Lawn care from spring to fall

By wikinus 21 Aug, 2020 Post a Comment

If you value a beautiful lawn, you must also maintain it accordingly.

Here you will find tips on how to take optimum care of your lawn from spring to autumn, including a lawn care calendar for the entire year to download.

optimum lawn care lasts from spring to autumn - not to say the whole year round.

The lawn is often the largest planting area in the garden and is often underestimated when it comes to maintenance measures.

However, just like all other plants, grasses need horticultural attention in order to thrive.

This includes sufficient watering, the right fertilizer and regular pruning.

In order to make lawn care easier for you, we have summarised all the important work that is required during the course of the year in our lawn care calendar.

Lawn care in spring

The first and most important step in the lawn care program at the beginning of spring is to thoroughly rake the lawn.

To do this, use an iron rake with strong tines.

It not only removes leaves and branches, but also scratches some of the moss and dead grass blades out of the lawn.

Then level the mole heaps.

This is also best done with an iron rake or shovel.

Simply pull the soil apart and spread it as a thin layer on the surrounding lawn. The grasses will grow through the soil again within a few weeks.

You should then lightly tread the grass around the hole.

If there is water in some places on the lawn, you should loosen the soil here with a digging fork to loosen compacted areas near the surface.

To do this, prick the fork deep into the soil several times in the wet areas and move the handle back and forth a few times.

Once the lawn is well dried, mow for the first time to stimulate growth and promote branching of the grass.

After mowing, around the time of forsythia flowering,

the lawn is fertilized for the first time - essential for optimal lawn care in spring!

Organic or mineral slow-release fertilizers that release their nutrients continuously over a period of three to four months are ideal,

but also contain a nutrient component that is immediately effective.

If your lawn is heavily mossy or matted,

you should scarify it again three to four weeks after spring maintenance and then reseed the bare patches.

Lawn maintenance in summer

In summer, thorough irrigation is the be-all and end-all of lawn care, as weeds such as plantain spread rapidly on dry plains.

Water your lawn as soon as the grasses appear limp and not only when clear dry damage becomes visible.

A proven rule of thumb sets the water requirement of lawn grasses at about 15 litres per square metre every four to seven days.

In addition to watering, timely and regular mowing is a prerequisite for a beautiful lawn in summer.

The one-third rule applies to lawn mowing: If the lawn is to be four centimetres high, it must be mowed again at the latest when the stalk is six centimetres long.

Make sure that the blades of your lawnmower are always sharp. Otherwise, an unclean cut will be produced with unevenly mown and frayed stalks.

Tip: Avoid a common lawn care mistake and do not mow down a tall lawn all at once after the summer holiday.

Instead, gradually bring it back to its normal cutting height. In June or July, a second lawn fertilisation is also due for maintenance.

Lawn care in autumn

Those who did not have the opportunity in spring can scarify the lawn in autumn until the end of October.

Weeds and moss are thoroughly removed so that the unwanted plants cannot spread over the winter.

However, it is important to remove the loosened plant material from the lawn afterwards.

Fresh lawn seed should be applied to areas that look somewhat bare afterwards.

The application of autumn fertilizer is one of the most important nutrient supply for the lawn during the year.

Choose a special fall fertilizer that contains less nitrogen than regular slow release lawn fertilizer.

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In this way the plants store more reserves of energy such as carbohydrates and minerals. This reduces the risk of winter diseases such as snow mould.

To make the lawn winterproof, lawn care also includes supplying the grasses with potassium and phosphate.

Potassium increases the salt concentration in the cell sap and thus lowers its freezing point.

It acts like a natural antifreeze and makes the grass more resistant to winter weather.

Phosphate promotes root growth and thus ensures that the plants are well supplied and show a beautiful green even in the cold months.

Autumn lawn fertilizer can be applied from September to the beginning of November and works for about ten weeks.

There are organic-mineral mixed products on the market, such as "Cornufera" and various purely mineral autumn fertilizers.

Tip: Instead of a "real" autumn fertilizer you can also buy the much cheaper Patentkali.

It contains only the nutrients potassium, magnesium and sulphur.

In the autumn, also remove fallen leaves from the lawn, as they impede the light absorption of the grass and promote moss growth.

In addition, the humid climate under the leaves is conducive to the development of rot and fungal diseases.

It is best to rake the withered leaves once a week.

The lawn will then be better aerated and have more of the sparse daylight.

Also, fallen fruit should not be left on the grass for too long, because if it rots there, the lawn can also be damaged.

As temperatures fall in the autumn, grass growth slows down.

Nevertheless, even now you cannot avoid regular mowing when maintaining your lawn. The lawn is cut as long as it grows.

Depending on the weather conditions, this is the case until October or even until November.

For the last cut, you should also choose the same mowing setting that was used all year round.

However, the cuttings should now be removed as completely as possible, as they will not rot and smear the soil in the cool temperatures.

Lawn maintenance in winter

Grasses are naturally able to tolerate very cold temperatures.

This does not mean, however, that the use of lawns should also be unrestricted during the winter months.

To avoid lasting damage, it is recommended not to walk on the lawn during frost or hoarfrost,

because the ice crystals in the plant cells or on the leaves will then easily damage or even destroy the blades.

This damage cannot be compensated for so quickly because no growth takes place in the winter months.

Brown spots remain, which - if at all - only disappear again in late spring. If the grasses do not regenerate, reseeding will be necessary.

Once the snow cover has melted, you can whitewash your lawn.

However, this only has a positive effect if the soil is too acidic.

Therefore, measure the pH value of your garden soil before liming.

If, depending on the type of soil, the pH value is above 5 (sandy soil) or above 6 (loamy soil), it is better not to apply additional lime.

At the end of the winter, the lawn can also be sanded.

This is advisable if the soil is very compacted and rainwater and condensation do not drain off properly.

At the beginning of the year, after the snow has melted, spread a layer of coarse building sand about two centimetres high on the lawn with the back of a rake.

Compacted soils loosen up after a few years, the lawn becomes more vital and moss grows less well.