliberate misrepresentation wastes the time of planning officers who have to deal with unnecessary queries.

Russell Gordon -Smith 01962 733219 Margot Power 01962 734167