Robbie, what you are doing is right and the best you can do with the standard equipment. The Allett has a rake built in that deals with re aligning flat growing grass and seed heads before the mower cuts them off and puts them in the grass box.
Robbie, I'm an amateur gardener in London who's just started to have lawn treatment and trying to learn more, these videos are really insightful and helpful. Keep them coming and I'll keep getting you a few pence. :) Keep mowing. Rob
100% right ✅️ I've been in the turf industry for 32 years and what your saying is spot on....keep going Robbie, I'm right behind your thought process 👍
Mate, off with depression, anxiety and as a focus I've been sorting our rented overgrown mess of a garden which is right ar the bottom of a hill from a farm, so all sorts blows over. I made my lawn lush and was so proud, my one satisfaction and genuine enjoyment at a tough time and your videos helped me along my journey. So firstly thanks mate but secondly any videos on moles as they've just effed up all my hard work, little c#nts lol 😆
Verti cutting is all well and good, however not very many amateur gardeners and lawn enthusiasts have access to such equipment. I will try my electric garden rake and see how that performs. Excellent videos by the way.
I really enjoy your videos and the honest approach. Absolutely great to know "what not to do" as well as "what to do" as it helps me avoid mistakes. Keep up the amazing work!
The only other point I would make is that I use a Honda HRH and it acts like a hover, so after verti-cutting the "loose" seed heads - mostly - are sucked off the lawn and into the mower box, so yes, I believe what you are doing is of more benefit than detriment. You lawn does look great.
I think you're right. I'm in MD, USA. Warmer than you, but we get a freeze winter. Seeds are considered ubiquitous here, stop seeds with pre-emergent and deal with overseeding by timing (its hard). I have a beast weed called wild bermuda (and I get Poa). The emerged plants are managed the same way. I use a thatch device towed behind the riding mower. It has spring tines that scratch the surface and bring up a little thatch and breaks the stolons and pulls up the shallow rooted Poa. Its messy on a bad year, but it works. Thanks for the show.
I wanted a pristine lawn in my in my new house so weedkilled the whole thing, dug it all out, new topsoil, seed etc... looked amazing. The following year it got infested with leatherjackets and ruined my lawn. Again I dug it all up and repeated the whole process again (whilst continuously treating the leatherjackets with nematodes). 1 month later... amazing lawn again! The following year and still treating for leatherjackets, they once again ruined my lawn. This time due to a bad back I just patch repaired it in the worst affected areas. Seem to be ontop of the leatherjackets but they weakened my lawn and the weedgrass has taken hold... not far off breaking point now! What a ballache having a nice lawn turned out to be!
After digging my .25 acre plot down to the subsoil about 50 years ago I adjusted the levels. Carefully prepared the lawn area ( a lot less than .25 acres. First problem were moles. Every morning a mole hill or two. Solved that problem by sussing out when they were working. I was poised with a bucket and spade. Saw the little critters working. Tip toed over there. They stopped as they were aware of my vibrations. I just stood there and waited. They obviously thought that old bugger had gone and started digging again. I wacked a spade straight down at the side of the little fellas and dug them out and put them in a bucket. After a few such attempts no moles. Ok don’t worry the moles were safely released a long way away. So I then had a nice seed bed. Sowed a good quality fine grass seed. Grew well and on the whole happy with the results. Yes have weed grass (and other weeds). I variously cut out the weed grass with a knife as soon as I spot it growing. Also use a very ancient Black and Decker scarifier. The rakings work well in my compost heap. So is my lawn ok? Well a bit of a challenge but far better than my friends a neighbours.
This year is the worst I’ve had for Poa. This video was really useful and validated the approach I’m taking. I am doing a monthly light scarify with the box on. It does stress the lawn so feeding/seaweed etc are used as well. Keep up the great content.
Robbie you are 100% right!!! I am fighting the same battle and this year it appears to be the year of POA…:( of course you could/should collect all seed heads and ask the birds not to fly over your lawn and have wind stoppers around your property…it is about taking decisions and I had to decide between a frequent cut and collecting. So i decided do go with a robomower and to take the battle through regular verticutting and overseeding…will i win the battle…don‘t think so as i have Alps around me…but i prefer to have the wind, birds and even the flowery Alps even with POA in my lawn!
Robbie, it makes perfect sense to me especially with the field you have growing next to you. We are just praying for some rain as I wasn’t to scarify mine but we have not had any decent rainfall for weeks and the lawn is starting to look a little stressed.
