If your lawn turns a rich green and grows fastest in the heat of summer, then fades to straw and stops growing as the weather cools, you are almost certainly looking after a warm-season grass such as bermuda or zoysia.…
Two low-growing weeds tend to spread through lawns in early summer just as the grass slows after its spring rush: speedwell and self-heal. Both share a frustrating trick, they grow and even flower below the height most people mow at,…
If circular patches of tan, straw-coloured grass have appeared on your lawn during a warm, muggy spell, the cause is almost certainly brown patch, a fungal disease driven by the soil organism Rhizoctonia solani. The practical takeaway is short: stop…
When a hot, dry summer turns ordinary lawns brown and crisp, clover often stays green and soft. That is not luck. Clover is built to survive drought in ways that grass is not, and it does a second job at…
A crisp, cut edge does more for the look of a lawn than almost anything else, and you do not need expensive kit to get it. A clean vertical line where the grass meets a border or path frames the…
If patches of your lawn are yellowing and thinning for no clear reason in early summer, and birds keep tearing at the same spots, the culprit may be living just under the surface. Leatherjackets, the larvae of crane flies, feed…
If you take one action for your lawn this month, raise the cutting height. As the weather warms and rain becomes less reliable, the most useful thing you can do is stop cutting your grass short. A lawn held at…
When patches of lawn turn yellow then reddish-brown in the heat of summer and the turf thins out for no obvious reason, one likely cause is a fungal disease called anthracnose. It is easy to mistake for drought or a…
If your lawn turns crisp and brown every summer no matter how much you water it, the variety of grass growing there may be the real problem. Some grasses are built to survive heat and drought, and some are not,…
Most lawns that turn brown in summer are not short of water as often as they are short of the right water, delivered the right way. The rule that does almost all the work is simple: give your lawn around…
