Grass Clippings - Lawn Advice From a Team of Lawn and Turf Experts

Ten Interesting Facts about Earthworms

Are Earthworms a Garden's Friend of Foe? That depends.  Here are 10 things you may want to know about earthworms:

1. Earthworms come in a seemly infinite variety—around 6,000 species worldwide.

One of the most familiar of them, the sort you may see in your garden, is commonly known as the night crawler (it typically surfaces after dark), the angleworm (its makes popular bait for fishing) or the rain worm (it leaves waterlogged soil after storms).

2. Of the more than 180 earthworm species found in the U.S. and Canada, 60 are invasive species, brought over from the Old World, including the night crawler.

3. Lacking lungs or other specialized respiratory organs, earthworms breathe through their skin.

Are Earthworms a Garden's Friend of Foe? That depends.  Here are 10 things you may want to know about earthworms:

1. Earthworms come in a seemly infinite variety—around 6,000 species worldwide.

One of the most familiar of them, the sort you may see in your garden, is commonly known as the night crawler (it typically surfaces after dark), the angleworm (its makes popular bait for fishing) or the rain worm (it leaves waterlogged soil after storms).

2. Of the more than 180 earthworm species found in the U.S. and Canada, 60 are invasive species, brought over from the Old World, including the night crawler.

3. Lacking lungs or other specialized respiratory organs, earthworms breathe through their skin.

Solving Lawn Worm Casts with CastClear

CastClear is the solution to lawn worm casts.

It's a lawn soil cast suppressant and a deterrent. It's proven in control on both lawns and sports turf.

Which? Gardening Trials Team trialled it and gave it the thumbs up.

It is unique in using a surfactant system that moves the nutrient into the upper soil structure and fixes it there providing good persistence of deterrent effect until breaking down to natural nutrients absorbed by plant roots.

Aeration - A Beginners Guide

In a wet winter similar to the one we have just experienced, failure to carry out a programme of lawn aeration can lead to an entirely different problem. This is when surface sealing can often occur, due to the compacting effect of trampling feet and heavy maintenance machinery.

Under these conditions, water is prevented from percolating; it will remain on the surface, restricting gaseous exchange and lead to moss or the build up of fibrous growth. If steps are not taken to relieve the compaction, a fibrous matt develops, restricting the amount of air, moisture and nutrients available to the grasses and creating ideal conditions for diseases to thrive.

The Solution to Lawn Worm Casts

CastClear is an organic and unique combination of nutrient materials that have been clearly shown to reduce lawn soil-cast levels on lawns large and small.

It's the Solution to lawn soil cast problems and has been selling in Garden Centres since the Autumn of 2011 with over 15,000 Litres sold to date.

Benefits of applying CastClear:

It's Worm Cast Time!

With the prevailing weather being quite mild, it was 10 degrees centigrade yesterday; your lawn turf grasses will be growing quite nicely now. We have had a little respite in the rainfall of the past three months but heh ho, it is still Winter!

The Earthworms will be having a bit of a mad time, throwing their sticky and annoying soil casts onto the surface of your lawns and it is a great time to apply a treatment of CastClear - The Solution to Worm Casts on Lawns.

Buy it on Amazon, or the link below where there is currently zero shipping to UK Mainland Locations.

Buy CastClear from The Lawn Shop

Happy New Year from The Grass Clippings Team

The Grass Clippings Team would like to wish all our Readers a happy and healthy 2020.  Bring on 'The Roaring Twenties'

With over 1,450 technical articles here on our Lawn Blog, you are never more than a simple search away from a useful and technically correct article about caring for your lawn.

The weather in the UK is still rather mild and the grass is still growing which is not bad for the 8th of January!  Don't be shy to run the mower over the lawns if ground conditions permit over the next week or two and trimming the lawn will really lift the garden.

Are Worm Casts destroying your Lawn?

The worms do a splendid job in the soil just beneath the grass crown, but it is a pity that their soil cast deposits pose such a problem for lawn owners.

CastClear is an organic non-pesticide control solution available to domestic lawn owners to deter the worms from casting.   There are only five types of casting worms found in UK lawns. 

Other European countries also suffer worm worm casts on turf.  The problem can be solved  CastClear is the solution to lawn soil casts.

Time to become a CastClear Stockist

We get a lot of the Garden Retail Trade referring to our lawn advice blog to their customers and a lot of garden professionals reading it too.  We thank you all!

If you are a garden retail outlet servicing gardeners with lawns then you should be stocking CastClear - the lawn worm cast suppressant and deterrent as they will all have a lawn worm cast problem.  It's a problem that all lawn owners face in the autumn months.

We get a lot of the Garden Retail Trade referring to our lawn advice blog to their customers and a lot of garden professionals reading it too.  We thank you all!

If you are a garden retail outlet servicing gardeners with lawns then you should be stocking CastClear - the lawn worm cast suppressant and deterrent as they will all have a lawn worm cast problem.  It's a problem that all lawn owners face in the autumn months.

We get a lot of the Garden Retail Trade referring to our lawn advice blog to their customers and a lot of garden professionals reading it too.  We thank you all!

If you are a garden retail outlet servicing gardeners with lawns then you should be stocking CastClear - the lawn worm cast suppressant and deterrent as they will all have a lawn worm cast problem.  It's a problem that all lawn owners face in the autumn months.

