SEASON 2 EPISODE 2: LAWNS – STADIUMS, PUTTING GREENS AND HOMES WITH GRAEME COLLESS

Charlie: Hi, I’m Charlie Albone and welcome to episode two of Season two of That’s How We Grow in partnership with Stihl Garden Power Tools. Thank you for listening. Today we’re going to dig deep into lawns. Now, I am a big fan of a beautiful lawn. It can have so many uses, such as a relaxing place to enjoy your garden from hanging out with your family or entertaining on. Is there anything really better than being barefoot on a lush lawn? For me, it is hard to top. From a design point of view, a lawn can really help to break a garden up. It’s also perfect to send the kids outside to play on, and I’m sure all parents can relate to that.

Looking after a beautiful lawn involves a few steps to deliver a soft, lush lawn. For some people, they want a golf course putting green finish. Others, just want a soft playground. Best we speak to one of Australia’s grass experts to achieve this. Graeme Colless will join me in just a moment to discuss all things lawn.
Now, Graeme is the Managing Director of Evergreen Turf, which is one of Australia’s leading turf growers. They’ve supplied turf to venues including the Sydney Cricket Ground, Townsville Racecourse and the Carrara Sports Precinct on the Gold Coast.

I’m looking forward to chatting with Graeme about how to have a beautiful lawn at home and be the envy of everybody in your street! Let’s get into it. Graeme Colless, welcome to That’s How We Grow.

Graeme: Thank you very much. Good to be here.

Charlie: So tell me a bit about Evergreen Turf.

Graeme: Charlie, yeah, well we started back way back in 1982, I guess about 40 years ago roughly.

Yeah, we started there was two or three of us and now we employ about 120 people in Sydney and Melbourne. We specialise in major stadiums, rebuilds, racetracks, golf courses, home lawns. We do renovation work, verde running and top dressing, anything to do with grass, we do.

Charlie: So you do, you do love your green stuff then?

Graeme: Obviously we do. We do mate, yeah.

Charlie: Where did the love of turf come from?

Graeme: To tell you the truth I sort of fell into it, I was originally from the bush. A little place called Come by Chance. I come down here when I was 17 and met my wife, who, her father and brother had a veggie farm. And they were veggie farmers and we were veggie farming for a little while. And then we decided to go in the turf. And yeah, that’s all happened since then.

Charlie: You’ve been in the industry for 40 years. How has it changed from when you started?

Graeme: Well, we used to run around bare feet, blue singlets, the OHS, all that sort of stuff, all the new technology, but I think we got about 12 greenkeepers, proper certified greenkeepers with me.

All the chemical use… It’s just, it’s changed immensely. And, you know, when we started, we’re all on the old cutters and there’s two or three of us and we used to cut 4000 (metres) a day and like, we were fit. Yeah. You say to me now, cut 400, look, I’ll try to turn my nose up! Like the harvesters we got now, they’ll cut up to 1500 metres an hour each.

Charlie: That’s hard work, hand cutting it out, isn’t it?

Graeme: Oh yeah!

Charlie: You must love grass to stay in the industry for 40 years, if you started by hand cutting it all.

Graeme: Yeah mate. And, I guess there’s other people around here sort of feel me, man. There was this bloke called Terry Ella who used to own Windsor Turf they used to cut it by spade – that was doing it hard. Yeah, that’s why I say that technology today is… Yeah. Just changed everything. Grass has become mechanised. Machines, they cut it, roll it, stack it and drop the pallet. And, then the machine doesn’t even stop. And they got the forklifts picking up straight on the track. Back in the old days, she wasn’t really doing it fast by the hand. I’ll tell you, everyone talks about the good old days, and there are some good old days. But I’ll tell you what, in our industry, I’m glad we’ve got these days now I’ll tell you!

Charlie: Yeah. Good hard old days I think!

Graeme: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Charlie: So how do you get into doing big stadiums and things like that? Did you fall into that? Were you doing someone’s lawn and they said, Oh, could you do something a bit bigger for us?

Graeme: No mate, to do the major stadiums, it’s been a long, hard slog to get in there.

Because there is so much high expectations on you. Everything’s got to be perfect. But we grow 80,000 metres of instant play, which is for the stadiums and it’s got to be ready to go at any one time. It’s got to match what’s in each different stadium, like with the Iroquois Grass, the couch of choice. It’s takes a long time to get there. We’ve been probably doing them for 20 years now and I’m probably little bit biased, but my boys would be the best in the world at what we do doing stadiums.

