A Healthy Dose of Autumnal Lawn And Order – Autumn Lawn Maintenance Tips

When we’re not using our gardens as much through the darker, cooler months, we stop noticing the maintenance issues that slowly creep up on us. Your lawn is one of those jobs, that with a little preparation before you put it to bed for the autumn, you’ll be able to enjoy those snuggly warm evenings inside, knowing that you’ll not be coming back to an unruly lawn in the spring!

For many of us, our lawns receive a lot of TLC throughout the summer months, feeding, weeding, scarifying and aerating to our heart’s content. You can’t beat the bounce you get under your feet from a well-loved lawn. We don’t want all of that effort to go waste though, so here are just a few tips on how to keep those pesky weeds in check…

Scarify This Halloween

No, we don’t mean Trick or Treat! Not unless you intend on being a Grim Reaper wielding a scarifier for the sweeties this year! Many people scarify their lawns in the Spring when they’re preparing it to be well used in the warmer seasons ahead. The problem here though is that you can damage all of the young growth coming through, so it’s when your lawn is actually at its most fragile.

Autumn is the perfect time to really put your rake to work without that fear of damaging the grass. Raking out all of the thatch with the scarifier or dethatcher – to get rid of all of the dead grass, moss or weeds which may have built up at this time of year will work wonders, especially if you’re going to give the lawn a good feed before it ‘hibernates’.
Removing this layer of thatch, will help the water that the ground needs to nourish that essential root system and reach the parts it needs to. The added bonus here too, is that a dethatched lawn will drain far better, so if you want to avoid soggy patches and puddles in the winter, this will break the back of that.

Avoiding A Moss Riot

One essential tip to help with the scarification – a couple of weeks before you’re going to do this, take a good look at the lawn. If it’s full of live moss, you’ll need to kill that first with a good moss killer otherwise the scarification process will spread the live moss spores – that’s worse than any of the horrors the trick or treaters have in store, that’s for sure!

Enforcing Some Clear Boundaries

Also known as trimming back the edges and hedges! If you have a well-landscaped garden, the last thing you want is ragged or untidy edges. Use lawn scissors to trim the lawn’s edges, but make sure you remove the clippings, cuttings and trimmings of any of the grass or foliage you’re trimming, otherwise it defeats the object of the dethatching process. If you are creating a neat lawn edge for the first time, using a plank along the edge is a simple way of keeping the lawn on the straight and narrow!

Take A Breather

By that we mean to aerate your lawn. Through spiking the lawn, you’re allowing water and nutrients to get down to the grassroots to really nourish them and help them to survive through the extremities of our colder months. This will also help with the more compacted areas of the garden which may have had heavier foot traffic, ensuring the busier parts of the garden won’t get waterlogged in the wetter weather.

Treats For The Well Behaved

Finally, give the grass a good Autumn Weed and Feed Treatment. Summer lawn feeds have higher levels of Nitrogen to encourage top growth. This is the last thing you want. Choosing a specific autumn variant of lawn feed will have higher levels of phosphates and potash which can help to provide protection for the grass from the frost and icy conditions our winter months bring.

Obviously, that’s our quick rundown of how to prep your lawn for the Autumn and Winter – the blue light version – so to speak. If you’d like any further advice on how to make the most of your garden through the cooler months, or would love to think ahead for your landscaping needs next year, get in touch and our friendly green-fingered team will be more than happy to help.

Need some help getting your garden ready for the season? Why not subscribe to our monthly free magazine for monthly tips and advice on garden care and design; https://www.thegardendesignco.co.uk/free-magazine