Look closely at the grass a day after you mow. If the tips are shredded and pale rather than cleanly sliced, and the whole lawn has taken on a yellow cast, the mower is tearing the grass instead of cutting…
If patches of your lawn have started lifting like loose carpet, or you keep finding turf ripped up and scattered across the grass in the morning, the cause is underground. Chafer grubs eat grass roots through autumn, and the birds…
Few things kill the momentum of a Saturday mow faster than a cloud of smoke rising off the engine. It looks alarming, and it is easy to fear the worst. The good news is that a smoking mower is usually…
A tired, patchy lawn at the end of summer usually points to one hidden culprit sitting right at the base of the grass: thatch. Early autumn, with its mild air and damp soil, is the window to rake it out…
A mower that buzzes hard through the handles after a full summer of cutting is not just uncomfortable to push. The shaking is the machine telling you that something spinning underneath it has gone off-centre, and left running that way…
A broken lawn edge pulls the eye faster than almost anything else in a garden. The grass in the middle can be thick and green, but a crumbling border or a scalloped bite out of the edge makes the whole…
A self-propelled mower that has stopped pulling itself is one of the most common late-season complaints, and it almost always strikes now, when thick, damp growth puts the drive under the heaviest load of the year. Most people reach straight…
If pink or rust-tinged patches have appeared on your lawn over the past few weeks, the culprit is almost certainly red thread, a fungal disease that turns up on many lawns in late summer and early autumn. The good news…
Your petrol mower runs fine for ten minutes, then loses power, bogs down and cuts out. You yank the cord and nothing happens. Twenty minutes later, once it has cooled, it fires up first pull and repeats the whole cycle.…
A summer of paddling pools, garden chairs, football and hot dry spells leaves most lawns with a few bare or worn patches by late August. The good news is that the next few weeks are the best window all year…