We actually got invited over to the States in 2019 and we did two stadiums up in Arkansas. With our instant play product. And they were actually blown away, the stadiums over there, a lot of them are synthetic grass. But that’s going to happen here, too. And they’re all starting to go back to natural grass, because if you’re got 100 to 200 metres square lawn, that makes enough oxygen for 20 people per day.

Charlie: Absolutely. People need to understand the amazing things that a lawn can do. You know, it’s a massive collector for dust. It produces a lot of oxygen. So before anybody lays any turf in a home or sporting field, what’s the considerations they need to give to picking the right varieties?

Graeme: Mate, it’s like anything, it’s like building a house. If you don’t get the foundation right, you’re not going to win. If you’ve got a clay, mate, you need to put a bit of gypsum in, a bit of lime in. I mean, a good 80/20 mix, not cheap recycled stuff. Yeah. Like I say, if you want, if you want a real nice home lawn, you’ve got to spend a bit of a quid like, nothing’s cheap these days. And yeah, if you want it to look flash, mate, you’ve got to spend a quid to make it look flash, you know.

Charlie: I went to a Lawn Solutions conference and listened to a soil scientists talking about what’s the best soil to establish a lawn. And they were saying that 80/20 didn’t have enough nutrients in it and it dried out too quickly. And they were suggesting perhaps a sandy loam with maybe 20 to 30% secreted compost in there, so a fine compost. Is that something you’d agree with or do you prefer a different mix?

Graeme: Yeah, mate, it is… It’s just different folks, different strokes like yeah, that’ll work too. But my preference is 80/20 mix. You know, and good starter fertiliser. Yeah. And then your choice of grass and everyone’s got their own ideas. But like I say, don’t be too cheap when you’re doing stuff. You know, there’s a lot of recycled products around that you can put in, but mate, not necessarily of all of them work, you know?

Charlie: Yeah, absolutely. And getting the soil right, not just in a, in a lawn, but in all your plants, is one of the most beneficial investments you can make in your garden.

Graeme: 100%, mate.

Charlie: What’s your, what’s your favourite lawn variety?

Graeme: Tahoma 31.

Charlie: Tahoma 31. Why is that?

Graeme: It’s a new one, we brought out of the States in 2019. It’s very fine grass, very pretty grass. Very nice in colour. And we brought it out predominantly because they don’t take a roll over. And we’re going to put it on a couple of what we call a couple of our pads in instant play now. We’ve got it all around the country just about now. Tiftuf is pretty good grass as well. That’s another that’s out of the States, there’s another one coming out called Iron Cutter.

Graeme: That’s another one out of the States. And they spend a lot of money over there breeding grasses that are drought tolerant.

Charlie: Yeah, I think it’s University of Oklahoma, isn’t it, that does all the research over there.

Graeme: Yeah. Correct. Like I say, all right. We’ve had a lot of rain the last couple of years, but I mean, it will go back to being droughty. And we need to get these varieties here. Santa Ana is another real good one. Yeah, we just finished laying the Allianz Stadium, new Allianz Stadium. It’s Santa Ana on an instant play product with a raw over. Yeah, very hard wearing. We did Brookvale all that Christmas last year and it’s held up remarkably well this year. So Santa Ana is good, but they’re all different.

They all take different maintenance and practice, but Tahoma 31 is my favourite at the moment.

Charlie: And you say your instant play product. What is that? And how is it different from, say, a normal roll of turf?

Graeme: Well, mate, it’s got a polypropylene nylon back and underneath it, a 20 mil and then you fill it with 50 mil of sand and stolanise topper which is like planting. And, and you grow it on black plastic. It goes down through the black plastic. The root system locks all nylon to the sand. And then that gives you instant play.

Charlie: And how, how big is a piece of instant play?

Graeme: Ten square metres. It’s 1.2 wide by 8.4 long and it goes 1.6 tonne.

Charlie: Wow, so how do you move that interstate? There must be some serious machinery.

Graeme: Yes, yes. There’s a lot of machinery work that goes into it. You can’t move it. It’s all hydraulically pushed over. Yeah. With these little things called WMI’s. They’ll lift two and a half ton. But they’re a track machine that will leave no imprint on the ground. The surfaces has all been laser levelled and.

