Grass Update

eleMental

Following on from another thread ages ago about drainage and the utter failure of grass to grow in Charlesland gardens....just an interesting point/update on that.

Today I finally caved and got rid of my (very expensive!) lawn in the back garden because after a year of fruitless attempts to get it to grow, it had been reduced to what can only be described as a quagmire in some places and arid desert in others.

Anyway the interesting thing was that my gardener said to me when he was covering the dying grass he noticed a very significant presence of bugs (i cant remember the name sorry) that look like short fat worms or really big maggots. He said they're what daddylonglegs are born as and are known to eat/destroy grass roots. Looks like the garden was rife with the little feckers (and come to think of theres always millions of daddylonglegs flying around in the evening) so it might be that its not just the crappy drainage we have to contend with.....:(

matti

sorry elemental but I'm so glad I'm not the only one! My garden is full of those maggotty things too. Next doors cat seems to like them though so hopefully it will eat them all up!

Alun

They're commonly known as 'leatherjackets'.

http://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profiles0206/leatherjackets.asp