Coalfalls clay survivors - my husband fought our 1,200m2 block for two years. Built a free lawn tracking app out of frustration. Posting because locals might find it useful.
We're on one of the older Queenslanders up in Coalfalls with a full 1,200m2 block. Posting because my husband isn't on Reddit and I figure locals on the same clay might get something out of this.
What happened to our lawn:
Curl grubs ate the root system. He treated with Acelepryn and the grubs died. But then he put Barricade pre-emergent down on the recovering lawn, not realising it stops every runner from establishing new roots. Killed his own recovery. $3k+ lesson.
We ripped the front yard out early 2025. Full soil prep on Coalfalls clay:
- pH test: 5.5-6.5 (typical for here)
- Gypsum at 200-500g per m2 to break clay aggregation
- Dolomite to raise pH and add magnesium
- Volcamine Zeolite at 1-2kg per m2 (permanent nutrient retention)
- LawnPride Under Turf Starter
Laid Sir Walter Buffalo DNA Certified. Cyclone Alfred hit three days later. It survived. Front verge is thriving now.
Why I'm posting here specifically:
My husband is a medically retired vet and his notes about what he applied were scattered everywhere. Different apps, notebooks, bags in the shed. He has cognitive decline from service so tracking this stuff across multiple places is genuinely hard. He started building a little app for himself to keep it all in one place.
I turned it into a real product. It's called LawnSuite, it's free, and you can use it right now in your phone browser without installing anything:
It's got 111 Australian products with real label rates, dosage calculator for your lawn area, BOM weather, treatment logging. Built for Australian conditions, not a US app with metric conversion.
Backyard is still dirt. Waiting on Stampede Buffalo to come out for the shaded 632m2 out the back.
Anyone else fighting Coalfalls clay? Would be good to know what's worked for people locally. Also happy to pass on anything my husband learnt the hard way if it saves someone the same mistakes.