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

Summer Lawn Care Tips

The weather is being fairly kind to us of late, with nice nice warm sunny days and the occasional rain storm which is great for the garden including the lawn.

July and August can be hard months for the garden, trying to keep all the plants flowering and trimmed and shrub borders looking their best.  It's the same for the lawn.

On a dry warm day in July, the natural water loss from a lawn could be around 46% so if you applied 1,000 litres of water, you would have lost 460 litres of water through evaporation and evapo-transpiration. 

Here come the Moles

This year’s mole invasion is something we’re likely to see a lot more often.

With Summer well and truly now underway, many of us are wondering what sort of Summer it will turn out to be. Wet or Dry? Cold ? or warmish like last year?

The volatility of the British climate is legendary; 2011 was a remarkably dry year (East Anglia was officially classed as a drought area by DEFRA), yet in 2012 we experienced the UK’s second wettest year since national records began in 1910. The persistent heavy rainfall throughout this winter also resulted in the wettest winter in England and Wales since 1766.

Search for Britain's Best Lawn

Briggs and Stratton, the lawn mower engine manufacturer, is inviting people with lawns of all shapes and sizes to enter a competition to find the best garden lawn in Britain.

The competition, which is now in its ninth year, awards the prestigious title of Britain’s Best Lawn to winners from all corners of the country. Briggs & Stratton is once again looking for gardeners who are passionate about their lawns.

The overall winner of this year’s competition will not only be awarded the title but will also win a walk behind cylinder Atco lawnmower, a selection of tools from Wilkinson Sword and a day’s gardening services of lawn expert and author, Martin Fish.  Entries will be judged by a panel of keen eyed judges and lawn experts and there will also be prizes for two runners up.

Turf farm fined £67,000 after Employee death on farm

A Turf company has been fined £67,000 after one of its East Yorkshire workers was crushed to death by a harvester.

York-based specialist turf company Turfgrass Services International Ltd was handed the fine for a catalogue of safety failings that led to the death of Wilberfoss father-of-two Lee Woodhouse.

Mr Woodhouse died from serious crushing injuries when he was struck and then run over by a 27-tonne turf harvester he had been using in a field off Feoffee Common Lane, in Barmby Moor, near Pocklington.

The perfect golf course to lose your ball...

You had better make sure you hit the perfect shot if you want to make the 14th hole at this Idaho golf course.

The Lake Coeur d'Alene course boasts with the world's only floating, moveable golf green which sits in the club's namesake.

And if you manage to land your ball on the bobbing green, you'll have to catch a boat out to take your next shot.

 

Quentin Letts evaluates The Bosch Robo Mower

For all those lazy lumps who hate mowing the lawn, salvation is at hand.

The cordless robot mower has arrived, made in Britain by Germany’s Bosch. You press a couple of buttons, sit back in your garden chair, and bingo, chore done. Alles ist gut!  But is it, in fact, any good? Does this robot mower work?

Daily Mail Writer and lawn enthuiast, Quentin Letts gets to grips with the Bosch Robot Mower.  Quentin Letts referrered to Our Managing Editor, Mike Seaton, as 'A herbicultural Hercule Poirot' when recording his BBC Radio 4 series, What's the point of The British Lawn.

How and when to water your lawn

When and how much water should you give your  lawn during the prevailing hot weather when the thermometer is tipping almost 28 degrees centigrade.

We are receiving a lot of calls about the very same subject, mostly about newly renovated lawns with seed or turf.  One big question is how long to water your lawn for.

Should you water your lawns or not when it is this hot?  Turf grasses are tough old things and so long as you  have healthy and desirable turf grasses in your lawns then they should  be capable of coping with the extremes of drought.

Come home to the smell of freshly mown grass

A British candle-maker has created the ultimate homage to her local football club, Newcastle United: a handmade scented candle that smells just like their playing pitch at St James' Park.

Ruth Herling, artist and founder of Candela Candles, intended to create a product that would give off the smell of freshly-mown playing field grass.

 

 

American Lawns Vs the Great British Lawn

Today is Independence Day in the USA, marked by a national federal holiday for one and all, with private and public events celebrating the Declaration of Independence on July 4th 1776, independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. 

There are simply millions of homes with lawns in The USA.  It was in the USA that the service industry of lawn treatments and care was born and that service industry is a multi billion dollar business.

There are many differences between growing grasses in The USA and Great Britain, mostly becuase of climate.  They mostly have warm season grasses and we have cool season grasses, but to fair The USA does have many varying climate regions and in some states, our cool season grasses flourish.

Lawn Treatment Estimates Online

We all live busy lives and often the garden and lawn come at the bottom of the pile when it comes to time allocation. 

Any money spent on a lawn is a good investment so long as it follows the flow chart of lawn care science and the timing is correct relative to the lawn's natural growth cycle.

Dry Patches on Lawns

Dry Patch is a little known problem of turf in amateur lawn circles but one that has an incredible impact in ensuring consistent colour, growth, nutrient status, run of the ball and most of all visual impact and continuity of grass cover.

Now we know a lot of lawn and turf areas are now turing brown as a result of the fine July sunshine but this problem has nothing to do with lack of rain or potential drought.

You may notice a darkening halo on parts of the lawn, visible from the upstairs window. This is a good indicator that the soil underneath is starting to or has dried out.