The bodge: phase 3

The bodge continues!

With BH forecasting a wet week to come, sowing the grass seed yesterday, despite the rain of the day before, seemed like a good idea.

Phase 3a, sprinkle on the lawn seed: 'Shady Place' from Johnsons of Inkberrow in Worcestershire, for whom see reference 2. 

About 425g grams of seed, spread at a rate of around 35g to the square metre. So sprinkling straight out of the box, using the holes provided was not going to work. Instead, finding that the small measuring cup I use when making bread held just about 35g, I used that instead. Just about visible bottom right in the wheelbarrow. The quantity of seed bought was spot on and the box is now ready to be recycled.

The seed was pale blue in colour and there was a modest amount of blue dust in the pack. Modest amount of blue dust blowing around during the scattering - for which I did not mask up. Maybe a combination of lawn feed and bird deterrent - the pigeons not having seemed to have found the seed, getting on for 24 hours later. I was careful to wash up afterwards: who knows what chemicals might have been involved?

Noting in passing that the box said good for up to 20 square metres. While the small print said 35g to the square metre for seeding a new lawn, 20g to the square metre for renovation. Slightly misleading.

Phase 3b, sprinkle some compost on top: J. Arthur Bower’s Multi-Purpose Compost. Given the conditions, this seemed better than mixing the seed with the compost, as originally suggested. Bower's appears to be a popular brand owned by Westland of reference 3, but neither Bing nor Google could tell me who Mr. Bower was, although the wording at the Westland website suggests that he was a real person, not some figment of marketing imagination.

Around two thirds of an 80 litre pack. The parental sieve, probably getting on for a three quarters of a century old now, seemed to work pretty well. With the parental rake serving to smooth out the dents left by the bit of board serving as a scaffold board. A bit of board which was bought more than thirty years ago when we were replicating the sand pit we had at Norwich - a replica which was never as successful as the original, perhaps because the boys were getting older, perhaps because we did not have a nifty circular brick platform to put it on, as at Norwich, where we called it the bandstand. Presumably originally intended for tasteful garden furniture, rather than for imaginative play involving sand, water and plastic dinosaurs.

I might say that FIL's rake was even more heritage, with the tines being nails bashed into the base plate by a blacksmith, rather than the whole thing being made in a factory from a single small slab of steel, as here.

I might also say that 80 litres is about as I want to pick up these days. Very feeble, although in my defense, I might add that the bag was perforated (by design) and the compost was fairly wet.

The lowest point of the renewal, far right, was pretty wet. Let's hope the seed there does not rot.

PS: I am reminded that when we bought our house in Norwich we bought the curtains as an extra. At the eleventh hour, the vendor told us that this did not include the curtain rails. At which point we got cross - and they carefully took the curtains down and took the rails away with them, possibly to dump them in some tip on arrival at their new home? But they did leave the curtains behind, nicely folded.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-bodge-phase-2.html.

Reference 2: https://www.johnsonslawnseed.com/.

Reference 3: https://www.gardenhealth.com/.