If your lawn turns a deeper green after a night of rain than it ever does after an evening with the sprinkler, you are not imagining it. Rain feeds grass in ways tap water cannot match. It carries a small…
If the grass under your trees or along a shaded fence looks as though someone has dusted it with flour or talcum powder, you are almost certainly looking at powdery mildew. It is a fungal disease, caused by Blumeria graminis,…
A soil moisture meter costs less than a bag of feed, somewhere between 7 and 15 pounds (about 9 to 19 dollars) for the simple probes sold at most garden centres and online, and it removes the single biggest source…
The single change that does more for a summer lawn than any feed, gadget or seed is watering less often and more deeply. A lawn given ten minutes with the sprinkler every evening grows roots that sit in the top…
If you are tired of mowing, watering and feeding a patch of grass that browns off every summer, a chamomile or thyme lawn is worth considering. These scented, low-growing ground covers need no regular cutting, release a soft fragrance when…
Lift a paddling pool, a trampoline base or a heavy garden table after a few warm days and you find the same thing underneath: a pale, sickly yellow shape stamped into the grass. The good news is that in most…
If your lawn has slowed almost to a standstill since the warm, dry weather arrived, the grass is not failing. It is protecting itself. Most garden lawns are built from cool-season grasses such as perennial ryegrass, the fescues and bent,…
If pale, broad-leaved tufts are standing proud of an otherwise fine lawn within a day or two of mowing, you are looking at coarse grass invading your sward. The reason it suddenly stands out in summer is that these tougher…
A single water butt fed from a downpipe can capture hundreds of litres from one heavy shower, and that stored water is free, untreated, and ready for the driest weeks of summer when the tap is the last place you…
If broad rosettes of oval leaves are pressing themselves flat against your grass and shrugging off every pass of the mower, you are almost certainly dealing with plantain. The quickest fix for a handful of plants is to lever each…
