Grass Clippings

Moss control using Sulphate of Iron

Moss control and then Moss removal in lawns is a practice normally performed in the autumn and spring lawn care months. If the grass plants activity has thinned or weakened over the past 12 months, now is the time to start Moss control and eradication and some mechanical operations just ahead of over seeding the lawn to turn the tide on the moss and re populate with existing or new grasses whilst the soil is still warm.

Lawn Check - Lawn Treatment Service Providers Evaluation Scheme

The Grass Clipping Team came upon this new web site and concept that is trying to pull together a Lawn Treatment Service Providers Evaluation Scheme.

The 'Lawn Check' scheme provides a central register of regularly assessed, approved companies that meet nationally applied standards of competence. Ones the lawn owner and customer you can trust.

It is being set up and designed by a long standing member of the, we can only presume turf industry with over 15 years of domestic lawn treatment experience; as a lawn application crewman, a lawn surveyor, a manager and a former company owner. This experience from the 'grass roots' upwards you might say means they have a thorough understanding of not only what good companies will be doing, but also the short-cuts, poor training, and sometimes illegal practices that some lawn treatment services may try to use! Their goal is that lawn treatment company customers everywhere should be able to receive quality service from caring, professional companies with trained, knowledgeable staff.

Top 10 Autumn lawn tips

Lawns often feature on the Royal Horticultural Society's Top 10 garden problems each year so why not have a top 10 lawn tips to help you through this autumn. The nights are closing in and ideal mowing days reducing dramatically. We have not had many frosts in the South East of England which is quite suprising for almost mid November but you just know that winter is around the corner and we will soon be scraping the ice off the car windscreen in the morning and view frost on the lawn.

Weather to mow the lawn or not.....

Finding the ideal time to mow the lawn this autumn can always be a challenge. You should never consider that you do not have to mow the lawn in the autumn or winter months as the lawn will never acutally stop growing - it will just slow down. You do not get out of it that easy!

Having a reliable weather source is vital in planning on which days you could mow your lawn that fits in with your busy work, home and social life and a time that coincides with the weather not throwing it down with rain at the time!

Disposal of Garden Lawn Waste

On the many occassions that we have scarified and renovated a lawn, there is always a lot of scarifying debris to get rid of. There are many Local Authority green waste schemes but you might need a lot of wheelie bins or recycling bins to place your debris accumulated into them so that it may be disposed of and recycled.

You have several options available to you should you have a lot of garden and lawn debris to dispose of. You could of course burn it, compost it, organise a skip, make many trips to the local waster transfer station (the tip or dump) or consider using a Hippo Bag.

Aerating a lawn - the importance of this lawn maintenance task

Lawn enthusiasts will go to great lengths, not to mention expense, to work on the top surface of their lawn but totally neglect, and in many cases fail to understand, what is necessary below ground to keep the grass roots healthy and aerated.

I can imagine the shopping trollies at the garden centre full of autumn lawn feed, sulphate of iron to combat any moss and perhaps some soil and seed to reinstate low and bare patches where the grass may have failed through the year but I somehow feel that spiking is not on most lawn owners to-do list.

Fusarium Disease kills lawns in the Autumn

Every professional Turf Manager is fully aware of the perils of their sports turf becoming diseased. The finer the playing surface, the greater the disease risk and blemish to the sward. A disease outbreak can appear over night which is why it is important to take a good look at your lawns every single day, especially in warm and moist conditions commonly found in the autumn months.

Lawn Guide - a great Xmas present for the lawn lover in your life

If you have a lawn lover in your family or network of friends, why not give them a useful reference on how to look after a lawn?

This useful guide, priced at only £9.50 each including packing and postage could be included in their pile of presents under the tree and provide an endless supply of hot lawn tips and lawn advice from the professionals.

How to measure a lawn

Knowing the size of your lawn is vital should you wish to care for it correctly. Measuring a lawn is so important when making an assessment on how much fertiliser to buy and then ensure that you have applied the correct amount of product over the given area and this applies to granules and liquids. The ultimate aim is to arrive at the total number of square metres of the lawn or each lawn and the total of all of the lawns making up the garden.

Tips on caring for a new lawn

We are often asked by lawn owners who have recently received a new lawn - "How do I look after it?"

So how do you care for a new lawn? If the lawn was turved, you really do hit the deck running. Ensure that you do not let the turves dry out at all otherwise they will shrink and it will look awful. Do not make the mistake of being too kind with the water too otherwise you run the risk of killing the lawn. Your landscaper or turf care organisation would have fertilised the lawn with a pre seeder fertiliser before the lawn was laid or fertilised it with a granular fertiliser appropriate to the time of year after laying, so an autumn and winter fertiliser to aid root development and toughen the turf up ahead of the perils of winter. You can turf a lawn all rear round so long as the soil on site can be worked and the turf farm can lift the turf.