Hi Robbie, your videos have been a great help to me and have helped me transform my lawn, couldn’t have done it without your help. Keep up the great work and thanks for your professional advice!! It’s much appreciated.
Yorkshire fog is the only one I remove; thick leaves, light colour. It is best pulled out by hand before it drops seeds and any patches filled or reseeded
I really enjoy your videos, just brilliant. So just sharing a wee tip, I have heard that putting some tomato juice in the dog food helps to prevent the dog pee burning on the lawn.
Robbie you can try dog rocks in your dogs water bowl to combat the pee stains on the grass. I have a few clients (one of them a veterinary assistant) who use them and there are no longer stains on their respective lawns. They don’t change the PH in the urine and is perfectly safe for the dogs.
I just had my lawn scarified and overseeded maybe 3 months ago and suddenly there’s seed heads everywhere. I’m so disappointed. Can only hope that when I scarify and overseed again maybe September/October it has a better result.
This happened to me after my lawn renovation. I live next to a field and the prevailing wind takes them in to the right side of my garden while the left side prospers. Verticutting can keep the meadow grass under control but 100% elimination? Not likely. If you keep on top of it, nobody will really notice them anyway.
I take the routine every day to go pull the weeds by hand and feed them to our chickens. We had so many that it would have take a complete makeover to deal with it. I have not yet find a method that would be a quick fix.
I've done by best to help you towards £30 for this video ! (PS a few, non related tip bits in and around lawn care like the comment about monetisation are always interesting). As always helpful and thought provoking. Whilst I'm fortunate to have a collection box - I have (lazily) not tended to always use it because when I verticut (a bit deeper than you - I still have quite a lot of thatch) I find the machine throws up a large amount of material which I would otherwise have to empty quite frequently (in part because the material is heavy & tends to lie at the front of the box "filling it more quickly"). I have therefore tended to verticut periodically (your comments about grass stress are well noted - thank you) and immediately scarified - lifting the grass up and finishing off with a cut - so like you, I'm resigned to some seeds falling into the lawn as a by product of this process - but having listened to you, I shall probably try to be less lazy and use my grass box at all times. Many thanks - as always.
For a few years now I had an immaculate lawn with very little to no POA or weed grasses. Early spring/autumn mornings (especially when it's damp) I used to go out and pick these out over the course of a couple of weeks whilst they were still small and you could see the heads easier. My summer lawn looked great if not epic as some of these I seen on the yoo toobz. That being said I have a smaller lawn than you 120sq metres and 6ft walls either side so little to no seeds got blown in. But they still came in from wind and bird's. During lockdown I learnt more about no mow may or no mow summer and it's impact on wildlife, I sowed wildflowers round the outside of the lawn next to the walls/fences/boarders mainly so I didn't have to strim/trim and I could do my bit for the environment/pollinators. Nowadays 40-50% of what was my lawn is wildflowers that come back every year. I still look after the middle section, but it's nice to sit back in the nice lawn and enjoy the colour's of the wildflowers around me and watch the insects (butterflies/dragonflies/ladybird's amongst others) doing their thing. My opinion? I think your right, but you're also fighting a loosing battle nature is far too powerful. As a lawn care business owner and interweb influencer I urge you to look into no mow and how you can adopt it in to your clients lawn's and your own and video's for other to learn from. Look up Joel Ashton and Lee Burkhill on Yuu toobe. Who says 100% of your lawn needs to be pristine with stripes? Let the pollinators have some areas to do their thing after all we need the to pollinate our food. Either way I wish you all the best with you channel and business in the future and I would love to see someone adapt to what I have just mentioned.
An interesting post, I did do a video for no mow May but it wasn't really long enough for RU-vid. The video is on my facebook and instagram accounts. I have some plans for the video and need to find the time as I have some ideas and will hopefully roll it out for next Spring. It actually opened up my though proccess to 'weeds' and I ended up doing a video on clover, I am filming another similar video very soon. Thank you for your feedback This is the clover video, I tried to show both sides of it being a weed or not ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-rucmWaDbmbk.html
@@Premier_lawns_official I saw this yes thx. What I am trying to say is we leave these "weeds" or what we class as weeds alone, let them do their thing. feed the pollinators, enjoy them for what they are and in the autumn cut them down. Instead of mowing your whole lawn area twice a week to achieve or what we perceive as a "perfect lawn", mow X percent less of it. This way wildlife will have their food/home's for their duration of their lifes, instead of us cutting it all back as we deem it too ugly or unsightly. Edit: linked you 2 videos... Lee Burkhill.. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gDhs55lLe6w.html Joel Ashton...ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-BSC3Um4UUQs.html
I work on the assumption that those seed heads are flower heads to start with. If I’m verticutting and mowing weekly then I’m never allowing the vast majority of flowers to turn into seeds.
