Autumn lawn care

Autumn lawn care regime.

September is the month we usually start our autumn lawn care.

The first (and most obvious) is to scarify the lawns. This is the process which we “rake” the lawns to remove dead grass, thatch, build up. At home a spring tine rake is sufficient, we hire in a petrol scarifier.

We do this to allow air, water, light and food to the grass plants. This is a key way of thinking when looking at lawn maintenance. Your lawn is built up of hundreds of grass plants, planted closely together. If you think about individual plants needs, they like food, water, air and light to grow healthy. The same goes for your grass plants. All the lawn maintenance programmes are about improving growing conditions for the grass.

After scarifying you may be mistaken for ruining the lawn. Things will look worse before they get5 better.

Next step is to alleviate compaction from walking on the lawns especially if we have a damp summer! To do this a garden fork pushed into the soil at regular intervals is sufficient or once again you can hire petrol machines.

Last we apply an autumn lawn feed and stand back (and hope all will be green again soon).