Had Gadya, a song about a baby goat that gets eaten by a cat that is in turn eaten by a dog which is hit by a stick and so on, is sung at the end of the Passover seder. It is the Jewish version of There Was an Old Lady or my favourite There's a Hole in the Bucket, which has the fun additional feature of wrapping back around at the end.
All of this is by way of introducing lawn care. My neighbour, Orla, asked about critters digging small holes in her lawn. Orla's lawn is probably getting dug up by skunks or raccoons digging for grubs. To stop the raccoons, you will need to get rid of the grubs that are munching the lawn. Which means you need to fix up your lawn ... dear Henry, dear Henry.Â
Lawn grub damage as chinch larva damaging grass roots causing a brown patch disease in the turf.
Photo: Getty Images / wildpixel
Grubs are larval beetles (which also gobble up your garden in their adult form). They grow best in a layer of dead grass that tends to form under the new grass that lawn mavens call 'thatching'. There they eat the roots of the grass. Without the intervention of raccoons or skunks the grubs will start to leave dead spots in the grass. Thatching also prevents grass from putting down deep roots into the soil and makes the grass more susceptible to drying out in hot weather.Â
So, if you have raccoons digging up grubs which are growing in your thatch, which is bad for your grass, then late summer is a great time to fix up your lawn.Â
One thing you can do is aerate. It seems alchemical to infuse air into the ground but that's exactly what you want to do, particularly in areas that get a lot of traffic and are more compacted. An aerator digs up small plugs which allows water and air to get down in the soil and loosen compression so the grass can send its roots deeper.
Left: The brown layer is the thatching where grubs tend to make their home. Right: Euphorbia, mint and geranium as an alternate to grass.
Photos: Jeremy Wexler
For bigger lawns a powered aerator is probably needed but for a small patch you can use a hand aerator available at most garden supply stores.
The other possibility is to move away from grass. Grass tends to be high maintenance and water intensive. Other ground covers may not be perfect for croquet but don't show grub or racoon damage as much. I have a shady spot that was once a small grass lawn. Now it is covered by euphorbia marginata (a.k.a. snow on the mountain), prostrate mint and a pretty blue geranium. I don't mow it and I have not had to water it at all this summer. Which is fortunate because there's a hole in my bucket.Â
Dear reader, dear reader. Are you a grass person? Do you grow clover where grass used to be? Send your lawn stories, woes, questions to jeremywexler9@gmail.com
JeremyWexlerisan avid amateur Montreal gardener and reader of garden writing.His regular columns for The Suburban.com speak to dedicated home gardeners, interested beginners, and people who are happy to simply read and never get their hands dirty. Ifyou have a question, a tale of woe or a favourite plant, Jeremy will read everything you send to jeremywexler9@gmail.com
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Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.