im battling the stuff too i rake and rotary cut i find it works i have tried scalping the lawn before this only made it worse lol better to have a slightly higher cut. and lift the lateral growth before each cut seems to b working just one man and a lawn battle lol
Hi James, I'm never to this and just want to be sure I'm reading your comment right. Before every cut, I should rake it lightly so it's lifting up? Thanks
Hi Robbie. I guess, living in the emerald Isle, you don't get too much trouble with drought affecting your lawn. Here in Southern England, my lawn is now turning brown as it does most years. I don't water it though as it recovers in the autumn.
My verticutter (Stihl RLA 240) has a grass catcher box. I wouldn't dare use it without the box. After verticutting I will go over it a few times with the mower to get as much off the lawn as possible. Ohh and then there's my daily patrolround over the lawn to pull out anything with roots and all that has no place in the lawn.
Good on yer putting this out. None of us are right 100% of the time. I did see the various comments from people including well known folk. My thought was immediately how many of these are viable seed heads? I know poa becomes viable much more quickly than other grasses. OK yes to some extent not boxing off does risk spreading some but I do like the thought process you have described. Some will be collected in the grass box when you go over with the cylinder mower as the blades brush the surface.
@@Premier_lawns_official which one are you using? Trinexapac ethyl aka primo maxx? I know the upper rate for a fescue rye mix sward is 2.4l per hectare.
Had 3 years of POA hell Robbie . .still ongoing ,digging out and reseeding even got hold of some Tenacity and tried that , killed it off for sure but the new stuff keeps on coming
I understood the previous videos and those from your peers Controlling POA is all about out competing it. You'll never get 100% of the seed heads. But you're constantly putting POA under pressure whilst giving your deep rooted grass the ability to out compete the POA That's what it's all about. Yes. Get those seed heads boxed. But put as much pressure on the POA as you can by verticutting or rake + rotary mow is good too !
I have watched your channel from start because I have never had a nice lawn and any info helps. I moved into new home with just a lawn put down & first year I cut couple of times a week but did not collect cuttings. Not too low. Grass nice green. I was really pleased. Just the odd weed. Best lawn I ever had. Now I cut and collect clippings I have more weeds and this poanna in the lawn? I give up.
Tomato sauce given to your dog can lessen the acidity in its urine. But not sure how much you and how often you need to give it to them as I have a mate that give tomato sauce to his dog to stop it bleaching/killing the grass on his lawn
Omg Robbie, ye get a wee wuman to do yir scripts and research. Top notch. If you didnt you would need to put in a 36 hour day with your day job etc Lol. Another honest and informative video and what you say makes sense to me (But then I am half Irish Lol). Keep up the great work
Maybe go over rotary after you finish with scarifier it will suck all the cut seed heads, and cut the remaining standing ones and you can finish off with cylinder.
My verticutter has a box on it and still pisses seed heads out everywhere, don't think it's the end of the world. Trick is to use a rotary mower after with some decent filtering on the bag and decent suction like my advanced rotak has, then you're at least getting most of it up. To be honest, my lawn is fairly new and doesn't have much in the way of weed grass and the seed heads tend to be the grass i want so with mine I don't mind them dropping, but yeah..
Good morning, from Newmarket, Canada. I want to thank you very much for all the information and tool recommendations you have provided I have watched all of your videos and you have become my grass mentor. I just started a landscape business and use much of your information to produce literally "MINT" lawns. I want my entire business under the electric battery-operated equipment umbrella I recently purchased the Milwaukee M18 self-propelled battery-operated mower along with all my other battery-operated lawn tools- hedge trimmer, grass trimmer, chainsaw, spray pack and blower all on the Milwaukee battery platform. Future purchases include Allett Stirling 51 battery-operated interchangeable cartridge reel mower, an electric cargo van, and Toro Revolution Battery Standup Mower. Are there any other recommendations for my electric business that anyone could provide?
