Lawn Care Guide

Give your lawn a little love

This winter it has been cold at times, and also very wet.  Lawns are in need of a little TLC to get them ready for summer and March is the ideal time to get your grass match fit.

Feeding is vital for a green, healthy lawn.  Lawns should be fed twice a year; with a spring feed that is high in nitrogen and in autumn with a feed that is higher in potash.  Over winter, heavy rainfall leaches out nitrogen from the foil that is needed for healthy, green growth.  So, a Spring nitrogen fertilizer along with aeration replaces this and boosts growth.

A granular fertilizer can be applied via a spreader or by hand and will feed the lawn for several months.  Some people are reluctant to feed their lawns because they fear that the grass will grow more quickly and need to be mown more often! But a starved lawn will never look good, it will be prone to moss and weeds.

Raise the height of your mower and cut your lawn more frequently - at least once a week in the growing season and you will be rewarded with thicker, healthier grass.  If you only mow once every fortnight during the growing season you will be left with scalped, yellow patches, this will weaken the lawn and invite weeds in.

So, feed your lawn, mow little and often and your lawn will be healthy and less work

 

Many people have decided to let areas of lawns grow long, to benefit wildlife or to accept some weeds in the lawn because these weeds bloom, benefitting bees.

If you don't use weed killers the clover flowers profusely in summer - it make mowing a slow job sometimes as you have to stop to let the bees fly off before mowing!

Spring is also the perfect time for sowing a new lawn and for laying turf.  You can also repair bare patches in the lawn with seed and 'patch packs' that contain seed, compost and fertilizer are perfect for this.

On existing lawns, tidy up the edges to give the garden a spruce up - nothing makes a garden look tidy more efficiently than a mown lawn and neat edges!