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

Why are Worms spoiling my Lawn?

The gardening section of the daily newspapers are great sources for information relating to caring for a garden and this appeared recently in The Telegraph in one of their gardening Q&A.

'My lawns are covered in worm soil casts, too damp to brush with a besom. I have tried to remove them with a trowel and given up.

The lawn now looks worse. My lawn care contractor will treat them with chemicals – but should I allow this?'
Marjorie Masterman - via email

Autumn Leaves

After some interesting weather during our british summer, the trees are turning a fifty shades of brown and autumn is finally here.

Now is the time to start working on your lawn before too many leaves fall on it and the frosts appear.  Your thoughts should be warming towards fertilising your lawn and it is not too late to apply a summer fertiliser at the full rate or apply it at half the summer rate.  The clever technology of The Lawn Shop Granular Lawn Fertilisers means that the nutrients will stop releasing once it gets cooler yet when the soil warms up in the spring, it will stop releasing again - clever!

Stockists opportunities for CastClear

The worms are great for the lawn, their casts not.  Amateur lawn owners have struggled for decades with the conundrum of how to control the earthworm casts across their lawn during the months of September to April each year.

Help is now available in a clever new product that is available NOW in 263 Garden Centres.  The product is called CastClear and it comes in a handy one litre bottle that will treat up to 500 square metres.

Lawn Shop open 24/7 this autumn

Spare a thought for your lawn this coming weekend and get it ready for the winter.  Make sure that you have blown or raked up all of the leaves and debris and trimmed the edges. 

It is not too late in the year to mow your lawn so don’t think that you are getting off lightly and hide the mower in the garden shed until the spring time and head out to the shops or golf club!

Top Ten Lawn Mistakes

Lawn care is a science and like all sciences there is a requirement to follow a sequence like a flow chart and also to keep everything in balance too. 

Tip the scales or be too reactive and your lawn will suffer, get diseased, go thin and less dense and sometimes die.

In no particular order, here are some of the errors we see when out and about visiting lawns:

1. Mowing too low and infrequently and always in the same direction

EasySet Mole Trap

Beagle is a British company that provides an easy, effective solution to unwanted moles in your lawns.

Moles to be honest are great mammals but a bit of a pain in the rear when they mess up your lawn with their mounds of soil on the surface.

Their pest control products are designed and manufactured exclusively in the UK to the highest quality standards. They should last you a life-time, and should be a pleasure to use.

Further innovative, high quality garden products are in development, each of which will make a real difference to the way you maintain your garden.

Lawn Specialist or Lawn Expert?

An Expert is defined as a person with a high degree of skill in or knowledge of a certain subject.

A Specialist is defined as a person who specializes in or devotes herself/himself to a particular area of activity or field of research, etc.

There are therefore Lawn Experts and Lawn Specialists who can both lay claim to knowing a thing about lawns. 

How to measure your 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.

Suppressing earthworms in the desert

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.

A supply of CastClear was recently sent to a new garden retail stockist in Nevada, USA to assist local lawn owners with their worm cast problems. Locally owned and operated since 1996, Rail City Garden Center has the most unique nursery experience in Northern Nevada.

CastClear deterring worms in Canada

CastClear is an organic and unique combination of nutrient materials that have been clearly shown to reduce soil-cast levels on lawns large and small.

It's the Solution to lawn soil cast problems and has been selling in Garden Centres since the autumn of 2011 with over 10,000 litres sold to date via 260 retail garden centres and outlets.

It's a lawn soil cast suppressant and a deterrent. It's proven in control on both lawns and sports turf.

The loss of a true turfgrass legend

Roy Goss, Ph.D., a longtime turfgrass specialist at Washington State University and one of the pioneers of the Northwest Turfgrass Association, died Oct. 10, after a brief battle with cancer. Goss, 89, won the GCSAA’s Distinguished Service Award in 1978 and the USGA Green Section Award in 1988.

Our Managing Editor, Mike Seaton recalls 'As a turfgrass student in the early Eighties, Roy Goss was an inspirational authority and his research and books gave hours of vital reading and up to date knowledge on turfgrass and disease.' 

Seaton added 'When our college lecturer came into the class room with a hand out or document that he had obtained from the USA, our eyes lit up ad their level of research appeared to be way above ours in the UK.  This was all pre intrnet when you relied on the postal service to be sent papers over to the UK.'

Irresponsible Lawn Care in the Media

David Hedges-Gower the lawn care expert has the kind of professional credentials which only come from total dedication.  From a career spanning Golf Professional to Course Manager at a prestigous Oxforshire Golf Course to author of his Modern Lawn Care book, he is technically frustrated with the lack of lawn care advice in the media today.

Our Managing Editor, Mike Seaton, tends to agree totally.

“Lawns are not worth it; they take up too much time, they’re difficult to look after and they use nasty chemicals and lots of precious water. Up and down the country home owners are realizing that life is a lot better with paving or artificial turf.”

When is the best time to scarify your lawn?

We are noticing a lot of traffic generated on the site about scarifying your lawn.

In the autumn, the timing is good now until we get the first ground frost as you need some grass growth to aid recovery from the scarifying operation.  In the spring time, the quick answer is do not attempt to scarify the lawn until you have given the lawn its first mow of the season. 

At such time, your lawn must be able to put on some natural recovery growth so performing this important mechanical lawn task too early in the year is complete madness and not very good for your lawn either.

Dyeing to see where you have sprayed

When lawn owners make liquid or chemical applications to their lawn, they are faced with a big dilemma - how can they mark where they have sprayed already?

Professional Turf Managers have been using Spray Pattern Indicator Dyes for decades but these have never been widely available before to the amateur lawn owner. 

Turf Managers also use what is called a foam bout marker on their large sprayers which leaves a trace blob of foam down the travelled run of the fairway so that the operator can match up with the last pass on the return run.  The foam soon disappears after an hour via sunlight.

Lawn Advice - over 880 articles to search online

There are a lot of Landscapers and Gardeners who 'claim' to know a lot about lawn and grass. There are numerous trade suppliers to the industry who specialise in their range of products and advice associated with them.

There has been a steady rise in the establishment of Lawn Treatment Companies over the last few years also adding their bit to the advice bank. So why is it that the advice given to lawn owners varies so much and is often so inaccurate and poor?

Lawn Care is a science commonly known as The Science and Practice of Turf Culture. The science is based around the separate subjects of Botany, Biology and Soil Science, with Chemistry and Physics all playing a big part as does Meteorology.