How to look after your lawn
Winter is a good time of year to carry out some lawn repairs, though landscape gardeners start thinking about non-essential tasks like this as soon as plant and grass growth has slowed a bit. As a garden designer as well as a landscape gardener I remain busy throughout the year, but being based in Glasgow I take any dry days that I can to carry out potentially muddy tasks like this. We can also touch on other common lawn issues and the essentials of keeping a lawn that doesn’t deteriorate over the years, without going to excessive expense.
Lumps & bumps
Don’t try using a roller to flatten bumps, or filling in deep hollows with lots of top soil. Bumps are best off repaired by lifting the turf with a spade, peeling the grass back, and removing some of the earth before re-laying the turf. Make sure you firm the grass back down well, and if it is a fragile area of the lawn (such as the edge) then be sure to give it a good watering too. Very shallow hollows can be top-dressed with topsoil and grass seed mix – this involves raking this mixture, perhaps combined with sharp sand as well, over the offending area. Don’t try to fix hollows over half in inch deep like this. Deeper hollows should be repaired in the same way as the bumps described above, but this time adding topsoil (not compost). I have never had success repairing deep hollows by repeated top-dressing, so I would always advise the lawn surgery described here.
More weeds than grass
There’s no quick fix to this I’m afraid, but you can make significant progress over the course of one growing season. The answer is a selective weed control that is normally applied a couple of times per year. Available online or from large hardware stores and garden centres. Some landscape gardeners in the Glasgow area offer a lawn care service too.
More moss than grass
Again, no quick fix I’m afraid. Ironically I’ve met a few folk over the years who have been happy with their moss lawns because they don’t have to cut them so often! However, most people prefer a grass lawn. The answer here is apply a lawn moss control in the spring – NEVER apply this manually, always use a spreader. Small hand-held spreaders are not costly, and will help avoid the inevitable (and very ugly) strips of dead black moss that you get when apply the moss-killer by hand. A couple of weeks after applying the moss control you should scarify the grass – you can do this by using a wire rake pulled through the grass hard, or for larger areas you should hire a scarifying machine. This all sounds complicated, it’s really not and you only need to do it once a year usually.
Boggy patches
We’re not talking massive puddles caused by serious drainage problems here, you need to take more significant measures if that is the case. For small boggy patches, get a big garden fork and go and pierce the boggy area over and over. You’ll make your life easier by working the fork backwards and forwards in each hole before extracting it. Once you’ve got the area well covered in holes, rake in a sharp sand – and it MUST be sharp sand.
Bald patches
The first question to ask here is why the grass is not growing. If for example the area is under a tree, it may be worth over-seeding with a specific shady lawn seed. If the shade is really deep…..then why is there a lawn there?! Often when presented with this I have simply created an additional flower bed instead and filled it with shade-loving plants.
Once you’ve excluded other issues, set about spiking the lawn as described in the section above, before raking in a top soil/grass seed/sharp sand mix. Then keep the area well-watered. There is no great science to the ratios in the mix, but double the suggested grass seed quantity to allow for greedy birdies.
Scruffy grass/yellowing after grass cuts
This is normally going to be down to cutting the grass with a mower with blunt blades, or cutting the grass in the wet. Neither is a disaster or causes lasting damage. Sharpen the blades on your mower, and despite received wisdom, if your petrol mower is happy cutting grass in the wet, then it is really no big deal. I wouldn’t cut a grass in the wet with an electric mower for obvious reasons!
Minimum maintenance
Lawns are like cars – you can literally spend as much as you want on their maintenance. If you like a nice lawn and are willing to do a little work, but you don’t want to spend every waking hour looking after your grass, then try this minimum maintenance programme. Spring – feed, weed and moss control. Scarify. Summer – feed again. Autumn – feed again, carry out lawn repairs. Winter – lawn repairs. If you use an autumn lawn feed all year you won’t overload your lawn with nitrogen and so will get slightly less vigorous growth in the spring.
Starting again
This is a subject for another blog post, but it is not a hugely difficult task. Large or complicated areas are probably best handed over to a professional landscape gardener, but for a small to medium residential garden, if you’ve got time on your hands and are willing to get muddy, it’s pretty straight forward. We can talk about it another time!
Getting professional help with your lawn
This is the domain of a landscape gardener, though you may also want to engage a garden designer for a larger project involving the rest of your garden. There are many landscape gardeners and garden designers in Glasgow just a few clicks away!