Now is the time to start preparing the lawn for spring and summer. If your grass like ours has to put up with permanent shade in winter, the chances are your pride and joy which looks like a velvet carpet in summer can now appear to be rather sickly. Well mother nature will now take over and before long all will be well again. However its best if we lend a hand, start by lightly scarifying the lawn with a spring tine rake, collecting all dead leaves and debris that will have acumulated. Also raking up dead moss, you can be quite firm but not too severe as you do not want to cause too much damage to the roots. You can then spike the lawn which is of great benefit as it improves the drainage. There is a proper tool for the job, a hollow tine aerateor, rather difficult to get a good quality one. More often or not a garden fork is used, just plunge in the spikes almost to full length and lightly pull the handle back and forth. Go over the whole lawn about eighteen inches appart, pretty tough on the knees so get the wife to take over half way through. A couple of weeks later give it a run over with the lawn mower, set the mower at a position where it won’t scalp the grass, and gradually lower the setting as the season progresses. As for feeding I prefer to wait until mid may, best results I have had is with Scotts Lawn Builder, available at your garden centre. Most important of all never forget to give the lawn an autumn feed, late September early October, you must use a proper (Autumn feed) it has all the proper nutrients. (Scotts now named Evergreen)
A Lush Lawn
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