A petrol mower that starts fine, runs for ten or twenty minutes and then dies on a hot day, only to restart once it has cooled, is showing one of the most recognisable faults in small engines. The cause is…
You can keep a lawn largely weed-free without spreading anything that forces you to fence off the garden from children and pets for days. The safest approach is also the most effective long term: pull or spot-treat the weeds you…
A mower blade is a wear part, not a permanent fixture, and there comes a point where no amount of sharpening will bring it back. Keep grinding a blade past that point and you are mowing with a thin, unbalanced…
The first cut of a lawn grown from seed is the moment most new lawns are either made or ruined. Cut too early, too low, or with a blunt blade on soft ground, and you can rip seedlings clean out…
The single most useful thing you can do with a season of grass clippings is stop throwing them in the bin and start turning them into compost. A summer lawn the size of two parking bays produces enough clippings to…
For a small lawn, the mower that makes the most sense is often the one the gardening world has quietly moved on from: the corded electric. While attention has shifted to cordless batteries and robot mowers, a plug-in mower still…
When a self-propelled mower stops pulling itself along and you find yourself shoving it like an ordinary push mower, the fault is almost never the engine. The blade still spins, the engine still runs, so the problem sits in the…
Every bag of lawn feed carries three numbers, something like 12-4-8 or 20-2-6, and they tell you exactly what is inside and what the product will do to your grass. They are the percentage by mass of nitrogen, phosphorus and…
The lawn you come home to after two weeks away is decided in the hour before you lock the door, not while you are gone. Most holiday lawn disasters are self-inflicted: a final mow cut too short, a heavy feed…
If a strip of your lawn has gone thin, flat and bare after a summer of barbecues, paddling pools and a constant stream of feet to the back gate, the fix is not simply more seed. Worn grass is almost…
