[BXMurphy]

NE Mass. on NH border. Kept lawn out of dormancy. Have greenest crabgrass in neighborhood. Neighbors jealous.

Took my first soil sample using 3/4" soil sampler tube. I was surprised that I didn't find a layer of spongy thatch given that this is my first season getting serious with my lawn.

I pushed the grass aside to get to reasonably bare ground. Good growth of whatchamacallit grass.

Will thatch show up within the bare soil or did I push the thatch aside when I took the sample?

 

[Pete1313]

Here are a couple pics of thatch samples I pulled from my yard when I moved in May 2016. They had an excessive amount of thatch (about 1").

So yes, you should see thatch when taking a sample if you have it. The grass will also feel spongy like walking on a pillow when it is excessive. The thatch I had was isolated to shady areas where fine fescues dominated the areas. The other 95+% of the yard had zero thatch. If you can look thru the soil and see bare dirt, you probably don't have thatch. At least not in those areas.

 

[g-man]

Pete, what was your approach to removing that much thatch?

 

[Pete1313]

I didn't need it gone right away, so I just fed the yard organically, lots of sles, kelp, humic acid, but one thing I did was add molasses(2oz/k) to every spray tank. I was told molasses wouldn't work on that much thatch, but I wanted to try it. I think the molasses (or a combination of what I did) helped it as it went from 1" to about 5/8" by next March. The rest of it was taken care of by the aggressive coring and dragging, but I think I do see some benefit by keeping some molasses in the tank maybe as more of a preventative then curative. Picture is from March 2017, in the same spot as where the cores were taken the year before. The thatch layer went down some.

 

[BXMurphy]

Perfect! Thank you for taking the time to take and post pictures. That's what I was looking for.

I don't have thatch. I will be running with kelp, SLES, humic, molasses, and yucca to kick start the microbes and soften up the ground a bit.

I got lucky... I don't think the soil is in such terrible shape as far as structure goes. I'm taking soil samples as step one in my first season getting serious about the lawn.