How to revive Sir Walter buffalo lawn in Brisbane?

[niccim]

Hi there can anyone tell me what is happening with my sir Walter lawn. This started to happen about a month after the big floods we had here in Brisbane back in February.   My lawn has always look magnificent I spend a lot of time and $$ on it. But this issue just got worse and worse it looked like it had mould and now no matter what I do it won’t come back. Admittedly it is winter right now but I thought I would see some improvement. 

 

[MitchellMc]

Welcome to the Bunnings Workshop community @niccim. It's brilliant to have you join us, and many thanks for your question about Buffalo lawn maintenance.

If it weren't for that distinctive striped effect, I'd say it could have something to do with the excess water or some fungal infection. However, I will have an educated guess and say this looks like a lawn mowed far too low and has been scalped, exposing the runners. The width of those strips seems incredibly close to that of a lawnmower. You can see on the perimeter and around the pole where the mower deck couldn't get close. I'm not sure why you have the striped effect; perhaps the wheels rode over that area with the passes, so they didn't get cropped as severely.

Did you happen to give this lawn a really short mow some time around when that rain was? Whatever the reason, I can't go past the fact that these strips are somehow related to the issue you're experiencing.

Let me call in one of our experts, @Adam_W, to see if he has any thoughts.

Mitchell
 

[niccim]

Hi Mitchell thanks for your response..it was like this before I mowed short, I mowed it shorter than I normally do especially in winter to try and dry it out over the past 2 mows. But it looked like this before hand. All of that dead area was wet and had like a mould. I have treated it for that but it is not coming

[MitchellMc]

Interesting @niccim. Any ideas on what's caused the stripe effect? Something has caused the stripes to remain healthy and in between to be affected. A mower would be my first guess, but if we can work out how that has happened, I'm reasonably sure it will reveal the answer to your problem. What's going on under the soil? Do you have irrigation run across this area that alines with this striped damage? Does the soil undulate and the dead sections are lower than the rest and therefore sit in water trapped in the area?

Buffalo goes relatively dormant over Winter, so any re-growth or repair will take some time, typically occurring once it starts warming up. 

Mitchell

[niccim]

The stripes would be from my mower I have a commercial grade Honda wide deck and it is heavy and on all my grass it has the stripes which look good if the lawn is not buggered lol..no everything is level and that grass has been down now for 18yrs and no irrigation in that area. until the floods I had no problem same mower same level of grass has always been plush and green and super healthy I use fertiliser 4 times a year the original sir Walter fertiliser and it also gets sea soil lawn a couple times a year. This all happened after the floods. I guess it is some sort of fungus from whatever got washed through in the floods. I will let it go back to being a bit longer again to protect it and wait till spring and if still not good I will take out and replace with new grass
Thanks for your time