Yellow-brown dead patches spreading across a lawn in autumn, especially after a wet spell, often mean something is eating the roots from below. The usual culprit is the leatherjacket, the larva of the crane fly, and early autumn is the…
Reach for lawn feed at the end of summer and you might grab the wrong bag. The high-nitrogen fertiliser that drove thick green growth from spring onward is the last thing grass needs now. Autumn feeds are built the other…
If you want a new lawn, early autumn is the window to aim for. From September to November the soil still holds summer warmth, rain becomes reliable again, and the weather sits between the extremes that stall germination. Sow now…
The weeks after peak summer give you the best chance of the year to reset a tired lawn. Hot spells, foot traffic and drought leave grass thin, patchy and full of dead material, and the mild damp spell of early…
Pinkish-red threads webbing through pale brown patches of grass are the clearest sign of red thread, one of the most common lawn diseases in cooler, damp climates. It shows up most in wet summers and through the heavy dews of…
A lawn that has filled with weeds is not really a weed problem. It is a grass problem wearing a disguise. Weeds move in where the turf has thinned, where the soil has hardened underfoot, where the mower has been…
A heat-stressed lawn does most of its recovering in the weeks after peak summer, not in spring. The grass you walked on, mowed short and watched fade through the hottest stretch is carrying drained roots and a thin, patchy surface.…
A lawn that has gone thin and brown by the end of a hot summer does not need stripping and returfing. It needs air in the soil, organic matter on the surface and fresh seed, applied in that order. That…
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…
