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Lawn Care Tips for Luscious Lawns

The chilly winter months have flattened and stunted our lawns, but spring has started to bloom its radiant smile upon us.  Now comes the time to wake up our hibernating lawns with some tender loving lawn care. Warm spring days are the ideal time to feed and fertilise your lawn. Time to spring clean, remove all weeds, moss, and other unwanted pests, and fix those barren patches that pop up in the piercing winter months. So here we are again with our green thumbs and plant pointers, eager to help you and your lawn to be ravishing to wind away your summer days.

Once winter parts its way, you should check for moss and weeds afflicting your lawns with their presence.  Moss typically rears its head after drought or water logging, one way to free your lawn from its clutches is weed killer. Chemical weed killer contains sulphate of iron, this will kill and blacken the moss, which you can then remove with a rake such as our Kent & Stowe Stainless Steel Long Handled Lawn Rake.

If chemicals are the route you choose to free your garden from these vexing pests, a great choice is a triple action lawn treatment such as Miracle-Gro EverGreen Complete 4 in 1. Use between April and September, you will see results in 7 days and weed control in 3 – 5 weeks (for full product details and cautions read the label on our website.) 

When mending your lawn with this method, ready for sumptuous summer evenings, it is important to not over apply and to do it evenly. Avoid cutting the lawn 2-3 day before and after treatment. After 2 days, if the weather does not shower your garden with some loving droplets of hydration, give your garden a helping hand and water it generously to help activate your chosen product. 

However, if you prefer a non-chemical option for your garden, we have some organic solutions to help protect your natural surroundings. You can impede those whining weeds by mowing regularly, they will bow out gracefully with persistence. Raking before mowing can allow you to remove resistance pests such as yellow medick, buttercups and clovers. For natural and organic chemical substitutes, we suggest Westland Safe Lawn

Westland Safe Lawn is a 100% organic fertiliser with added lawn seed and is also made using only natural ingredients. This fertiliser breaks down into the soil to feed the roots, along with the grass seed germinating filling in any gaps.  This will save your garden lawn without jeopardizing the natural beauty around us. This option will not require raking afterwards to remove moss as the bacteria breaks it down. As well as being natural and organic, this option is a child and pet safe method.

Once we’ve given our lawns their prescribed medication, turn to patching your less green areas to give your lawn continuous luscious locks all summer long. When fixing patches of lawn, check you have the correct seeds for your needs. For our eager growers we have Johnsons Quick Lawn Lawn Seed.  For recently medicated lawns, we have Johnsons After Moss Lawn Seed and, for the stubborn patches in our shady gardens we have Johnsons Shady Place Lawn Seed.

If you choose to seed, keep your seeds keen to grow by following these key steps. First, prep and rake your ground to open the soil. Make sure to sow your seeds down in two passes at a right angle, meaning to shake one direction and the shake again in the opposite direction to help with an even seeding, left to right then up and down. Our Johnsons boxes come with perforated seed dispensers to help create that level distribution which is so important.  Press your seeds in, either by foot or roller, to tuck them in.

Then wet the patch thoroughly with a fine sprinkler to activate the seeds. If your hose only has one jet speed, how about switching out for the Hozelock Multi Spray Gun Plus Metal, with different jet steams to cater to all your horticultural needs. Then water regularly until the patch begins to fill out and continue even after the grass has sprouted. When seeding, it can be hard to match the colour of the new grass to the old, in this situation it is necessary to over seed to create uniformity in the lawn.

Compacted grass can also cause bare patches in the summer and mud baths in the winter. To relieve this you can aerate the soil. Aeration is achieved by pushing a garden fork 10cm deep in the soil every 10cm, then gently rocking back and forth on the handle. This allows roots to breath and encourage regrowth, an organic solution to a natural problem, especially in heavier soils like clay.

If pest and patches do not cause torment to your sanctuary, still feed your lawn in the spring and summer. Avoid feeds containing weed killer, as this will not help with lawn health and may aid in the creations of woeful weeds. A great option for this type of feed is Miracle-Gro EverGreen Lawn Food, it greens lawns in 5 days, is easy to apply and water soluble.

If you are fertilising, make sure you apply fertiliser when it is forecast to rain as this will wash the product to the roots and stop it burning the leaf blades.

Our top tip for lawn cutting – cut your lawn once a week in summer and every two weeks in spring, autumn, and winter this helps your garden to refresh and promote growth. Do not cut too short, a bit of extra length will help the grass stay greener, and if you are so inclined, help create those lovely cutting lines.

Apply all these methods to your garden lawn and you will be able to enjoy the blissful summer in your own exquisite oasis. Allowing our little footballers to score that deciding goal and our talented gymnasts somewhere safe to land those crowd cheering cartwheels. A lawn is not just a lawn, it is your family’s outdoor living room.

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