Caring for Your Winter Lawn
We're well into winter now, which means your cylinder lawn mower is tucked up in the shed. However, this doesn't mean it's a good idea to abandon your lawn altogether this season. While not much can be done in winter when it comes to maintaining a healthy lawn, there are a few simple steps that you can perform over the colder season to ensure that your lawn still looks fresh and healthy again when spring arrives.
Winter Lawn Maintenance Tips
If you have already taken the extra steps before winter of aerating your lawn to relieve compaction and applying lawn fertiliser, then you don't need to do much more than a few simple jobs to help your lawn stay healthy this season. This includes simply sweeping away any fallen leaves or removing any debris or objects from your lawn like branches, furniture or toys. For the same reason, you should discourage or advise people away from walking across the grass.- Mole activity could well be a problem and this will increase in January and February due to mating and nest building. Remove the largest hills and re-firm before overseeding in spring.
- Keep brushing away worm casts, as they can be troublesome at this time of year.
- Algae can be a problem on lawns where there is poor drainage, excessive shade, or under the drip-line of trees.
- Fusarium patch or snow mould may be a problem in wet weather, particularly on overfed and lush lawns that have been left a bit too long.
- Stay off your lawn if it is particularly icy or snow covered as you will damage the grass blades.
- Use the non mowing season to give your mower a good clean and a service. You can use your Allett cartridge mower for picking up leaves if it's not too wet. Machinery dealers are often quiet in January so get your machine in for a service and your cylinder in for a sharpen.
- Wait until spring for any weed control
- Leave scarifying/rolling etc until spring as it is NOT the time to do this in winter