Grass Clippings

Campervan promoting the green mile

Readers of this blog site are really into their lawns and grass and the great outdoors! One of my friends always seems to get caught up in the exhibition traffic preventing his normal travel to the office each morning during a big international ground care event held each September. He moans 'Lots of people knowledgeable about grass, standing in a grass field. talking about grass.' We live in a green and pleasant land, made better by those who know a lot about grass!

Controlling weeds in your lawn

I saw the very first Dandelion in flower yesterday on a lawn. Surrounding it, were Daisies enjoying the spring sunshine. Spring arrives early this year. While March 21st is traditionally the first day of spring, the astronomical event that marks the turn of the seasons – the Vernal Equinox – occurs at 11.44 on Friday the 20th March.

As their name suggests, the two equinoxes of spring and autumn are the points when day and night are of equal length – at least north or south of the equator, where light and dark are a lways in balance.

Turfing a lawn or seeding a lawn - which is best?

The process of renovating your lawn from a brown field site is the same up to the finished prepared soil surface whether you are seeding or turfing as careful seed bed or turf bed preparation is key should you wish to make life easy for yourself in the short and long term.

The decision to renovate your lawn may have arrived because it is too far gone to renovate by trying to introduce some more grasses into the sward or it maybe because the complete garden has had a make over and the lawn is like the carpet of the room outside.

How to scarify a lawn

Scarification or Scarifying is an essential part of cultured turf or lawn management. It is carried out with hand tools such as a Spring Bok Hand Rake or, for larger areas, purpose built machinery called a Scarifier. The aim of scarifying is to produce a healthy vertical type growth of desirable grasses, to improve the turf surface and appearance. Very light scarification (like with a drag brush or rake on a cylinder mower) is used simply to raise the leaves of the grass in the sward before mowing, to leave a smarter looking finish.

Which lawn fertiliser should I use on my lawn?

You may remember your Grandad mixing his own fertiliser consisting of Sulphate of Ammonia, Dried Blood and Fish and Bone Meal - sounds ghastly and it probably was. It is still possible to purchase straight Sulphate of Ammonia as a lawn fertiliser and good old fashioned Growmore. These age old Nitrogen sources are likely to scorch your lawn, especially Sulphate of Ammonia as it has a Nitrogen content of 21% straight Nitrogen - a generating real flush of growth and then the benefit quickly reduces and is gone.

The Shooting Star Children's Hospice

At the end of last year we heard a news item on the Capital Radio Breakfast Show hosted by Johnny Vaughan and Denise Van Outen. As part of their Help a London Child Christmas Appeal they were trying to raise funds to help some needy children in London. The recipient of the money raised Last December through the Appeal will be used to build a Play Therapy Room in a new extension at The Shooting Star Children’s Hospice based in Hampton in Middlesex.

When should you fertilise your lawn in the spring?

You should now consider applying fertiliser to your lawns. It is important that you should have performed the first mow of the spring before application of lawn fertiliser as this process will stimulate some growth and the lawn can tell you that it is ready for some food after the long cold winter.