Broadleaf plantain presses its leaves flat to the ground, so the mower skims straight over it and the plant keeps spreading while the grass around it thins. Slide a narrow blade down beside the rosette and lever out the whole…
A pull cord that flops out slack and will not reel back in has almost always snapped inside the housing, which is a rope job, not a broken spring, and the fix costs a few pounds. A cord that has…
Autumn top dressing drops a sand and loam mix into aeration holes, and the payoff lands next spring as a flatter, denser lawn that greens up sooner. The job only takes in the right order and the right weeks: scarify,…
A mower that coughs, sputters and refuses to catch is very often starved of a proper spark, and the spark plug is the cheapest thing on the engine to check first. Pull the plug out, read the colour of its…
The scorched circle is a nitrogen and salt burn, not an acid stain, and the bright green ring around it is the same nitrogen acting as a weak feed at the diluted edge. A full watering can of plain water…
That Black Crust Under the Deck Is Doing Two Kinds of Damage at Once Tip your mower up at the end of the season and you will find the underside of the deck coated in a hard black crust of…
Moss moves into a lawn when shade, damp and compacted soil leave the grass too thin to hold its ground, so scraping off the green layer without changing those conditions just clears space for it to grow straight back. Rake…
The idea that you should scalp the lawn low before winter is backwards; a taller cut protects the grass through the cold months. Cutting too short weakens the roots and lets in moss, weeds and disease, right when the lawn…
Creeping buttercup spreads by runners that root as they go, so it forms a spreading mat rather than separate plants. It thrives in damp, compacted lawns, which is why it takes off in autumn, so fixing the drainage is half…
Nine times out of ten the bag stops filling once the airflow has failed, not once the collector is genuinely full. The usual causes are a caked deck, a blunt or worn blade, a clogged bag mesh and heavy autumn…
