| The great thing is, that unlike mowing -
these care things only have to be done once. OK maybe twice!
Only if your lawn has looked a bit yellow
and generally sickly over the past few months, should you bother about
feeding it at this time of year. If you do, then it MUST be an autumn
lawn feed. The feed you used in spring and summer is not suitable, for it
will have too great a Nitrogen content. This will lead to over-lush growth,
which is not desirable at this time of year. It will weaken the grass and
leave it prone to all sorts of turf diseases. You can actually care for your
lawn too much at this time!
Autumn lawn care jobs include
- Keeping worm casts under control
-
Moss-kill
- Scarifying
- Aerating
- Over-seeding
- General repairs
- Creating a bit more lawn - maybe.
That's about all I can think of at the
moment. Think positive, the maintenance tasks mentioned above are going to
save you a small fortune in Gym fees! And just think how motivating it is to
know that your lawn will be so much better next year than this after this
care and maintenance. A downside
is, that neighbours and friends will ask for your assistance next autumn
when they need to care for their lawns,
for you will be THE lawn expert of the neighbourhood!
Worms - and their worm casts - on the lawn,
are a pest - especially in autumn. They are not even the friendly worms that we welcome in other
parts of the garden and are an essential part of the autumn care and
maintenance programme. The type of worms that make worm casts in the grass, are
not good aerators of soil, and they do NOT help drainage! There are no
chemicals that are allowed for killing them - so just keep brushing off the
worm casts as they appear. (So many writers and gardening broadcasters extol
the virtue of using the worm casts as soil for sowing seeds. Can you imagine
how many worm casts would need to be 'collected' to fill a seed tray with
what is basically mud! Forget it. For when this cast soil is dry it will set
like rock, and when it is moist it will resemble porridge - without the
oats!)
Get round to analyzing your lawn this
autumn.
Does your lawn have moss, is there a
build-up of thatch, just a bit bare, or perhaps just a bit thin in places?
Whatever, we are going to go through the whole Autumn Lawn care maintenance
programme.
First things first. If there is moss,
then apply a moss-killer to kill the moss that is there. However, it will
return unless you also find out the basic cause of the moss!
Two weeks after you have used the
moss-kill, the lawn will be ready to scarify. This is an important aspect of
autumn lawn care. You can do this with a rake
and back power (will-power will also be a great asset for this operation. If
you have any sizeable lawn - with enough room to turn a lawn mower for
instance - then best to hire a mechanised or electric scarifyer/rake. One of
the main reasons for scarifying is to get rid of the moss you have just
killed, and also to rid yourself (your lawn) of
thatch. (Thatch is the build
up of dead grass lying below the green grass that you see, and the soil. It
can be as much as an inch thick in some lawns. It needs to be removed.)
Once the scarifying has been carried out,
then aeration follows on. This is an important part of autumn lawn care, best carried out whilst the soil is damp
for this will make the task less back-breaking! It will almost certainly
need doing, for even the innocent activity of mowing your lawn will lead to
a certain amount of compaction of the lawn/soil surface. Add in the fact
that most lawns are used by children - or animals - and are generally the
main means of getting from one part of the garden to the other, and you will
see that a certain degree of compaction is inevitable.
Aeration can be carried out by using a
garden fork and stout soles on your boots! If the lawn is large enough, then
hire a mechanical spiking/aeration machine. Alternatively, purchase a
hollow-tyne fork. (A mechanical spiking machine is by far the best option -
other then getting someone in to do the job for you. However, that would not
be so satisfying would it?)
The aeration process will leave you with a
lawn full of holes, which will then need to be filled in! Use a mixture of
soil, sand and peat, that will keep these new 'pores' free draining, helping
future rain to get down to the roots and also the all-important air down
into the soil. It will also make the lawn less prone to future compaction.
You can only do this care operation in the autumn if the weather permits -
otherwise carry out the top dressing in spring.
If this is all carried out before the onset
of the 'nasty' part of autumn, then seeding of thin patches can also
take place. (Once we are into winter proper, then forget any ideas of
seeding.)
So, all the autumn lawn care jobs having been done, you can sit back and
enjoy what is left of the autumn. Oh! Did I mention that this is a good time
of year to carry out turfing? |
