If your lawn feels spongy underfoot when you walk across it in May, the problem is almost always thatch. A thin layer of dead and living plant material at the base of the sward is normal and even beneficial, but…
If your lawn has suddenly grown a pale, wispy haze of stalks that defy your mower and bounce back up an hour after cutting, you are looking at seed heads. From mid to late May, almost every lawn made of…
If your lawn is barely growing in May despite warm days and regular care, the problem is almost always one of three things: nitrogen has run out, the soil has stopped breathing, or your grass has started defending itself against…
Most lawn owners bag their clippings out of habit, not because the lawn needs it. The bag fills up, you stop to empty it, walk it to the compost heap or the green waste bin, come back, and repeat the…
You roll the petrol mower out of the shed on the first warm Saturday in May, prime the bulb three times, brace your foot on the deck and pull the cord. Nothing. You pull again, harder. Still nothing. By the…
There are two kinds of dog owners with lawns. The first kind has accepted that their grass is a write-off and stopped caring. The second kind keeps trying to figure out why the same patches keep turning yellow despite watering,…
The single visual change that lifts a tidy lawn to a professional looking lawn is a clean edge. You can mow perfectly straight stripes, feed regularly, water deeply, and the garden will still look unfinished if the lawn edge crumbles…
Walk through any allotment, golf club workshop or older suburban garage and there is a good chance you will see a Honda lawn mower from the 1990s or early 2000s, still cutting grass every Saturday. The grip is faded, the…
Spring rain followed by a sudden warm spell is one of the most common situations every gardener has to deal with in May. The grass shoots up four or five centimetres in a few days, you look out of the…
If patches of your lawn have turned a sickly yellow this month and the grass lifts away like a loose rug when you tug it, you almost certainly have grubs feeding on the roots underneath. The two culprits in late…
