A throttle cable that has seized with rust and grit turns a good mower into a frustrating one. The engine fights you when you try to start it, the revs stick where you do not want them, and the choke…
A heat-stressed lawn does most of its recovering in the weeks after peak summer, not in spring. The grass you walked on, mowed short and watched fade through the hottest stretch is carrying drained roots and a thin, patchy surface.…
If a petrol mower takes ten pulls to start, sputters and dies, or runs rough all the way round the lawn, the carburettor is the first place to look. Family Handyman puts a figure on how common this is: small…
A lawn that has gone thin and brown by the end of a hot summer does not need stripping and returfing. It needs air in the soil, organic matter on the surface and fresh seed, applied in that order. That…
In the shady, damp corners where grass thins out and gives up, most gardeners keep fighting a losing battle with seed and feed. There is another option. A moss lawn turns those difficult spots into a soft green carpet that…
The price on the box is only the start of what a mower costs you. Run three machines of the same cutting width side by side for ten years, a corded electric, a cordless battery and a petrol, and the…
If you laid turf in the last few weeks and the joints have started to open into finger-width gaps, do not assume the turf has failed. Those gaps are almost always a sign that the turves are drying out and…
The single most expensive mistake with a petrol mower is putting the wrong kind of fuel in it, and whether a fuel is right or wrong depends entirely on one thing: does the engine run on two strokes or four?…
Both an underwatered and an overwatered lawn can turn the same dull yellow-green, which is why so many people water a struggling lawn harder and watch it get worse. The two problems need opposite treatments, so before you touch the…
If wasps have started working over your lawn this month, the first thing to know is that most of them are not interested in you at all. They are feeding, hunting or house-hunting, and once you work out which of…
