Love Your Lawn
Early Autumn is the ideal time of year to carry out essential lawn maintenance. Soil temperature is still warm enough to encourage grass to grow but the external temperatures have dropped significantly and the weather tends to be wetter.
Carry out the tasks below to allow your lawn to recover before winter frosts hit.
Treat the Moss
Treat the moss with a specific moss killer – within two weeks you will notice the moss has died and turned black.
Scarify your Lawn
Scarifying is where you rake your lawn vigorously either manually with a rake or with a scarifier to remove old grass clippings, dead moss and other debris (collectively known as thatch).
These can build up on a lawn over time hindering drainage and encouraging weeds to grow and diseases to occur.
You are aiming to reduce the loose thatch rather than pulling up healthy grass, so work both ways to maximise efficiency.
Add your raked out materials to the compost heap or burn it if there are lots of weeds.
You may now find that your lawn looks really patchy now, this is nothing to worry about as the next few steps will encourage it to grow back healthier than ever before.
Trim Back Lawn & Bed Edges
Your lawn edges will probably have become slightly overgrown over summer so now is the perfect time to given them a good trim. Use edging shears or lawn scissors to neaten up your borders and collect the trimmings for your compost heap. This will also help during winter as grass needs light to continue to grow and remain healthy so trimming any trees or shrubs that shade it will help, where possible.
Aerating your Lawn
Aerating (or spiking) a lawn will help to improve the air and water flow within the roots of the grass, meaning your lawn will be better able to cope with periods of waterlogging or drought. Areas of your lawn that have had particularly heavy traffic in summer can become very compacted which limits drainage and allows weeds and moss to grown. Although it can be quite hard work and will certainly give you a good work out, you should only need to aerate every two to three years, so this is not an annual job.
The easiest way to aerate your lawn is to use a garden fork, spacing each set of holes 3-5 inches apart, going as deep as your soil will allow, ideally to the full depth of the tines. While your fork is in the ground, wiggle it back and forth slightly to make the holes larger to create air channels.
Top Dressing & Overseeding
Top dressing is important as it helps to improve the structure of your soil, whilst also encouraging strong root development, resulting in healthy grass. Made from a mixture of top soil, sand and multi-purpose compost, you can either make your own or buy our lawn sand and top dressing which has been specially formulated for this purpose. Work the top dressing into the aeration holes you have just created using a brush to spread it evenly. It should start to disappear if you have used the correct application rate. This is best done in early autumn. If you have made your own top dressing then now is also the time to fertilise your lawn using an winter lawn fertiliser.
Once you have top dressed your lawn, the next step is to overseed your lawn with grass seeds. This helps to repair thin and bare patches, as well as working to improve your existing grass. Once you have applied the seed evenly, around 35g per square meter. cover with 5mm of top soil to improve germination rates. If you aren’t using a top dressing then either walk over the seeded areas or use a roller to get maximum contact between the seed and the soil. Laying frost fleece on top to provide protection from wind, insects, pests and bird damage will allow rainfall and light to pass through as well as help keep[ the seed warm which will ultimately improve growing conditions and germination. Remember to water your grass lightly, ideally in an evening, on dry days for 3-4 weeks. It is worth noting that the minimum soil temperature for germination is 7-8 degrees Celsius.
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