Grass Clippings - Lawn Advice From a Team of Lawn and Turf Experts

Concreting over the Green Fields

Britain has concreted over an area of green fields equivalent to the county of Dorset in the past 25 years, satellite analysis shows.

And once farmland lost to urban development is included, the UK has built on land almost the size of Bedfordshire with houses, roads and other infrastructure in the same timespan.

The research showed that 967 square miles (2,505km) of grassland - around the size of Dorset - were lost in terms of grassland, and 433 square miles of farmland (1,123km sq) the size of Bedfordshire - were covered in tarmac, cement and bricks in urban development.

Read more on The Daily Mail

To Seed or Turf a New Lawn?

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.

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. 

So what are the advantages of using turf to create a lawn?

It is a quicker method of lawn installation, which saves you waiting for seed to grow 

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.

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. 

So what are the advantages of using turf to create a lawn?

It is a quicker method of lawn installation, which saves you waiting for seed to grow 

Choosing Lawn Grass Seed

A trip to your local garden centre or DIY outlet may be a bit daunting when viewing the shelves of grass seed and selecting one to suit the needs of your lawn.

Make sure you go armed with the dimensions of your lawn and known square metres of lawn area so you buy sufficient for the task plus 25% to allow for a margin of error on the day.

First think of the immediate needs of you lawn, does it need to be hard wearing, cope with general family life, the children and dogs or is it mostly shaded, wet, dry, or are you after a luxury lawn that you can trim every other day with your cylinder mower?

First think of the immediate needs of you lawn, does it need to be hard wearing, cope with general family life, the children and dogs or is it mostly shaded, wet, dry, or are you after a luxury lawn that you can trim every other day with your cylinder mower?

Recovering Stressed & Damaged Lawns

The natural water loss from the surface of the lawn can be up to 7mm per hour when the temperature is 25 degrees during the warmest hours of the day.

Application of a Wetting Agent like Lawn Quencher will ensure that any water applied will break through any hydrophobic soil areas to make water wetter and the act of watering or rainfall will be more effective.

Spare a thought for your Lawn

The weather is very warm and dry and your lawn will be getting stressed out with the natural water evapo-transpiration loss which could be up to 7mm per hour.

The Team at The Lawn Shop have a wide range of lawn care treatments available to spread or spray and their online Lawn Shop is open all weekend for your convenience.

There are also pages of great lawn care advice too.  Fill your boots.

Visit The Lawn Shop

Garden Sprayer Dilemma

Here's the dilemma. You have a lawn or gravel driveway where there are weeds and you need to treat them to get rid.

You purchase the control products, get the garden sprayer out and follow the label and mix up the treatment solution and then get to work applying product.

Solving Lawn Worm Casts

CastClear is an unique non-pesticidal nutrient that increases turf health and deters lawn soil casts.

It suppresses and deters earthworms from being in the upper reaches of the soil where their casts cause so many problems on the lawns surface.

CastClear contains more than 5% amino nitrogen with more than 15% bio-organic sulphur.

Ten Interesting Facts about Earthworms

Are Earthworms a Garden's Friend of Foe? That depends.  Here are 10 things you may want to know about earthworms:

1. Earthworms come in a seemly infinite variety—around 6,000 species worldwide.

One of the most familiar of them, the sort you may see in your garden, is commonly known as the night crawler (it typically surfaces after dark), the angleworm (its makes popular bait for fishing) or the rain worm (it leaves waterlogged soil after storms).

2. Of the more than 180 earthworm species found in the U.S. and Canada, 60 are invasive species, brought over from the Old World, including the night crawler.

3. Lacking lungs or other specialized respiratory organs, earthworms breathe through their skin.

Are Earthworms a Garden's Friend of Foe? That depends.  Here are 10 things you may want to know about earthworms:

1. Earthworms come in a seemly infinite variety—around 6,000 species worldwide.

One of the most familiar of them, the sort you may see in your garden, is commonly known as the night crawler (it typically surfaces after dark), the angleworm (its makes popular bait for fishing) or the rain worm (it leaves waterlogged soil after storms).

2. Of the more than 180 earthworm species found in the U.S. and Canada, 60 are invasive species, brought over from the Old World, including the night crawler.

3. Lacking lungs or other specialized respiratory organs, earthworms breathe through their skin.

How to Control Yellow Suckling Clover

Weeds in your lawn are a nightmare. One particular weed that is prevalent at this time of year is Lesser Trefoil or Yellow Suckling Clover.  It looks like a small leafed clover type weed that creeps close to the ground covering large areas from a single root. Left uncontrolled, it will quickly spread across the surface of a lawn. It is one of the more difficult weed to control in a lawn.

Trifolium dubium is a procumbent summer annual found in UK lawns and also open ground. It is common throughout Britain and is recorded up to 1,600 ft. Two distinct forms occur, one found in open habitats on cinders and spoil, the other on grassland sites, waysides, wasteland and on lawns. In lawns it survives mowing by developing a low growth habit, missing the mower blades. On grazed sites this is less successful and it is not a common weed in pasture.

Teach yourself in the safe use of Pesticides

Who better to train you in the safe use of pesticides than an organisation that is doing what you will be trained to do, each day of the year?

