February 2017

In 3 days it will be autumn here in Australia, and the summer has been very dry, although not as hot in Melbourne as it usually is.  The reason for this blog is to update you on my organic lawn.  Despite only having 2 days of meaningful rain where I live over the past 13 weeks, the lawn has coped very well with a weekly hour long drink from the sub-turf drip irrigation system.

Added to that, I have not fed the lawn since last April when I applied a top dressing of 9 litres of filtered compost.  I do spray the lawn with aerated compost tea every month, but it only gets about 7 litres each time.  By mowing the lawn every week to about 75mm thick, the roots have established a strong deep network and they seem to be finding plenty of water in the subsoil.  The dense mass of leaves and runners on the surface is acting like a mulch and helping the highly active microbe population in the root zone to retain nutrients and moisture and minimise evaporation.

I will feed the lawn with the same quantity of filtered compost again in April to help keep the beneficial soil microbes fed during winter when photosynthesis is lower.  (The plants will be producing less root exudate because of the reduced sunlight and reduced plant growth).