Graeme: Yeah. And then we get the one, one, one rolls it out and the other one comes behind and pushes it over. It’s all boarded up so we don’t leave any imprint whatsoever.

Charlie: So you kind of stitch the two rolls together along the seam?

Graeme: Not really. It’s just pushed over mechanically. And yeah, it’s very hard to see the joints.

Charlie: Yeah. And there’s no I guess being so big and so heavy, there’d be no movement when people are playing sport on it, it’s.

Graeme: No, mate, no. You can, you can put it down today and play on tonight and it won’t move.

Charlie: Yeah, that’s impressive. How often do stadiums kind of change their turf?

Graeme: There’s been times when we replaced Allianz, the old Allianz two and three times a year. It just depends on their workload and the SCG, I think it was 2018 or Summer of 2017 Collingwood were coming to town and all, and I’m not alone know much about the AFL, but the northern end of course they built the new stand, you know, we put 7000 metres in three days before Collingwood played. And no one even knew we did it.

Charlie: Yeah, that’s impressive.

Graeme: Yeah. And looks, I mean it’s exciting, and then if you don’t get excited about what you’re doing.

Charlie: Do something else.

Graeme: Do something else. But grass excites me like we’ve, we’ve turfed the Harbour Bridge twice for breakfast on the bridge. Everyone said it couldn’t be done like we had 110 people working on that project. We did a full football field in there and a half. And then we had to wrap it up and get it off there in two and a half hours.

Charlie: Goodness. And do you rejuvenate that turf that comes off or is it is it gone?

Graeme: No, no, it was rejuvenated and it went to another site.

Charlie: I’ve got a property on the New South Wales Central Coast and we’ve got a pretty big lawn there. And I’ve actually got one of the, I know robotic mowers set up there because I’m not there all the time. I can’t mower every day. Have you had much experience with the robots?

Graeme: No, I haven’t. But funny you ask that good mate of mine. Hewie Bowman the jockey, I did a lawn for Hewie. And I said to me mate, because he’s sort of not there all the time. And I said, we should probably have a look at one of these, the robotic mowers, and even my lawn at the front. Yeah, it’s only probably 140 square metres after Christmas. I’m going to have a look at the same thing.

Charlie: They’re pretty convenient in that sense. I noticed when you when you use a cylinder mower and you kind of strike up a lawn. Do you do you have to change direction? Is it a good idea to change direction every time you mow or is it do you need to do it in the same direction.

Graeme: Yeah, it just depends on your stripes and what you want. You should. You should try to change up the way you mow, like you’re saying, because if you keep burning the stripes in one way, all of a sudden the grass starts to lie over that way, and you will start to build thatch. So, take the thatch out. Swap you shop your mind around.

Charlie: Yeah. Okay. What kind of pattern? What kind of patterns do you like? Because I’ve watched a lot of people. It’s funny. I have a robotic lawnmower at home. Yeah. I watch people mow grass on Instagram

Charlie: to watch him put different patterns in their grass. It’s. It’s an odd thing. Yeah. Do you have any favourites or you just like the traditional stripes.

Graeme: Now or have checkerboard did more and mine’s Jack applied. Yeah. And all like the checked checkerboard stripes in mine you see them in Hobart they put those curly ones in for the cricket like they good. It is something different. Yeah. There’s a lot of tradition, the SCG, the trust wouldn’t let them do that, they because they just, they traditional, you know, and they’re fair enough to make, too mate,

Charlie: Yeah. Yeah, I understand.

Graeme: And even you look at Royal Randwick, we do a lot of the turf work down there. And Mick Wood the curator, mate, he came off a sports field in his previous life but he has his joint seeing and because the stripes he puts in it, they don’t mow them in, they just roll them in. I mean they’ll put the roller one way and then turn around and come the other way. And that’s how they put the stripes in.

Charlie: Obviously on a race course you have to keep the grass a bit longer. How does that change the maintenance of lawns? What issues do you get with the longer grass? Is there any or is it…?

Graeme: Most race courses, you know, grass is going to be about 120 mil, anywhere from either 120 mil sorry. Yeah, but those boys on every race track in Australia, they do an amazing job for the horses going across those tracks and the way they repair them. My, there’s heaps of different things they do, but mate they work for every cent, them race course managers.

Charlie: Yeah absolutely. It can’t be easy having hundreds of horses trampling over what you’re supposed to keep pristine.

Graeme: 100% mate, 100%!