We get a lot of the Garden Retail Trade referring to our lawn advice blog to their customers and a lot of garden professionals reading it too.  We thank you all!

If you are a garden retail outlet servicing gardeners with lawns then you should be stocking CastClear - the lawn worm cast suppressant and deterrent as they will all have a lawn worm cast problem.  It's a problem that all lawn owners face in the autumn months.

The Solution to Lawn Worm Casts

CastClear is the solution to lawn worm casts.  It's a lawn soil cast suppressant and a deterrent.  It's proven control on both lawns and sports turf.

Which? Gardening Trials Team trialled it and gave it the thumbs up.

It is unique in using a surfactant system that moves the nutrient into the upper soil structure and fixes it there providing good persistence of deterrent effect until breaking down to natural nutrients absorbed by plant roots.

Earthworm Infestations on Lawns

There are a lot of lawns being ruined by worm casts with recent rainfall, with multi sticky mounds of soil coming through the lawn.

Earthworm infestations can be massive, with many thousands per every 100 square metres.

It is not the worms that are directly the problem, but their castings on your lawn.

CastClear is the lawn treatment for worms and their casts and when applied correctly with a garden sprayer, the product will form a barrier layer in the soil that the Earthworms do not like passing through and they will stay deeper in the soil profile.

Garden Innovation from The Lawn Company Team

The Team at The Lawn Company who created, manufacture and distribute Indigo Garden Spray Dye are an innovative lot whom are capable of taking products that are widely used in the professional sports turf industry and scaling them down to benefit lawn owners and gardeners alike.

The scary thing about some of the much larger UK garden chemical companies is that thay may have an amenity (golf course) and consumer (homeowner) side to their business structure yet they suprisingly fail to bridge the gap.

The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse by Charlie Mackesy

It's not often that we write about a book here but the fact that artist Charlie Mackesy was featuring a Mole in his New York Times Bestseller was a good enough excuse to tell you about it:

The Sunday Times Bestseller and New York Times Bestseller. Shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year.

The tenuous link here is that Moles love Earthworms and CastClear controls their sticky and muddy casts on your lawn.  Are we forgiven now?

How to count Earthworm Populations in your Lawn

No-tillers Farmers who are trying to get a better handle on counting Earthworm  populations might try a method used in France to find more individual species.  But the trusty spade is quicker and cheaper for most.

The undisputed indicator of healthy soil is the presence of Earthworms in the soil profile. There are various methods of sampling or extraction to estimate the level of worm communities and analyze the different species present.

But what method is best? Two extraction methods — one chemical and one mechanical — are commonly used in the field. The chemical approach involves pouring a mustard solution onto the soil while the mechanical method involves simply using a good spade.

CastClear - User Testimonials

Here are a few testimonials from users of CastClear.  Please don't accept our words on how CastClear can resolve your Earthworm Casts problems. Please send the CastClear Team your comments good or bad.

Purchased this a little while ago and can thoroughly recommend it. Fantastic Product! Amazon Customer

Very pleased with this product. Applied 3 times, and now I have very few worm casts Amazon Customer

Really works well on our lawns - Amazon Customer

Does what it said on the bottle - Amazon Customer

It's Lawn Mushroom Season

You may have lately noticed lots of mushrooms on your lawn and in your local woodland and parkland.  Sign of a healthy soil.  It is that time of year when soil conditions are ideal for theses fruiting bodies to appear in abundance.

Does your lawn have circles in it?  Sometimes, these may be a dark green circle or grass or sometimes with a dead bit of grass in the middle or simply a ring of mushrooms only.  They are all called Fairy Rings.

The fungi responsible for fairy rings in lawns is Marasmius oreades.  Marasmius oreades grows extensively throughout North America and Europe in the summer and fall, or year-round in warmer climates. It loves grassy areas such as lawns, meadows, and even dunes in coastal areas.

You may have lately noticed lots of mushrooms on your lawn and in your local woodland and parkland.  Sign of a healthy soil.  It is that time of year when soil conditions are ideal for theses fruiting bodies to appear in abundance.

Does your lawn have circles in it?  Sometimes, these may be a dark green circle or grass or sometimes with a dead bit of grass in the middle or simply a ring of mushrooms only.  They are all called Fairy Rings.

The fungi responsible for fairy rings in lawns is Marasmius oreades.  Marasmius oreades grows extensively throughout North America and Europe in the summer and fall, or year-round in warmer climates. It loves grassy areas such as lawns, meadows, and even dunes in coastal areas.

You may have lately noticed lots of mushrooms on your lawn and in your local woodland and parkland.  Sign of a healthy soil.  It is that time of year when soil conditions are ideal for theses fruiting bodies to appear in abundance.

Does your lawn have circles in it?  Sometimes, these may be a dark green circle or grass or sometimes with a dead bit of grass in the middle or simply a ring of mushrooms only.  They are all called Fairy Rings.

The fungi responsible for fairy rings in lawns is Marasmius oreades.  Marasmius oreades grows extensively throughout North America and Europe in the summer and fall, or year-round in warmer climates. It loves grassy areas such as lawns, meadows, and even dunes in coastal areas.