A mower that coughs, sputters and refuses to catch is very often starved of a proper spark, and the spark plug is the cheapest thing on the engine to check first. Pull the plug out, read the colour of its…
The scorched circle is a nitrogen and salt burn, not an acid stain, and the bright green ring around it is the same nitrogen acting as a weak feed at the diluted edge. A full watering can of plain water…
That Black Crust Under the Deck Is Doing Two Kinds of Damage at Once Tip your mower up at the end of the season and you will find the underside of the deck coated in a hard black crust of…
Moss moves into a lawn when shade, damp and compacted soil leave the grass too thin to hold its ground, so scraping off the green layer without changing those conditions just clears space for it to grow straight back. Rake…
The idea that you should scalp the lawn low before winter is backwards; a taller cut protects the grass through the cold months. Cutting too short weakens the roots and lets in moss, weeds and disease, right when the lawn…
Creeping buttercup spreads by runners that root as they go, so it forms a spreading mat rather than separate plants. It thrives in damp, compacted lawns, which is why it takes off in autumn, so fixing the drainage is half…
Nine times out of ten the bag stops filling once the airflow has failed, not once the collector is genuinely full. The usual causes are a caked deck, a blunt or worn blade, a clogged bag mesh and heavy autumn…
A dandelion holds on through one deep taproot, so the trick is lifting the whole root, not pulling the leaves off the top. Early autumn is close to the ideal time to clear them, while the soil is soft and…
A mower that races and nearly stalls in a rhythm is almost always running lean: the governor keeps opening the throttle to chase a steady speed the fuel supply cannot hold. The cause is nearly always cheap and fixable at…
Lawn mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of underground fungi feeding on buried dead roots and thatch, and most of them help your soil rather than harm it. Pull larger ones by hand and scatter small clusters with a stiff broom…