Charlie: How is it different doing a stadium to a home lawn?

Graeme: Not much, really.

Charlie: Apart from machinery, obviously.

Graeme: Apart from the machinery, there’s not much, like you can put your topsoil down, screen it out so it’s level and virtually roll your turf, roll it in, water it and away you go it’s not rocket science it’s just a little bit of difference in practices. But if you wanted to, if you wanted, like I said, if you want it flash, you take your time and do it right. Yeah. And you win.

Charlie: So when you’re setting up a home lawn is doing the edging is important as kind of getting it flat. How do you how do you treat the edges of a lawn.

Graeme: Mate 100%, what we normally do if we’re doing the home lawn, we’ll lay the grass out, come to the edge and then we either cut it with a demo saw so you’ve got that nice crisp edge.

Graeme: At the stadium, we blow vac all the sand off the surface on a home lawn, you do the same for that, you know, blow vac it all off so it’s nice and clean. You’re not washing many fines back into the grass and then put your sprinkler and away you go.

Charlie: And away you go, as simple as that. When it comes to watering and establishing, what sort of regime do you use on an, say, home lawn?

Graeme: The first watering is probably the best watering. I always like to give it a good hour, like for the whole lawn and then probably an hour once you lay it out, an hour night and morning for a couple of days, and then slightly slowly back the water off because that way you get your root system to go in chasing the moisture in the ground. If you give it too much water, that’s another thing we need to talk about here with your grass. Like a lot of people of the opinion, when the turf turns up, the more soil on, the better it’s going to go. That’s not really it. The less soil, the better, the less soil on it, the better it’ll go. Because it’s like, there’s nothing there for it to live on. As long as you keep it, long as you keep it watered, the roots will go down chasing the moisture. We do a lot of washed turf for a job coming up at Royal Sydney, all the turf is going to be washed down at our facility and picked, so they wash all the dirt off on a free draining sand down there in that Royal Sydney, that way the roots go straight into it.
There’s no…

Charlie: Contamination.

Graeme: Contamination and the water runs straight through rather than sitting on top, and if you got that interface there the water won’t go through the grass.

Charlie: Right. So it just makes it establish a bit quicker.

Graeme: It does mate yeah. And then it’ll grow even further down into your profile.

Charlie: That’s counterintuitive, isn’t it? But I guess when you explain it, it makes sense.

Graeme: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Charlie: Now, a lot of people across Australia have been dealing with excessive amounts of rain at the moment. I’ve sadly had to lay a lawn in the middle of winter in the pouring rain at my house because it was better than mud. But, you know, how can people kind of get their lawns back after such a wet period.

Graeme: Mate, All I can say is, just aeration.

Charlie: Okay.

Graeme: If they’ve got verde reins or, like or spike rollers, that’s the best way. We’ve just had all our farms flooded three, nine, four times in the last two months. And the best thing we can do is put the aerator down. Because what happens is the worms come to the top looking for looking air. And then you get all, you get all your mounds, you know, your worm castings. That’s not, I mean it’s healthy for the grass, but as long as they stay down below where they should be, not coming to the top.

And mate if you aerate, all of a sudden all those worm casts start to go away because you’re getting oxygen into the soil.

Charlie: Yeah. Even on a small lawn, you can just do it with a garden fork, can’t you? You don’t need a machine.

Graeme: Yeah, correct mate, 100%.

Charlie: Would you fill those holes with the core sand to stop them from collapsing, or would you just leave them open?

Graeme: Mate I’d leave them open for a day or two and then you can fill them with core sand for sure mate. And that way, if you get any more rain, it’ll, it’ll go back, then it’ll go back in the holes, you know, rather than sitting on top.

Charlie: Yeah, right. And what about fertilizing? Do you think it’s important to, to do that when the, when the grass is so wet?

Graeme: Mate not really because like, I have my home lawn here. I’ve got Santa Ana on my own lawn. It’s mowed at 8 mil striped up. And, you know, I haven’t fertilized it I reckon since probably Christmas last year because of the rain and you don’t want to get it away on you because all of a sudden if it starts to get away, you get out and then you’ve got my scalp back down. Doesn’t look any good and of course it’s wet. I mean you’d know yourself, there’s been a lot of problems with army grub about because it is so moist, and so you just got to be careful how much fertilizer you do give it.

