Help! Diseased/dying areas in new turf.

adam_norris

Hi,
First time posting and I am a complete novice in the garden. We laid turf down just over a month ago, watered it regularly, mowed after about two weeks with a borrowed mower, continued to water regularly then started using/children playing on it just before the four week mark. Mowed it for a second time last week with a new mower. A couple of days later the grass started to look bad in areas and I think it could be spreading, photos attached. 
Hoping someone can tell me what it is, possibly what has caused it but most importantly how I can fix it. 
Thanks in advance. 

Dave Humby

Could possibly be the ground conditions in those localised areas. Did you do the ground prep prior to laying the turf? Do you recall any areas of hard ground, less topsoil or stoney for example? 

adam_norris

Thanks for reply. Yes there were areas of harder ground where we had less topsoil, thought we’d got away with it as the lawn was very green for first few weeks, can it become a problem later on? 

Dave Humby

These type of areas will dry out first and be less rich in nutrients etc. It’s difficult to get it completely uniform. You’ll probably find in late spring and early autumn the grass will look pretty similar across the whole lawn but these areas might be more obvious at other times. Will largely depend on your personal requirements for aesthetics and practicality as a family lawn. You can improve the areas over time by some light top dressing and some aeration / decompaction with a garden fork or worse case dig out these areas, reinstate with a better depth of top soil and reseed or returf. 

Fairygirl

In addition to the advice for improving those areas, if you have children playing on it, it's going to look a lot worse than that, so it's not worth worrying too much!

It's probably been a bit too soon to cut it and use it, but grass is tough, and it will recover. 
Just follow the advice for the less attractive areas, and it should improve. 

adam_norris

Thank you both for your advice and for taking the time to reply