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hydrophobic soil in lawn

16 years ago

Our lawn is 15 years old. It is St. Augustine turf grass (Floratam). I have had problems with hydrophobic soil in places in the lawn (not whole lawn) and have been told to use soap and water solution which works for maybe two or three days. After 2" of rain, my moisture meter was less than zero from surface to 3" deep. We are only allowed to water one day a week, and I try to put 3/4" of water on it from our sprinkler system if it hasn't rained. I need some kind of commercial product to take care of this. I have a lawn maintenance company but they keep telling me to put soap and water on it. Would like recommendations! Help!

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Comments (4)

bpgreen
16 years ago
Here is a thread where several products are discussed.
skoot_cat
16 years ago
I have the same problem and the only thing I can recommend that I know works is Compost, Compost and more Compost. Homemade Compost is the best, but the bagged stuff will work decent.

Start by applying it 1/4" thick then use a push broom or lightly rake it off the grass blades. (more is not better, you do not want to smother the grass) Keep the area moist (not soaking wet) for 1 week. 2-3 months later repeat, then another 2-3 months later repeat again. After the third application you should be good. Yes, I know its a long process but it does work.
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I do have mulch, which is why I have so many woodlice. The fine dark spheres which make up the layer are their poop. They often practice coprophagy to recover the copper in their poos. In order to do this, they have to poop. They also can help remove heavy metals in soil, but very slowly and over a very long time! I am certain it is not from ants. It is not soil and I would have to have A LOT of ants to make this layer. From what I have read, detergents are not recommended, but rather real soaps. Or a concoction involving flat beer and spit. Yeech! The spit is for the enzymes. I could purchase a product ready made, but wanted to try soap. I'm guessing Murphy's oil soap would be ok, but wanted to see if anyone knew for certain.
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MG has a very high percentage of peat so overall I would not consider the mix to be slightly peaty as you described . But yes, dry peat repels water.
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A 6.1 pH in a soil that fizzes (free calcium/Magnesium carbonate). No anomaly that would produce that comes to mind. Don't bother with a AA test. It's not going to be beneficial this year. We'll assume that all the soil is 8.4 pH and you can retest next year with AA. I don't like making recommendations at the 3-6" level for turf but here goes: Everything in your soil is not only above minimum levels, but decently into sufficient and some even at optimal levels EXCEPT Phosphorous which is detrimentally deficient ( your turf probably did well the first couple of years because sod farms pound their turf with P and you used up the residual that was present). In fact. P is well below critical. Potassium (K) and Boron are also a bit low. but we only need to keep an eye on B and kick K up. It's Phosphorous though, big time. The clay is going to be a real PITA. Edited: Before we go forward: Are you willing/can you afford to aerate twice this year? Can you find/want to pay for Triple fertilizer (10-10-10, 12-12-12, etc) ? Can you find/want to pay for Triplesuper Phosphate ? Can you find/want to pay for Sulfate of Potash/Potassium Sulfate/Sop? Can you find/want to pay for Milorganite (5-4-0) ?
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If you could untill the ground and remove the peat you'd be ahead of the game. Where do you live? Is the area shaded or sunny most of the day? We need that info to help you more. Your zone doesn't matter, we need the location. Most people who think they have clay have other stuff going on. If they try to fix it like it was clay then they are doing the wrong thing. There is a test called the jar test which can help you decide if you need further testing. Get a straight sided jar, fill it half way with soil, and measure the amount of soil with a ruler next to the glass (TAKE A PICTURE). Fill the jar with water and a short squirt of shampoo or dish soap. Cap the jar and shake it until all the soil is dissolved. Set the jar down, hold the ruler up and take another picture. After 2 minutes take another picture with the ruler. After 2 hours take another picture. After 2 days take another picture. What you will see is settling of sand/gravel (2 minutes), silt (2 hours), and clay (2 days). If you can see through the water on top of the soil after 2 days you don't have very much clay. Clay particles remain suspended for days and days to cloud the water. You can divide the sand by the total to get percentage of sand. Subtract the sand from the 2-hour picture settling and divide by the total to get the silt percentage. The rest will be clay. When you discover that you don't have any clay at all, then you might want to get a soil chemistry test to see what is the problem. Likely it is an imbalance of salts in the soil with too much magnesium being a possible problem.
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User
16 years ago
Skoot's will work, and changing to organics will help with it (albeit slowly) as well. You can cheat a bit and perhaps spray it with Nitron A-35 (I believe that's the name). I've never used it, but others report excellent results.

For the long-term, the organics and compost will help the most.
lazydazy
Original Author
16 years ago
Hello everyone, I apologize for not responding to your followup posts -- I thought I would receive an e-mail telling me there were followups but that did not happen and I assumed no one had written.
Thank you BPGreen for the link to the other posts, I did not discover that one when searching. Apparently I am not the only one with this problem.
Thank you SkootCat of Clearwater--we live an hour north of you and have sandy soil that either absorbs water instantly or mixes with loam and whatever else is out there, and gets hard.I have tried adding compost but these areas are in the swale where any torrential rains rush through and carry off the topsoil. Hmmm... maybe that is the problem! Our compost is being washed away before it can get down into the soil.Will keep at it. . .
MorpheusPA, I might give the Nitron a try also. Now I am thinking maybe I need to dig up some chunks of grass and put the compost UNDER the grass so it doesn't wash away???

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