The single best window to mow in a hot summer is mid-morning, roughly between 8 and 10am, once the dew has dried but before the day reaches its peak temperature. A late afternoon slot, around 4 to 6pm, is a…
If the forecast shows a run of hot, dry days, the safest thing you can do for your lawn is put the granular feed back in the shed. Applying a standard high-nitrogen lawn fertiliser to dry, heat-stressed grass is one…
When a mower starts playing up, the question is rarely whether it can be fixed. Almost anything can be fixed. The real question is whether the fix is worth more than the machine. A useful rule keeps most of these…
Letting the mower stay in the shed sounds like the easiest gardening decision you could make, and for a few weeks it really does help wildlife. But a lawn left completely uncut does not turn into a flower meadow on…
Come back from a fortnight away in June, or finally tackle a corner you have been ignoring, and the grass can be shin-high. The instinct is to drop the mower to its lowest setting and hack it all off in…
If crows, magpies, rooks, or starlings have started working over your lawn at dawn, jabbing their beaks into the turf and leaving small round holes, they are not after the grass. They are hunting grubs living in the root zone,…
If your mower leaves a thin ribbon of standing grass behind every pass, the fix is almost always cheaper and simpler than buying a new machine. In most cases the cause is a blunt or worn blade, a deck that…
If patches of your lawn are yellowing and thinning, the turf feels loose underfoot, and birds have started tearing at the grass at dawn, the cause may be living an inch below the surface. Leatherjackets are the grey-brown grubs of…
If your lawn is the first in the street to fade to straw the moment the rain stops, the soil underneath is almost certainly sandy, and no amount of extra watering alone will fix it. Sandy soil drains so fast…
If you only change one thing about watering this summer, change the clock. Watering between 4am and 9am puts almost all the water into the soil where the roots can use it, while watering at midday throws much of it…