Angela what is the meaning of life!! And how do i apply to make tea for and become a YTS for Robbie? i can brush grass if needed !!!! P.S. great video as ever Robbie
Do you have much experience of Yorkshire fog grass/weed? it’s ruining the look of my lawn …not sure if you can get rid of it by slicing it or do you have to chop sections of lawn out? many thanks Rob
That mower is older than my helper Daniel, getting spare parts for it is a nightmare at the best of times, even if you could get an attachement like that for it you wouldn't be able to get your hands on one, but no they don't make one
Have one from new, bought it way back in the 80s, came with a verti cutter along with a little reel brush for flicking up the grass. these t bar ones are getting old now
Would it be better to cut with a rotary after with them causing suction, sucking the seeds up into the bag? I run a cylinder too but do have a rotary aswell. I only have a few patches of this so might cut them out and get a turf roll to replace it. Grass is looking lovely.
How long before the seeds become viable seeds? In other words, if you are cutting them off with the verti cut & grass cut early enough & you haven't managed to collect all the seeds, would majority of those seeds cut off & left behind not be viable seeds? Especially if you're doing it every week. (Hope that makes sense) I've been doing the same thing on a customers lawn, same problem you have, they have fields next door. Your lawn still looks great 👍
Right or wrong, who knows. But your advice is always clear, well explained and really well thought out Robbie, we seriously appreciate your channel. Question: why is dog pee so bad compared to, eg, human pee (which fertilises my lawn!!)?
how old is your Cylinder moweri'm just wondering because i remember you saying around a year ago that it's a second hand and you bought it from a Golf course so why don't you replace it with one of Allet's domestic mowers i'm just wondering
Poa ... such a pain. Have a small lawn fully regrown this year using weed free premium seed. Looked amazing, and still does, but have started to see the dreaded poa appearing quite a bit. Don't have a verticutter, just a scarifier ... would hand pulling the seed heads off help or is that a fruitless endeavour?... tried getting the roots too when pulling them, but most are too new and just break off. Wish we had a pre-emergent in the UK we could use like the Tenacity they have it the states ... to bad we don't.
You won't have much luck with pulling out the POA, it will come from other places. The soles of your feet, blow in, birds poop it out etc. It's one of those things, verti cut as much as you can and learn to live with it
This might sound like a trick question but is a 1000ml of petrol heavier than a 1000ml of water 💦 why I'm asking this question is when I fill the genuine 1ltr bottle Stihl mixing bottle I can only get around 800ml before it's full right to the top and there's no room to add oil am I missing something or is petrol heavier? I measured the weight on a accurate kitchen scales I appreciate your comment on this or if you can try this and see for yourself if I may be right if I go to the line on the mixing bottle it would mean the 20ml you add to the mixture is to much ? I would have thought if the water is the same weight as petrol the mixing bottle is not correct ?
a useful alternative if you dont have a bag to catch the verticut clippings is to drag a rake up and down the lawn. this lifts the seed heads and lateral stems, which can then be cut with a rotary mower
Weve got more amg than before this year. Verticutting? Would using my scarifying rake achieve the same thing as your machine Robbie? We only have a small 20m square lawn.
Is Verticutting like my Bosch mower with a box? I scarify then mow had quite a lot this year I’l going to rake the lawn during winter to stop Poa spreading
You are fighting the inevitable, especially with the field next to your lawn, but generally seem to be winning. I note your dog had the good grace go look embarrassed.
how are you making you're lawn so green I put weed killer on mine... one that said didn't kill grass. well it looks awful. either it was big sections of weeds or is did kill grass as well. I really don't know what to do I have thrown seed on but only sections are re growing. it's so bad it's embarrassing. any advice will be welcome
Hard to say to be honest, a lot will depend on your own lawn, is it hot, are you getting lots of rain (or not) I'm holding off on mine for now. It's not seeding as much now due to the time of year
This is where I struggled being new to lawn care. I thought actual grass has seed heads but it doesn't. It's the weed grass poa that produces the seed head. I waited way too long thinking it was normal grass and had to verticut it all to get it under control. The amg in the lawn now is all white and half dead so it did the job. So yes, the seed heads are poa which needs verticut to allow your normal grass to thrive and outcompete the poa
Let’s face it, if there was a 100% right way to get rid of it, if there was and you knew the secret then you wouldn’t need to work anymore as you’d be very rich!
You are not killing the poa. The reason why there is less of the poa now is just because of the time of the year. In the summer poa is getting destroyed by the heat, but will be back again in the fall.
