Leatherjackets

I also have another question about leatherjackets. Both our lawns - front and back -seem to be absolutely infested with the bloody things. So, we called upon the local lawn maintenance guy to spray some industrial strenth insecticide on both of them as we couldn't find anything in the garden centres. Paid him �£32 and now I must say we don't really see any more of the buggers. However, the lawn doesn't seem to show any signs of recovery at all. The front especially is as hidious as ever. We seeded it from scratch last year when we bought the house. The bad thing is that previous owners hadn't lived in the property for a year before we bought it, so the garden was badly neglected, hence, all the problems we inherited. Please someone help me to restore the lawn :( We have the most horrible lawn in the entire neighbourhood. Even those of our neighbours who are not that keen on gardening have a far nicer lawn than we do and we did everything by the book when we seeded it. I can just imagine how everyone is laughing at us at the moment. We're our neighbourhood's greatest lawn embarrassment :(

 

The lawn is probably suffering because it wasn't mown regularly during its year of neglect. :( So - light, water and regular (but not excessive) mowing should put that right. Industrial strength sprays for farmers' fields turn them into deserts :( - perhaps it was just too strong for lawn grass.

Leather jackets are the larvae of craneflies. Blackbirds, starlings, robins etc will eat your leather jackets gladly if you don't make everything taste foul by chemical spraying . An organic quick fix is to water the lawn really well - give it a good soaking. Then cover it with black plastic for a day. Remove plastic and all the leather jackets will be on the surface. Then you can remove them by hand, trample them, hover mower them or let the birds have a feast. :D

 

Thanks Hornbeam. Unfortunately the lawn has gone yellow and dry well before we called upon the lawn maintenance guy and we do cut the grass regularly, fertilise it etc. Just can't seem to restore it at all from leatherjacket damage. As for bird feast... Not too sure about that. They did have a feast every day when the leatherjackets were here. Every plant in our borders is covered in their sh*t as a result (excuse my language). I'm just so frustrated with my lawn at the moment that the temptation is to concrete the lot :(

 

I have tried the "organic quick fix" method as stated by Hornbeam..Have to say it worked a treat,and the birds did have a feast, only had to do it the once. If you have the hosepipe ban, as we have, then that might be hard to do :rolleyes:

 

NO,NO, Technopuppy...not the concrete (thats the Prescot way of doing things)

 

No hosepipe ban as yet but plenty of concrete. Thanks to Prescott by the way (I'm in sunny Milton Keynes ). But anyway it's too late for the organic methods as all the leatherjackets seem to have gone. Just one problem now: how to restore the lawn after the damage they caused? I'm so deeply ashamed of our lawn :(

 

Send us a photo and we may get a clue to the problem

 

Have you got dog/s or have previous owners ever had them, just an idea, dog urine kills the lawn, even if you re-seed, unless you remove all the contaminated surounding areas the seed will not germinate. Just wondered if that may have happened :(

 

Just had another thought(dangerous things thoughts) is your house new? our house isn't new
but when we came here the house had stood empty for 4years, my husband has just reminded me of my lawn dilema. My grass would not pick up, on excavating we found the problem. there had been a huge glass house running all round the perimeter of the house. Builders had been bought in by the Estate Agents to take it down as it falling down, instead of taking it away they smashed it into pieces, spread it round the already overgrown garden piled soil from another job on top of the broken glass and put seed down. Of course the seed worked in the short term (long enough for us to come along and buy the house) only to find that come the drier months the lawn gradually died off in areas. it took a year to remove all the bits of glass,before we could re-seed, I still sometimes find the odd bit we missed working its way to the surface. Could your lawn be layed on top of rubble, in which case it would go brown and patchy