National Lawn and Garden Month - Top 5 Tips For Your Lawn

National Lawn and Garden Month is celebrated each year in April. The weather is starting to pick up and the grass is now starting to grow quickly in the gardens. April is the perfect time to clean up your lawn and get it ready for summer. It’s important to get the mowing height right when you mow your lawn. Most lawns do well at 2” to 3”, but it’s a good idea to leave it a little longer during hot months. You should have already taken your cylinder to your local dealer to be sharpened by now. Blunt blades will hack at the grass and cause disease. Important jobs this month to get your grass growing healthily include – aerating, scarifying, treating weeds, over-seeding and feeding.

1. The first job to do at this time of year is to clear any debris off your lawn including any broken twigs, stones, or leaves that should be raked or collected off the surface. These can damage your lawn mowers blades.
2. You should have already scarified by now however if the weather is cool enough and we're not in a dry spell you can still undertake your major scarifying session to rid your lawn of the winter thatch build up. You can aerate also which will help ease the flow of air and moisture into the soil below the grass making its roots grow more strongly.
3. A stripy lawn needs to be regularly kept free from weeds. From April, when temperatures have warmed up and the lawn is growing well, apply any moss or weed-killing treatments as necessary. Make sure the weed killer is suitable for grass; otherwise you will kill the grass as well as the weeds.
4. Over-seeding with new grass seed is another key spring job to build up the density of the turf and fill in any bare patches created by weed removal. Be careful if you’re treating weeds because if you put seed down at the same time the seed won’t take. Treat the weeds first, then go over the lawn with fresh seed a week or two later. Do not scarify the new seedings
5. Start your mowing with the blades on a high setting, to avoid shaving the lawn too short this early in the season. Reduce the height of the grass by no more than a third each time you mow, and remember that well-defined stripes are actually easier to achieve if the lawn is kept slightly longer. When you create stripes, you’re using the rear roller on the mower to bend the grass over in one direction. The stripes are created by the reflection of the sun on the bent-over blades of grass. As the mower and roller go away from the sun, a light stripe is created, then when you change direction and come back towards the sun the shadow of the grass blades bending the other way creates the dark stripe. Around 25-30mm is a good mowing height for stripes, if you start going any lower than that, you start to lose the definition.