Lawns give us many years of loyal service and ask for very little in return. We cut them to within an inch of their lives and walk all over them without a care.

Treat Your Lawn

• Pick up Autumn leaves before they start to rot on top of your lawn. Compost them separately if you expect a lot of leaves.
• Apply an Autumn feed which aims to boost healthy root growth to last through winter like Levingtons Evergreen. This is rich in potassium to help roots and lighter on nitrogen.
• Raise your cutting blades as the soils is wetter and the dew heavier.
• Apply a moss killer before scarifying if you are troubled with moss
• Repair any edges or bald patches
• Aerate your lawn by scarifying, spiking or hollow tining. Scarifying also removes the brown thatch around the roots that has built up during summer
• Top Dress the lawn with a mixture of two parts sharp sand with one of fine soil.

Tips for New Lawns

• Turf  is quicker and looks good as soon as you trim the edges. Rolls of turf are fairly heavy and laying turf is more labour intensive than seed.
• Seeding a new lawn is cheaper and you can select the grass type or mix more easily.
• The ground needs preparing, rolling and raking for seed or turf – don’t short change on preparation.
• Avoid visible joins on turf or seed. Butt turf edges as tightly as possible and stagger the starting point like brickwork. With seed sow half the seed vertically and the other half horizontally to get even coverage.
• You may get more weeds in the soil from seed sowing whilst turf has probably been chemically treated
• Turf can be laid in many conditions as long as it is watered when bone dry. Grass seed is sown in May or September for best results.

Links

BBC Autumn Lawn Care for more tips