Charlie: Because yeah. I guess it comes down to how much maintenance you can give it, if you’ve got a nice cylinder mower and you can get out there every day then go for it. But you know, not everyone has that time.

How do you pick the right tools for your grass? Is it a cylinder mower? Is it a normal mower? Is it a robotic mower? What the best way to pick the right tools?

Graeme: Mate, it’s like anything. I’m pretty proud of my lawn, a cylinder mower is good for couch.

The last few years, everyone used to have Water Buffalo. But I see people, you drive around the estates now, everyone’s going to couch because everyone’s trying to outdo each other. You know, there’s a bloke out for me who didn’t like my lawn because I was pretty flash, and he’s had a Santa Ana lawn, and he’s mowed it right down and he’s got rye in it now.

And, you know, it’s a contest to see who’s got the best lawn on the street. And that’s when I start to see the guys going away from the Buffaloes and the Kikuyus, and going back to couch lawns, you know.

Charlie: Yeah. That fine leaf lawn, it does make people jealous doesn’t it. When you’ve got a really nice, perfectly fine leaf lawn it does get your neighbours hackles up.

Graeme: Oh yeah. We get people pulling up to the front of the house. They’re jumping out and feeling and walking on it. So it’s, yeah, it’s good mate. And like I say, you can have a biggest and flashiest house going, but if you haven’t got a flash lawn to go with it mate… Yeah.

Charlie: You’ve got to put the jewels on. I get it.

Graeme: My word, mate, my word. It’s like putting your earrings on.

Charlie: So if someone’s in a competition with the neighbours and they really want to take their lawn to the next level, what have they got to do?

Graeme: Mate, every Spring, renovate to start with, de-thatch it, it doesn’t matter what kind you got, Kikuyu, Couch or Buffalo, top grass it fertilize it and then fertilize it every three months. Aeration is the key to it, I reckon. Even better if you can do both.

Charlie: How deep do you need to go with aeration?

Graeme: Mate probably three inches mate, that’s plenty.

Charlie: Yeah. So, aerate, scarify. Get all the thatch out of it. What’s in the top dress? What do you use for top dress?

Graeme: This depends on your profile. If you’re down in the northern beaches, you just use sand, because all that country down there’s virtually all sand. You get a bit further out in the suburbs, you know, 80, 20, 70, 30. You just going to see what you got underneath it, you know?

Charlie: Yeah. And if you don’t know, get your soil tested to work it out, I guess.

Graeme: Correct. You don’t necessarily need a lot of dirt on your turf. Take the less and the better. Yeah, it might take a little bit more water to get it established, but in the long run, you’re going to be better off. Because if you’ve got stuff with 30 mil of soil on it, it’ll tend to live in that profile. If you wet it up, it’ll live in that profile. It won’t go down chasing the goodness underneath, you know.

Charlie: When’s the best time to lay new lawn? Because I just learned it’s certainly not the middle of winter.

Graeme: We lay all year round.

Charlie: In Sydney and Melbourne?

Graeme: Sydney and Melbourne, lay all year round. And it’s just, you know, it depends on what you want to do. But like I say, oh, I don’t mind Winter either, because you use the less water and it doesn’t get off, it doesn’t grow flat out, but you do use less water. But mate optimum tolerance probably September to December. But you know, because January, February in Sydney gets, you know, stinking hot. But yeah, you can lay all the year round.

Graeme: Don’t worry about that. We lay washed turf in the middle of Winter and it still takes.

Charlie: When it comes to getting the right tools. What things do you look for? Because obviously you need a lot of tools from big machines all the way down to push mowers, I guess.

Graeme: Yeah, I think we’re going to be at 45 or 50 cab tractors alone. We started with New Holland and we got all new Holland gear, like tractors. Yeah, we’ve got Verde grains, ten trucks. They’re all Isuzu. Ten tailgaters, they’re Moffatt’s. All our demo saw, all our hand tools, are Stihl, especially in the stadiums, mate. We’ve got the demo saws and they’re concrete, demo saws. You know what I’m talking about?

Charlie: Yeah, yeah.

Graeme: Yeah. And them Stihl, them Stihls, mate just go flat out all the time. And when we pull that pull cord, I want them to go.

Charlie: If you’re laying a stadium in an hour or across the Harbour Bridge you want, you don’t have much time to waste do you, you want them to work!

Graeme: And they’re reliable mate, and aftersales service like, so if they treat you right, well, you just keep going back mate.

