Love your lawn!

What do you love about your lawn? Is it walking barefoot on the soft grass in the summer, creating perfect stripes after you’ve mowed, a safe space outside for the kids to play on or a place to socialise with friends and family? Whatever the reason your lawn can be a wonderful addition to your home.

Whatever you love, many people long to create a lush, healthy, green lawn, free from weeds and moss. If you want this then spring is the perfect time to start and with the right upkeep and care you can make sure you have a lovely lawn for the summer.

Mowing Matters

First things first - you need a good mow, which should always be timed when the ground is not wet. You are aiming for a clean cut so make sure your mower blades are sharp to avoid the grass being torn.Try not to scalp the grass on the first few mows, it’s a bit like going bald too early, a bit of a shock to the system! Adjust your mower for a high cut initially, reducing each time until you reach your preferred height. As a guide a multi-purpose lawn is best at a height of 2.5cm.

Your lawn needs some TLC Lawns are a bit like us, they thrive if they are fed. With the right food and plenty of water they can look and feel great. Of course, you can let nature take its course and wait for the rain, however if you want a really lush green lawn then consider applying a lawn food to help establish a good root system. The grass can increase the absorption of water and nutrients and have a better chance of surviving those (hopefully) hot summer months and continue to look good. There are plenty of lawn food products on the market however we like Miracle-Gro® EverGreen® Fast Green.

Another useful tip is to aerate the lawn – sounds technical but in essence what you are doing is creating holes in the lawn for the roots to have space to grow deep into the soil, therefore making them strong. Soil can become compacted if lawn areas are regularly used, such as when you walk to and from the shed or BBQ. This results in the grass having shorter roots and therefore will be weaker when competing against weeds or moss.

There are lots of tools on the market to help with aeration and last year one of the team used a garden fork to spike her compacted mossy lawn. She admitted it was hard work and time consuming. Sadly there were patches in the lawn where she clearly did not do a great job, so moss has crept back. This year some aerating sandals have been bought which are cleverly strapped onto sturdy gardening boots. With all the winds in March, the lawn needed to be cleared of branches and sticks so whilst picking up sticks she also created lots of little holes wearing the sandals. It was great exercise, increased her step count, and she managed to collect a few leaves on the spikes, so she completed lots of jobs all in one go! We will let you know whether the moss has been controlled this time around. If you have other tips on how you keep your lawn looking great we would love to hear from you.

Lawns without good drainage can be covered in moss. Use of a product such as Miracle-Gro Complete 4 in 1 which will eliminate moss and weeds as well as feeding the lawn. We like using this hand held spreader, which is a really quick and easy way to apply the granules evenly.

After 2 weeks the moss will blacken and die. You then need to scarify - a posh word for raking up the dead moss and thatch (another technical word but it is just dead grass that has built up on the lawn over time). This job can be done with a spring tine rake.

Patch it up You may find that if you had lots of moss or weeds in your lawn you are left with bare patches. To avoid moss and weeds creeping in, fill in the bald spots by applying a good quality grass seed 8 weeks after you applied Miracle-Gro Complete.

To make sure the grass seed germinates keep it well watered and don’t let it dry out. Depending on the weather conditions the seeds will start germinating within a week, although it will take a few weeks until the patches fill in. Our favourite grass seed is Miracle-Gro Super Seed