Post Winter Lawn Care

by Alan Titchmarsh.

Wotta rotten winter. And if, this weekend, you are looking out of your living room window onto a shaggy khaki swamp, where once you had a pristine emerald lawn, you’re not alone. Moss, tufts and tussocks, puddles – even snowmen – have all been par for the course this season.

But the very worst thing you can do is to take any kind of remedial action. At any rate, not just yet.

At this stage in the season your aim is to stop things getting any worse, using the old park-keepers maxim ‘keep off the grass’.  If you absolutely must sally forth, perhaps to the shed or the veg patch, then do it with as little lawn damage as possible by walking on a plank or a temporary path (the sort that consists of a series of slats held together with strings).

Otherwise your boots will sink in and leave a set of embedded footprints that set solid when the ground dries out; it’ll be like pushing your mower over the craters of the moon for ever after.

You’ll know when conditions are right for a little lawn-doctoring a few weeks after a myriad of wormcasts emerge all over the surface. Worms are a good deal brighter than they look; they are an excellent barometer of soil conditions underneath a lawn.

In winter when conditions are freezing cold they dive deep to escape, and as soon as milder, drier conditions prevail in spring they surface with one thing on their mind – and wormcasts are a very visible side-effect of the breeding-season feeding-frenzy.

So wait for the worms to tell you to go ahead, then get outside with a rubber-toothed rake (a fab bit of kit) or a stiff broom and sweep up or – if that’s not practical – simply work the casts into the turf; otherwise they’ll bung up your mower or blunt the blades. Wait for a day when the weather is fair and the surface of the grass dry, then raise the blades of the mower up to their highest setting and give the lawn a light haircut.

For the first outing of the season, just take the top off. The grass deeper down is sure to be sopping wet, so allow a few days of ‘good drying weather’ before giving it a second cut, only this time lower the blades slightly. Over the next three or four cuts lower the blades slightly again; by then the grass will be back in trim and being cut at its usual height.

The best thing you can do then, to improve the general condition of the lawn, is spike it. Take a garden fork and prong the turf evenly all over at six inch intervals, to about two inches deep, and follow up with a light sprinkling of coarse horticultural sand to improve aeration and drainage – a handful per square foot is about right.

Some will find its way down the holes you’ve just spiked, but the worms will soon work it into the surface.

The grass still looks a tad anaemic, but resist the urge to green it up with a dose of lawn feed, or to use products to tackle moss or weeds. Wait till the end of April in the south of the country, and mid May further north.

After a dreadful winter, the golden rule is ‘go easy on your grass’. But handled with care, it’ll be back to rights ready for the summer, so a little patience pays off.

Temporary lawn path