What Is Lawn Thatch and Why Does It Matter?
Cut a small wedge out of your lawn with a spade and look at it from the side. Three distinct layers: green leaf at the top, dark soil at the bottom, and between them a band of brown fibrous material that looks a bit like coconut matting. That middle layer is thatch, and how thick it is tells you more about the health of your lawn than almost anything you can see from standing height. Thatch sits behind a surprising number of lawn problems that get blamed on something else. Drought damage, patchy fertiliser response, recurring moss, disease that keeps coming back to the same spots. Knowing what it is and where it comes from makes all of those easier to solve. What Lawn Thatch Is Made Of Thatch is a layer of dead and decaying organic matter that accumulates on the soil surface, underneath the living grass. Specifically: grass stems, crowns, rhizomes, stolons and old roots, along with dead moss and whatever other plant debris has ended up in the sward. What these materials h...