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K-State Turf and Landscape Blog

A turfy mudslide

Posted on by kennelly

(Megan Kennelly, KSU Plant Pathology)

I have a quick story to share that is kind of funny, and it is disease-related in an indirect way.

At my house, we had a Scot’s pine that we figured would eventually get pine wilt. Last year, it got the disease, and like good citizens we took it down and destroyed the wood. (That is the disease part of the story).

This left a bare spot in the lawn, so we planted some seed. A day or two after that, Manhattan got some drenching rains and flooding.  Our seeds (and the soil) moved around in all the water. Some of it moved down the slope all the way into the flower bed. The rest ended up pooled/clumped. If you click on the photos below to zoom you will see it better.

It's a little hard to tell in the photo, but the ground slopes from upper right to lower left. Our grass seeds, and some of the soil itself, got washed down into the flower bed where it is now growing nicely.
It’s a little hard to tell in the photo, but the ground slopes from upper right to lower left. Our grass seeds, and some of the soil itself, got washed down into the flower bed where it is now growing nicely.

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So, we decided to try an experiment and transplant some of the clumps from the flower bed back up into the bare patches.

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Oops – here’s the 3-year-old trying to “help”:

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We’ll see how our transplants survive…

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