Charlie: Yeah, absolutely. I’ve never heard of a demo saw being used to cut edges. I mean, I like it and I’ll definitely try it, but what other Stihl hand tools you’re using?

Graeme: Well, we have

Graeme: hedge trimmers because we do a bit of maintenance, or one side of the business does maintenance. Bowers, backpack blowers, all that sort of stuff. Like each tractor, I got seven mowing tractors here, each tractor has a Stihl blower attached to it. So when we go from one paddock to another, everything has to be blown down, blown off the mowers so there’s no contamination.

Charlie: Yeah. So that is, that’s the stuff, any stow ons or anything like that, you know, creeping into another field?

Graeme: Correct. So if you go from one variety to another other, the mowers have got to be clean, the wheels are going to be blown down on all the tractors. And it’s imperative they do that because we’re with a group and we’re in a certification program. Yes, they come out and test us three times a year to make sure there’s no contamination from one variety to another. So it’s very important that all those blowers in the ring or some attach to the track is right you know.

Charlie: Yeah. And it’s all got to work, right? Because if it doesn’t work, it’s time wasted.

Graeme: With the demo saws, when we’re flipping the rolls over from one roll to the other, like they cut through, you know, nearly 100 mil. And it’s sand… And like I say, like I say, the amount of comments we got the other day when we did Allianz because the people who built it, John Holland and a lot of their people came down, they go “What the hell are you doing all these demo saws?” And I say, you just wait and see what we’re doing with them. And they were blown away. We’re cutting grass with a concrete blade on it, too.

Charlie: So you use a concrete blade?

Graeme: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Charlie: That doesn’t clog up?

Graeme: No, not at all.

Charlie: Yeah, right.

Graeme: Yeah.

Charlie: I’m definitely going to give that one to go.

Graeme: Yeah. And you’ll get it nice and crisp. And that’s, that’s the whole thing. Getting a nice crisp edge for the next roll to go into, you know.

Charlie: So you mentioned also you do international work. How does lawns in, say, Thailand, as you mentioned, differ from lawns in Australia and in other places around the world?

Graeme: Mate, the stuff we do overseas in Thailand and South Africa we’ve done, there’s a product called Staylock. Which is stabilises the sand. And we’ve been doing that for a long time now. We’re actually the worldwide agents for it. It was developed 50 years ago by the US Army for when they’ll land the tanks up on the beaches. The polypropylene fibres which banjo out when you put them in, you spread them over the sand. And the best way to describe it, Charlie, is, you know, when you go to the beach, and you first walk onto the sand up at the top and you sink in to your ankles? Once you put them in, once you put the fibres in, it’s like walking in where the water’s been coming in.

Just firms it up. The SCG, Allianz or a lot of the stadiums now have the fibres in it, because of the concerts, we all know stand up and compact but it doesn’t let it come back to it to a degree. We put those in and that’s what we do overseas.

Charlie: Does it have any effect on root penetration into the sand?

Graeme: No it doesn’t and that’s okay, the root grows once it’s been in, the root grows through the banjo Staylocks and it locks it all together so that gives it the whole surface strength mate.

Charlie: So would you be able to say use that under an area that might have a car parked on it occasionally to protect the root zone?

Graeme: Correct. Correct. There’s this big cemetery getting built and they don’t want to have any tar any more as carpark. And we’re going to do the fibres underneath the grass so they can park on the grass.

Charlie: I mean, obviously that’s going to affect the leaf growth on top with cars moving and turning on it. But at least the roots are protected so it can recover quickly. Is that the principle?

Graeme: Correct mate, correct!

Charlie: Yeah, lovely. So where is the best lawn you’ve ever seen? You know, there’s always a spot where you go, “Oh! That’s a good lawn. Is it your own or?

Graeme: No, well mine’s up there, but I went to Brisbane probably a month ago and a bloke called Will Pearson, he had a Tahoma 31 lawn and he had the mowed at about seven mil. And my, this is the best thing I’ve ever seen me life!

Charlie: How often was he mowing it?

Graeme: Every day.

Charlie: And what’s your go to fertiliser on a lawn.

Charlie: Yeah yeah. And what’s your go to fertilizer on a lawn?

Graeme: Dynamic lifter.

Charlie: Ok.

