In the shady, damp corners where grass thins out and gives up, most gardeners keep fighting a losing battle with seed and feed. There is another option. A moss lawn turns those difficult spots into a soft green carpet that…
If you laid turf in the last few weeks and the joints have started to open into finger-width gaps, do not assume the turf has failed. Those gaps are almost always a sign that the turves are drying out and…
Both an underwatered and an overwatered lawn can turn the same dull yellow-green, which is why so many people water a struggling lawn harder and watch it get worse. The two problems need opposite treatments, so before you touch the…
If wasps have started working over your lawn this month, the first thing to know is that most of them are not interested in you at all. They are feeding, hunting or house-hunting, and once you work out which of…
Turf gives you a green lawn the day it is laid; seed gives you a cheaper lawn with deeper roots, if you are willing to wait a few months for it. That is the trade at the heart of the…
A splash of petrol from the mower, a drip of engine oil, or an overturned handful of lawn feed leaves the same result: a dead, straw coloured patch within days. Move fast and you can save most of the grass.…
Long grass feels harmless, but a lawn left to grow through the hottest weeks of summer becomes a shelter for ticks and fleas and a source of the pollen that sets off hay fever. Cutting your grass to around 7.5cm…
Test the soil before you buy another bag of lawn feed. A lawn sitting at pH 5.0 can be fed four times a year and still look starved, as the nutrients you paid for stay chemically locked in the ground…
If irregular yellow-bronze patches have spread through your lawn this month, the fix is almost certainly a bag of nitrogen and a higher mower setting, not a hosepipe and not a fungicide. Anthracnose, caused by the fungus Colletotrichum cereale, is…
Raise the mower to at least 6cm (about 2.5 inches), stop feeding, keep off the grass and let it turn brown. A well established lawn on a normal loam will sit out three to four weeks of complete drought in…
