Lawn-envy is a terrible thing, especially if you have vast expanses of flat, emerald green on either side of your browned, pitted and sparse wasteland… There’s no need to despair, though, as you can transform your tatty patch of land into an even, lush green carpet if you make the effort.
It starts with the soil
You can’t expect luxuriant green grass to grow out of nothing, so it’s important that you tend to the soil before you order your seeds from The Grass People. Using the right fertiliser is vital – if it’s later in the year then you need a fertiliser with phosphates in to provide long-term nutrition over the winter.
Make a schedule
This can be as simple as putting notes on a wall calendar or using a gardening app on your smartphone to remind you to buy the right type of fertiliser for the right season.
When it comes to fertilisers, there are two phases. Autumn and winter is for potassium and phosphate mixes, which strengthen the grass and help it to cope with the cold temperatures over winter. These mixes need to go down in October, November and December.
Once it’s spring, then it’s nitrogen time! Nitrogen mixes get used up faster, so you’ll need to apply them every six weeks from March through to August.
It’s important to control weeds and moss
Weeds and moss rob your grass of the vital nutrition it needs to grow healthily. Therefore, they must be eliminated! It’s a good job, then, that you can buy treatments that feed your grass and kill off weeds and moss at the same time. September is the best time to lay this treatment on your lawn because the weeds and mosses are still active so they’ll absorb the compounds. Trees which shed leave and twigs all over your lawn will also be detrimental,. so we’d suggest contacting New Smyrna Beach tree maintenance services for an expert opinion on how to manage your overhanging branches.
Get the hose out
The UK doesn’t really droughts, so there’s no need for a built-in sprinkler system. However, you do need a decent hose that can reach all the parts of your lawn and you also need to know which soil type you have. Sandy soil doesn’t retain water so well, so it’s more prone to drying out. Clay or loamy soil holds onto water a bit better, so you can water less frequently.
If you tend to water your lawn a little bit every day, then you should stop doing this. If you water frequently, the grass roots only ever need to “look” for water near the soil surface. Leaving it a few days for the water to sink down further without adding more encourages the roots to travel deeper down in search of moisture and nutrients. This makes the roots stronger and in the long-term helps the roots to access more nutrients.
Do some over-seeding to fill in bare spots
If your lawn is plagued by bare patches where grass just doesn’t seem to thrive, then try some over-seeding. This is sprinkling extra seeds in the area so that it gets a few more blades in the end. Be careful, though, because using too many seeds will back-fire as the seeds will be competing for an insufficient amount of food and none will grow properly.
To achieve and maintain a healthy and beautiful lawn, you need to effectively mow, fertilize, and water your lawn. However, you also need to ensure that nutrients can penetrate the soil beneath your turf. Aeration remains a highly important ingredient to a healthy lawn since it allows both air and water to effectively penetrate the lawn patch.
Just wanted to thank you for sharing these tips! They sure helped in making my lawn as green and beautiful as it is today! Nathan