Weed Free are able to provide formal training and assessments for Food and Environment Protection Act Certificates of Competence in the Safe use of Pesticides. Each year, we train many Greenkeepers and Sports Turf Managers and Local Authority Staff.

We were asked multi-times to provide training one to one to small business owners and as a result came up with the the self study pesticide course concept to support our on site training for larger companies and organisations.

You can purchase self-learn NPTC / City & Guilds training modules and other publications here.

Who better to train you in the safe use of pesticides than an organisation that is doing what you will be trained to do, each day of the year?

Weed Free are able to provide formal training and assessments for Food and Environment Protection Act Certificates of Competence in the Safe use of Pesticides. Each year, we train many Greenkeepers and Sports Turf Managers and Local Authority Staff.

We were asked multi-times to provide training one to one to small business owners and as a result came up with the the self study pesticide course concept to support our on site training for larger companies and organisations.

You can purchase self-learn NPTC / City & Guilds training modules and other publications here.

Who better to train you in the safe use of pesticides than an organisation that is doing what you will be trained to do, each day of the year?

Weed Free are able to provide formal training and assessments for Food and Environment Protection Act Certificates of Competence in the Safe use of Pesticides. Each year, we train many Greenkeepers and Sports Turf Managers and Local Authority Staff.

We were asked multi-times to provide training one to one to small business owners and as a result came up with the the self study pesticide course concept to support our on site training for larger companies and organisations.

You can purchase self-learn NPTC / City & Guilds training modules and other publications here.

Who better to train you in the safe use of pesticides than an organisation that is doing what you will be trained to do, each day of the year?

Weed Free are able to provide formal training and assessments for Food and Environment Protection Act Certificates of Competence in the Safe use of Pesticides. Each year, we train many Greenkeepers and Sports Turf Managers and Local Authority Staff.

We were asked multi-times to provide training one to one to small business owners and as a result came up with the the self study pesticide course concept to support our on site training for larger companies and organisations.

You can purchase self-learn NPTC / City & Guilds training modules and other publications here.

Who better to train you in the safe use of pesticides than an organisation that is doing what you will be trained to do, each day of the year?

Weed Free are able to provide formal training and assessments for Food and Environment Protection Act Certificates of Competence in the Safe use of Pesticides. Each year, we train many Greenkeepers and Sports Turf Managers and Local Authority Staff.

We were asked multi-times to provide training one to one to small business owners and as a result came up with the the self study pesticide course concept to support our on site training for larger companies and organisations.

You can purchase self-learn NPTC / City & Guilds training modules and other publications here.

Stormy Weather

Lots of parts of the United Kingdom received a lot of rain yesterday but the sudden downpours were very localised as Woking had about 30mm of rain in 30 minutes and a few junctions down the M3, nothing at all. Our local village was flooded with highway storm drain lids lifting rendering the road through our village impassable.

All good news for drought stretched lawns and the garden in general. This week will be warm for most with the risk of heavy showers and thunderstorms breaking out across many areas state The Met Office.

Hassle Free Garden Treatments

Indigo Garden Spray Dye is an innovative product brought to you from The Lawn Company Team, that you simply add to your garden sprayer to help you make liquid applications / treatments to your lawn and garden.

Benefits:

Spray Pattern Indicator Dye

Saves Time, Money, Product,

Lets You See Where You Have Or Have Not Sprayed

Indicates When Your Sprayer Is Clean

Takes The Guess Work Out Of Making Liquid Treatments In The Garden

All this for £14.99 inc. P&P.

Available from Amazon and The Lawn Shop

Lawn Quencher™ Tablets - The Solution to Lawn Hydration

Your lawn may be looking a little sorry for itself especially with the general lack of rainfall in April and May.  When the lawn returns to its former green self, spare a thought of the localised dry patches left visible on the surface.  Dry crusty patches where the grass is simply not growing.

It is very common for lawns to suffer from localised dry patches and drought has nothing to do with this natural occurring turf / lawn problem.  Rainfall or irrigation will not solve these dry, crusty, and hydrophobic areas. Nothing will grow in these affected areas as there is no available soil moisture.

Controlling Red Thread Disease on your Lawn

Red Thread Disease can appear on lawns in the early to late summer, especially seen on lawns of low fertility, especially Nitrogen. If the summer months are humid and moist there will be an incredible outbreak of this disease on UK lawns.

Identification:

This disease is now thought to be a combination or complex of two fungal species:

a) L.fuciformis – Red Thread – where the red needles are present
b) L.fuciformis – Pink Patch – where the pink mycelium is present.

This disease is now thought to be a combination or complex of two fungal species:

a) L.fuciformis – Red Thread – where the red needles are present
b) L.fuciformis – Pink Patch – where the pink mycelium is present.

Wetting Agent Tablets - First Aid for Lawn Dry Patches

Lawn Quencher is a 75 gram Wetting Agent Tablet that you pop into your chosen hose diluter / feeder and attach to the hose pipe and spray onto the localised dry patches or entire lawn.

Lawn Quencher is the solution to localised dry patches on your lawn. These problem will not get wet by way of applying water or natural rainfall alone as the soil underneath has become hydrophobic - repelling water.