Spring Lawn Care
It’s Time to Spring Clean Your Lawn!
Long awaited Spring is finally here. The perfect time to get outside and start enjoying your lawn. Spring is the ideal growing season for your lawn. After a long hard winter, your grass will finally begin to start looking greener and healthier. Therefore, spring lawn care is crucial to get your lawn back on track and looking fabulous. Here’s some hints and tricks on how to get a great looking lawn in Spring.
Step 1 – Eradicate the Enemy!
Over the winter months your lawn growth rate will slow into dormancy. Although, a slow growing lawn may sound ideal for those who despise mowing – it also makes your lawn an easy victim for unwanted weeds. If you have found your lawn has been completely over-run you may consider spraying a chemical application, such as an all purpose weed control. (Ensure to check the label for directions – you don’t want to kill your lawn along with the weeds!)
However, in most cases if you have a superior variety such as Sir Walter DNA Certified less drastic measures will need to be taken. A quality lawn, when at a healthy state will compete fairly well against weeds even throughout the winter months. In this case remove the invading weeds selectively by hand or with a weeding wand. Also, giving your lawn a lower mowing will knock down unwanted weeds. As well as removing any thatch that has built up over winter.
Step 2 – Freshen Up Your Lawn
Certain varieties of lawn will build up a thatch layer over the summer and winter months. The build up of excess clippings and debris creates a thick spongy layer on the top of your lawn. This can interfere by blocking crucial water, oxygen and nutrients, that help keep your lawn healthy from entering the soil. It is important to give your lawn a close haircut to remove the thatch layer and spring is the perfect time to do so. With an older type of lawn, such as some couch varieties you may need to scarify your lawn with a scarifying machine. However, with a newer variety such as a soft leaf buffalo a low mowing with an ordinary mower will usually do the trick. With a soft leaf buffalo lawn set your mower to it’s lower settings and reduce it to 25mm or less over one or two mowings.
Step 3 – Give a Good Feeding
After taking care of unwanted weeds and any thatch build up you may have had over winter – it is the perfect time to give your lawn a good fertilise. Spring harbours the ideal weather for fertilising your lawn and you will see it begin to thrive. An all purpose lawn food is great for giving your lawn some extra nutrients to recover from winter.
It’s a good idea to give your lawn an application of fertiliser at the beginning of spring. Follow this with another application four to six weeks after and you will see your lawn looking amazing! Be sure to check the label when fertilising your lawn as many fertilisers need to be watered in to avoid them burning and damaging your lawn. It is best to fertilise in the early morning and late afternoon when the weather is cooler. Also, don’t fertiliser your lawn when the weather is hot. This increases the risk of the fertiliser burning your lawn.