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 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…
While ordinary lawns turn brown in the first dry spell, a lawn with micro-clover mixed through it tends to stay green, and it does so on roughly a quarter less water and little or no feeding. Micro-clover is a small-leaved…
Liquid seaweed is one of the few lawn products that earns its place in summer, when a heavy granular feed would do more harm than good. It is not a fertiliser in the usual sense, and that is precisely why…
A family lawn has a hard life. It takes football boots, paddling pools, dog claws, garden furniture, and the constant traffic of people crossing the same line to the back gate. The grass seed that makes a fine ornamental lawn…
When a hot, dry spell is forecast, most people do one of two things with the mower, and both are usually a mistake. Some carry on cutting at the same low setting they used in spring, scalping the grass just…
