A mower that drags through four or five pulls before it catches, splutters under load, or dies halfway across the lawn is often carrying one cheap, worn-out part: the spark plug. It sits on the side of the engine under…
A scatter of toadstools across the grass on a damp late-summer morning looks alarming, but it almost never means your lawn is sick. The caps you can see are the fruiting bodies of a fungus that has been living out…
A mower that will not start, bogs down in thick grass or blows dark smoke often has one cheap, overlooked fault behind it: a clogged air filter. It is the first thing a small-engine mechanic checks and the last thing…
A mower that sputters on a slope, loses power halfway across the grass, or dies mid-cut and refuses to restart is usually starving. Somewhere between the tank and the engine, the fuel is being choked off, and the cheapest, most…
The lawn you sow or turf this autumn will only ever be as good as the ground you prepare for it now. Grass seed dropped onto lumpy, weed-riddled soil germinates in ragged patches, roots into pockets of trapped air, and…
Yellow-brown dead patches spreading across a lawn in autumn, especially after a wet spell, often mean something is eating the roots from below. The usual culprit is the leatherjacket, the larva of the crane fly, and early autumn is the…
Reach for lawn feed at the end of summer and you might grab the wrong bag. The high-nitrogen fertiliser that drove thick green growth from spring onward is the last thing grass needs now. Autumn feeds are built the other…
If you want a new lawn, early autumn is the window to aim for. From September to November the soil still holds summer warmth, rain becomes reliable again, and the weather sits between the extremes that stall germination. Sow now…
You give the mower one last tug, the pull cord snaps, and the frayed end whips back into the housing and vanishes. It is one of the most common faults on a petrol mower, and one of the easiest to…
The weeks after peak summer give you the best chance of the year to reset a tired lawn. Hot spells, foot traffic and drought leave grass thin, patchy and full of dead material, and the mild damp spell of early…
