With Spring just around the corner, no doubt you’ll be thinking about getting your house and garden in shape. There are many aspects to a garden, yet one of the most integral is often overlooked.
The importance of the common garden lawn is in many ways akin to the living room of your house; it’s where you’ll host barbecues and garden parties… play hide and seek… create fun waterslides… and all sorts of other fun summertime activities – yet it is often taken for granted.
This article provides a quick overview of the two most essential aspects of caring for your lawn, which a surprising amount of people get wrong – watering and pruning. However, if you want a really lush, thick and vibrant lawn this summer you might want to consider using a fertiliser such as charlie carp liquid fish fertiliser that will optimise the nutrition of your lawn, meaning it will grow more abundantly which is particularly good for any worn out patches from last summer’s waterslides or football games.
With that said, let’s now look at the two most important aspects of keeping a healthy lawn.
Watering
Aim to water the lawn after the sun sets in the evening or early in the morning before the sun gains strength; the myth that watering in the sunshine will turn your emerald green lawn into a scorched nightmare is mostly unfounded… it’s just wasteful, as watering in the midday sun means most the water will evaporate rather than soak down to where it needs to be. Many experts recommend watering first thing in the morning as the sun will dry the grass out within a few hours, which means there’s less chance of disease associated with the grass sitting in too much water. There’s no need to water each morning; as it’s better to water deeply and infrequently, as this approach encourages root growth and increases resistance to drought and disease.
Mowing
It can be tempting to keep your grass short but tall grass makes for a much healthier lawn. Try to avoid cutting it below two inches (5cm) as the ideal length in terms of having healthy grass is around three inches (7cm). When you’re cutting the grass, you want to be removing not much more than ⅓ of the blade of grass, as trimming any further than this can seriously damage your grass. You’ll want to mow the lawn when it’s cool and dry; especially avoid cutting the law whilst it’s wet or in midday sun. The final point is to either leave the grass clippings on the lawn, as they decompose quickly and provide much needed nutrients, or use the grass as fertiliser on other plants.
So, there we have the two core aspects of keeping a healthy lawn and some brownie points, in terms of utilising fertiliser, if you want really good results. However, one last thing to consider, as an alternative option to natural grass which is particularly convenient for busy people or older folk that are struggling with the physical demands of mowing their lawn – is a grass alternative such as astroturf, which nowadays, can look quite realistic. That said, for many of us, we would agree that nothing beats the smell of freshly mown grass on a summer’s day.
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