The birds ripping up your lawn are hunting chafer grubs feeding on the roots below, and the damage peaks in early autumn as the grubs fatten up. Watering in Heterorhabditis bacteriophora nematodes while the soil is still 12 to 20 degrees Celsius kills the grubs without any chemicals.
An autumn lawn feed should be high in potassium and phosphorus and low in nitrogen, so it builds roots and hardens the grass for winter rather than forcing soft top growth. Scatter it at 20 to 30 grams per square metre just before rain, after scarifying and aerating, and only on a lawn that is still growing.
A mower that fires on the pull then dies within a few…
A light scatter of leaves does little harm, but a wet mat…
The weeds in your paving joints are not growing up through the…
A mower that buzzes and rattles through the handles almost always has…
Thatch is the spongy brown layer of dead stems, old roots and…
Hard, compacted ground starves grass roots of the air and water they…
A strong smell of petrol and an engine that cranks but will…
Yarrow creeps through a lawn on underground stems and shrugs off close…
The figure that clears a lawn of leaves fastest is air volume,…
Autumn is the best window of the whole year to lay new…
