A mulching mower does not collect your grass clippings. Instead it cuts them, then cuts them again into pieces a few millimetres long, and drops that fine confetti back down into the base of the lawn where it breaks down…
The fastest way to deal with ant hills in a lawn is also the gentlest: wait for a dry day, knock the loose soil flat with a stiff brush or the back of a rake, and brush it into the…
If pale patches of grass have suddenly appeared on your lawn over the past week or two, knit through with fine pink or red threads at the tips, you are looking at red thread. It is one of the most…
Letting part of your lawn grow into a meadow is one of the cheapest changes you can make in a garden, and one of the most misunderstood. The idea sounds effortless: stop mowing and wait for flowers. What actually happens…
When two petrol mowers sit side by side at similar prices, the name stamped on the deck tells you far less than the name cast into the engine. The engine decides how easily the mower starts on a cold morning,…
A mower pull cord that has gone solid, or that pulls out a few centimetres and jams, almost never means the engine is finished. In most cases the cause is one of a short list of problems you can check…
Watering your lawn after dinner feels sensible. The air is cool, the sun has gone, and less water seems to vanish into the sky. The problem is what happens to the grass for the next eight to twelve hours. An…
If a low, sprawling weed with three small leaves and tight clusters of bright yellow flowers has started creeping across the thin, dry parts of your lawn this summer, the plant is almost certainly black medic, and its arrival is…
Small, round, straw-coloured spots scattered across a summer lawn, each roughly the size of a coin and sometimes joining into bigger bleached patches, are most often the lawn disease called dollar spot. It is a fungus, it loves exactly the…
A thin ribbon of standing grass left behind on every pass is one of the most irritating mower faults, partly because it looks like the machine is mocking you. The fix is usually quick once you know which of a…
