10:02 - 22 February 2010
When the lawn looks good it transforms the whole garden. Time spent nurturing your lawn this spring will be richly rewarded as the season progresses. Heavy snow and extreme cold winter weather can take its toll on the health of your lawn, so you need to treat it to some tender loving care as soon as possible to help rejuvenate the grass plants that make up the lawn and help them to perform to their full potential.
After a difficult winter the effects of the weather will have taken their toll on most garden lawns. The weight of the snow and the very heavy rainfall will have helped compact many lawns. A compacted lawn will be rock hard, slow to drain after rainfall and may also have had to bear heavy foot traffic. Paths across the lawn are often quick to compact. You can aerate a compacted lawn in spring, you may need to wait until March or April if the weather is still bad, but don’t leave it too late. Aeration helps to opening up the structure of the soil and improves the drainage around the grass roots to encourage healthy growth. Use a hollow tine aerator to remove plugs of soil and fill the holes with a good lawn dressing. You can also use a normal garden fork and push the tines into the soil to a depth of 7-10cm if possible and then brush lawn dressing into the holes.
After a very cold start to the year it’s hard to believe that spring is on its way. The weather will improve, but we may still experience a cold snap. As the weather warms up your lawn will start to grow more rapidly. Don’t be tempted to cut it if the soil is very wet or there is frost or snow on the ground. Once it gets to the stage where you need to cut it, it is essential to be gentle, especially with the first few cuts of the season. Simply trim off the top third of growth, with the mower blades adjusted to their highest setting. Then allow the lawn to recover for a few days and then cut again if it is still growing, with the mower blades on a lower setting. At this time of year the lawn may only need cutting about once or twice a fortnight. Do not cut it too short and do not cut it the lawn if it is not growing, i.e. when the weather is cold.
Check the lawn for invaders such as weeds and moss. Both will actually compete with the grass for all the available nutrients and moisture and if you don’t keep them in check they can take over the lawn completely.
For moss you need to look at the underlying causes to prevent it reoccurring. If the lawn is poorly drained and compacted then this encourages moss to grow and if it’s in shade too this creates the perfect conditions for moss to thrive. Feed the lawn to help the grass compete with the moss for food and water. Moss thrives in areas that are poor in nutrients, so by feeding the lawn you are improving its chances of survival and helping to deter moss regrowth.
Spring is a good time to scarify the lawn with a wire rake; this will remove any debris that has built up around the grass roots. Top-dress the lawn with lawn dressing, brushing it in with a stiff broom. This will improve the drainage and add a balanced fertiliser around the roots of your grass.
Resow any bare patches using a lawn repair kit or a patch pack or if the whole lawn is thin and sparse you can over sow the whole lawn with lawn seed choose a quality lawn seed mixture to suit your lawn and the existing conditions. If you only have time to do one lawn task this month then keep the lawn edges neat. If they are undefined then recut them using a half moon lawn edging iron.
