From quagmire to garden lawn
Despite the quite harsh cold winter by Irish standards lawns around the country have continued to grow and are begging for a first trim when the weather allows.
If, like me you have a ride-on mower, and if, like me, you still don’t have a hope, other than aquaplaning, of getting the mower onto the lawn, you must just be patient.
Running heavy machines like a ride-on mower over very wet ground will do massive compacting damage, encouaging weeds and even more moss growth.
If it is possible to use a push mower and conditions are favourable then work away. At this time of year with your first cuts be light handed, don’t scalp the grass back to the ground.
If your mower has say seven cutting heights and a summer cut is usually at height two you shouldn’t be cutting any lower than height setting four to begin with, possibly even higher.
If the mower is choking up you definitely have your settings too low. Leave the setting high for the next copuple of cuts before dropping it another notch, you probably won’t be down to your summer cutting height until middle to late April.
Once you have given your lawn a couple of early cuts you can look at doing some remedial woks to it.
My first task is to re edge and define the lawn edges from the plant borders, paving surfaces and paths. Any plants that have flopped over onto the lawn should be cut back. This may expose bare areas on you lawn where the plant has choked out the grass during the summer.
To remedy this you can lift a sod of turf incorporating the bare patch and some healthy grass and reverse it so the bare patch is now internal to the lawn and the live grass is creating the new edge.
A light dusting of soil and grass seed and within a month it will look twas ever thus. Regular trim of the plants that have caused this can be done during the summer but the softness this tumbling planting gives to a garden if left alone is worth the hardship of a little spring work.
Next I will treat the moss in the lawn. Moss is becoming a bigger and bigger problem with wet summers and winters so it is best to atempt to control even if you can’t totally eradicate it.
You can use sulphate of iron applied at a rate of 10 grams per metre or you can dilute with water at 10 grams per 2 litres and spray on.
The spraying method can be particularly useful for large lawns and for even applications. This will turn the moss black within two to three weeks and at this stage it should be raked out either by hand with a springbok rake or with a automated rake available for hire. An alternative, although more expensive is to apply a product called Mo Bactor which contains a bacteria that eats the moss away leaving no residue to rake out and should be available from your local garden centre. Mo Bactor contains a fertiliser to and I would probably wait a couple more weeks before applying this.
That goes for all combined lawn treatments such as weed, feed and moss killer. You can however start with spot spraying any weeds that are visible. Wait for a warm day 10 degrees to allow the weed killer to be actively absorbed by the plants.
And remember that on lawns you use a selective lawn weed killer that doesn’t harm the grass. If you go at your grass with a round-up type weed killer you will have more than a few bare patches to deal with.