My TOP Lawn Care Tips

I’ve given lots of advice across my blog on how to properly care for your lawn.

The thing is, lawn care can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. That’s why I’ve put together these ten TOP lawn care tips that will not only make your lawn look good, they are easy to do as well.

So without further ado, let’s dive right in.

1. Prepare your lawn for winter

If you don’t do anything else, make sure you do this – prepare your lawn for the cooler months in Autumn & Winter.

By doing just a few things early after the growing season, ie. applying Autumn Lawn Feed, scarifying, raking moss out and removing leaves, you’re job will be much easier when the following Spring comes and you need to get your lawn looking great again.

It may not be 100% perfect at the start of the following season, even if you put a lot of effort in. But you can keep it at 70% of it’s health rather than letting it go down to 30% of it’s health.

2. Stimulate growth in Spring & Summer with a high-nitrogen feed

Our Signature Spring & Summer Lawn Feed is THE BEST fertiliser product for stimulating growth. It will give your lawn a sharp boost in both colour and thickness, while feeding it with macro-nutrients for up to 10 weeks.

What’s more, if you apply a high-nitrogen based fertiliser before a heat wave, it may still dry out a little, but it will bounce back super quickly when the first rain returns.

Remember to water in the Spring and Summer feeds if there’s no rain forecast.

3. Overseed every 18 months

Whether you’re looking after newly laid turf or freshly germinating seed, the grass will undoubtedly become tired and potentially patchy over the course of the years. That’s why I highly recommend doing an overseed of around 25g per m2 every 18 months or so.

By doing so, you’ll avoid the need to do a full overhaul in a couple of years and essentially keep costs down because you only need a low application rate each time you do it.

4. Help Improve drainage

If there’s one thing to do on the soil bed, it would be to make sure you have good drainage. Mainly because of the negative effects of bad drainage. For example, if water sits on the lawn it will be much more likely that moss thrives or disease sets in.

Ways of improving drainage include aerating and top dressing with sand based materials.

5. Mow little and often with care

Some say if you stick to the NUMBER ONE rule about mowing, your grass will thrive. That is only ever mow 1/3 of its length at a time.

Watch this video from Premier Lawns Northern Ireland to find out exactly why

This is key to avoiding brown patches. Especially in the Summer. When you leave the grass to grow, then try to mow off too much in one go, you’re getting rid of the very leaf that generates photosynthesis.

Even if you’re doing regular feeds, it won’t matter if you cut off more than you should.

As the saying goes, “Don’t bite off more than you can chew

6. Remove weeds by hand / Avoid herbicides where possible

The best way to remove weeds (in my view) is ALWAYS by hand. If you look after the grass, then it will be much harder for weeds to settle in the lawn.

That means you will hardly have any weeds to get rid of. Meaning you can easily do a once over the lawn and take any weeds out by hand.

The alternative option is to let the weeds grow and that will help with pollinators. However, it does mean that, if the grass is left to it’s own devices, the weeds will likely take over because grass struggles to grow without the correct nutrients (at least 4 feeds per year) over time

7. Remove Thatch & Moss

Removing thatch and moss is easy when you know how. I highly recommend investing in an electric scarifier and going over the grass at least once if not twice per year.

An electric scarifier will get deep into the thatch and pull up all the dead grass from underneath the healthy grass. Scarifying will make way for the seed to easily get down to the soil.

The best time to scarify is just before doing an overseed. It’s also best to do it on a dry day.

Have a read of my full article called Scarifying: when, why & how to revive a UK lawn afterwards.

One thing is – don’t be concerned about ‘wrecking’ your lawn from scarifying. Below is an example of how much thatch might be under just 50m2 of grass. So, it’s waaaay better to get it out than to let it build up.

8. Track your tasks

This is something that’s easily overlooked but something that can have huge benefits. Yes you should use a calendar so you can write down the exact date you applied a feed and when you expect to need to do the net one.

Most of our fertilisers contain slow release nitrogen, meaning you won’t need to feed it again

Don’t have a lawn care calendar or diary? Check out this one

Alternatively, do your tasks on days of the yearly events. For example, I apply Autumn Lawn Feed on Halloween Weekend. Or apply your Spring feed on Grand National Weekend. You could even use a loved ones birthday weekend as a different guide.

If you work out the length of time between events, you are sure to find 4 days that work for you and you don’t even need to create or use a lawn care calendar.

9. Train pets

If you’re like most pet owners, you probably want to let your pets can use roam as they please when they’er in your garden. It’s definitely possible to have a great looking lawn and let your pets roam around where they wish.

I recommend training them a little so they can get used to peeing in the right places or even digging in the right places so they don’t mess up your beloved lawn.

I’ve written a full article on how to avoid brown wee patches on the lawn, which does include the different training options.

10. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy

I love to play with my kids on the lawn and try not to worry too much about using it. Of course, I want it to look good but I also don’t see much point in having it if I’m not going to enjoy using it. So, whether you do it for admiring it, or whether you do it to let the kids play on it, enjoy it.

That’s my number one piece of advice.

Why?

Because if you don’t enjoy it, then you you’ll find it even harder to keep it looking even half nice.