I was recently working outdoors in the backyard and got a lot of oak sawdust on my grass. This was in the afternoon. By that evening the grass was starting to die and turn brown. I watered that night and several times the next day but its totally brown now. I never had a problem before but I usually work with pine.
Is there something particularly bad for grass in the oak?
What should I do to get my grass back?
Replies
There is nothing specific about oak that it would kill your grass; I regularly compost oak sawdust and use it in our gardens without any ill effects. This said, I cannot explain what happened in your case. One day isn't enough for sawdust to harm grass by blocking out sunlight...
Grass is pretty hardy stuff. Try watering it, giving it a good soaking (1") in the morning.
Best
Bill, I don't know the answer, but have a couple of comments. (1) the fact that it's brown doesn't necessarily mean it's dead. The root system of grass can remain viable even when the leaf component is brown and seemingly dead. (2) Paul's comment about successful use of composted oak sawdust isn't particularly relevant here. Your problem relates to the raw stuff, so to speak.
I think we need Jon Arno here. I'll drop him a line. In the meantime, be careful not to overwater the problem area -- you could drown the poor thing. Paul's suggestion of 1" is good.
forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
FG, due to its high concentration of tannins, oak is a rather acidic wood. Use of oak sawdust mulch in alkaline soils would actually be beneficial...at least after the depleting effects of its decomposition, which tends to rob the soil of nitrogen for awhile...but this is true when using sawdust of any kind.
I suppose the grass might have suffered from an overdose of acid, but it's equally likely that light deprivation and/or heat build up might have caused the grass to go temporarily dormant. As was mentioned earlier., I doubt if the grass roots have been seriously damaged and it will probably recover relatively soon. Grass is pretty hard to kill.
Thanks, Jon, for your timely input!forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)Another proud member of the "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
Jon
Oh, I don't know.
I manage to kill my grass off without any trouble.
Now the weeds are another story.
Jeff
Jeff, with a brown thumb like that, I'll bet even the dandelions hide when they see you coming. :O)
They tremble in fear.
Jeff
Jon's probably right, we all listen to him, but I'll just throw out the additional idea that maybe the dry sawdust just sucked the moisture out of the grass.
I killed some azales'es with walnut sawdust many years ago, before I got smarter.
Enjoy, Roy
Roy, walnut sawdust is another story altogether. Walnut contains juglone, which is one of the most potent natural herbicides in the plant kingdom.
Seems like something else must be at play here, to kill off the grass in just a few hours. Even herbicides won't kill grass that quickly!
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." A. Einstein
http://www.albionworks.net
I did the same thing a few years ago only it was Redwood that I was cutting. The grass turned brown and then went bye-bye. I had to workup the soil and re-seed it to get it to come back. I finally guessed that the problem was not anything in the sawdust. I figured that I was standing for most of the day in the general area of the problem and I had managed to pack that sawdust into the soil so tight that it was apparently letting water down to the roots. I suppose it also sucked up most of the moisture in the soil too. It was a fairly warm day and I think the combination finally killed it off. Of course the cat may have seen all that sawdust and figured it was kitty litter which would have had the same effect.
Sincerely;
The Tool Guy
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