Preparing Your Lawn for Spring

With the British weather finally starting to look a bit better, it’s worth considering how you can prepare your lawn for the Spring; this means starting to think about dealing with damage from Winter, as well as how you and other family member can begin seeding and fertilising your lawn to be in the best possible condition for the Summer and the Spring. What, then, are some of the main things that you need to be focusing on when it comes to preparing your lawn for Spring?

First of, you need to inspect the condition of your lawn, and to see what plants have died, as well as whether debris and turf have built up in certain areas. By assessing your lawn, you can decide on whether you need a particularly strong fertiliser, or when you need to begin seeding areas to be in a strong position for the Summer. If you’re unsure, it’s best to hire a professional garden inspection company to give you a report on how best to treat your lawn.

The moisture and growth levels of a lawn that’s suffered through a bad Winter can be improved by taking care towards not going in too soon with lawnmowers and too much watering when Spring arrives. Instead, you should focus on removing any existing debris, as well as ensuring that your lawnmower is still in a working condition after the Winter, and that its blades are sharp and ready for use.

If you find that your lawn has a lot of bald patches and dead spaces, you can put down new sod and seed to repair damage - during the Spring, there’s no point in regularly watering grass if you’re having regular shower. Instead, you can treat the soil with Spring nutrients, which can include fertilisers that are low in nitrogen, and that have good levels of phosphorous and potassium for encouraging growth.

It can also be a good idea to use lawn sand to encourage growth, as well as iron sulphates and ammonia sulphates to kill off any moss that might have developed during the Winter. Iron sulphate can similarly help with greening, and can boost growth without encouraging weeds. Greening treatments with fertiliser can be combined with scarifying and seeding, where you remove dead grass, and lay down new seeds for Summer and Autumn flowering.

As Spring progresses, you can begin to get back into a regular routine for cutting your grass - the first cutting should be carried out with a high blade setting, as this will help to avoid root damage. If you have various lengths of grass, you can use gardening scissors to trim and tidy up your lawn. Mowing your lawn every two weeks or so, depending on the weather, can then involve using lower blade settings to get closer to the roots, while continuing to use nutrients and seeding to encourage Summer growth.

Lisa jane enjoys looking after her garden, despite never knowing what the English weather’s going to be like. She also blogs about DIY and flower planting, and recommends Flora Select for your garden supplies.