Graeme: Yeah. Everyone’s different. You can go to ureas, you know, all that sort of fertilizers, but bit of dynamic lifter, water it in. And I try and stay away from the synthetics fertilizers a lot. And they just keep it ticking over, if your lawns healthy, mate – that’s all you need.

Charlie: And when it comes to scarifying, getting the thatch out of the lawn, what’s the best way to do that for a home gardener? Is it to go to say, Kennards and rent something or a stiff rake?

Graeme Yeah, correct, mate, yeah. You’re better off going to Kennards

Charlie: Yeah. Can you, can you scarify with, say, a metal rake or something like that, or do you do more damage than good?

Graeme: I reckon you do more damage and good. You’re not going to get the evenness over everything, you know. You could do it, but you’d want to be keen, though.

Charlie: Yeah. Yeah. You want to be fit to do it.

Graeme: 100%.

Charlie: Well, it’s been amazing talking to you. I’ve learnt so much about grass. I thought I knew a lot about it. But you are the guru when it comes to the green stuff, so thank you for your time.

Graeme: No, no, thank you very much, Charlie. Thanks for your time.

Charlie: It is now time to move on to our community questions. And I am slowly getting through that long list that you are sending in, but enjoying answering them for sure!

Jodie from Perth has emailed me saying, Hi Charlie, I have a nice lawn that is Kikuyu, but I’m noticing that it’s popping up in a couple of places in my garden beds. I thought I had a good border of rocks, but the Kikuyu is growing through this. What tips do you have to stop this grass from invading? In my garden, where Kikuyu is an incredibly fast growing grass, which is excellent. But it does like to invade your garden and it has stolen that which run across the surface and quickly hop into your garden beds.

A border of rocks is not going to do it because it’s going to have cracks in between and the grass is going to easily get through. So you need to dig down an edge into the soil and have a physical barrier. Now, if you want something quite formal, you could use a brick edge. If you wanted something a bit sleeker, you could just use a metal edge about 150 mil down, and that’s going to stop any grass growing through to your garden beds. Jason from Melbourne has asked, Hi, Charlie. Our family got a dog last year. Well, so did I. I got one during COVID lockdown, one and one during COVID lockdown too. But we’re noticing a few patches of the lawn have died off and we think it’s from the dog’s way.

Charlie: The dog likes playing outside and we don’t want mud in Winter. So what do we do? Well, yes, dogs will wee on grass and when it is concentrated, you do get burnt yellow patches. The best way to combat this is when you see the dog wee is just to water it down to try and dilute it. There are things like rocks. You can put it in the dog’s water to try and prevent all of the excess minerals. But to be honest, I think just dilute it if you can. Matt in Sydney has sent in a question saying, hi Charlie, I’ve been trying to get my lawn looking thick and lush. Do you use a lawn scarifyer? And how often should I do this to ensure I’m not overdoing it?

Well, scarifying is excellent for taking stuff out of a lawn, which is for those that don’t know, are all the dead leaves. The brown stuff you see in the lawn is called thatch, and it’s a good idea to get rid of that because then you prevent any fungal diseases. So yes, you should use a scarifye, but you only really need to do it once a year and Spring is the best time to do it. So then your lawn is nice and free and airy to power on through the warmer months. Do you have a gardening question you’d like me to answer? Well, send me an email. Charlie at Stihl.com.

You know, it was really great to speak with Graeme Colless today. He’s a real expert with over 40 years of experience in the turf game. He said you get what you pay for and do your soil properly. It really is the foundation for a good lawn. And every Spring time you need to scarify, aerate and fertilise to get your lawn looking good, all through the warmer months. I learnt a couple of new things today as well. First, use a demo saw on your edges and less soil actually works out to be more!

It will help your turf establish quicker and you’ll have that lush green lawn you’ve been looking for in no time.

Thanks for listening to That’s How We Grow in partnership with Stihl Garden Power Tools. On our next episode, the incredible chef Matt Moran will join me to discuss his passion for local produce. Growing your own vegetables is rewarding and great fun, and Matt is going to discuss how he works with his team to have a constant supply of local produce for his award winning restaurants. This episode will be available in two weeks’ time. Don’t forget to check out Stihl’s blog with plenty of great gardening advice, as well as many of my key seasonal tips and tricks. Be sure to go to blog dot Stihl dot com dot A U.

You can also find us on Instagram. You can follow Stihl, Stihl underscore A U and you can also follow me as well. Charlie underscore Albone, thanks for listening. And until next time, goodbye.