Lawn care

[almondfinger]

I have my first patch of lawn and am trying to take good care of it, but have a couple of questions for those of you with lush grass.

1. Should I fertilise it, what is best and is now the time?

1. In the past month there are loads of worm casts appearing, making walking through the middle of the lawn a muddy experience. Is this a good thing? Are they aerating the grass or just being a pain in the ass?

1. Dandelions are sprouting up here and there, do I have to dig these out to kill them or can I paint Roundup on them without killing the surrounding lawn?

1. Toadstools and mushrooms sprouting. DD loves them as she thinks Big Ears lives in them, but are they a problem on a healthy lawn?

All advice appreciated. It's a tiny little patch but I love it

you are supposed to fertilise in the spring - if you have weeds you could use weed and feed. If you are keen there's also an autumn fertiliser to strengthen roots. Worms are good. ref point 3 - read label on bottle. Toadstools in my lawn shade out grass and kill it - so i remove them. In the autumn you are supposed to rake all the dead grass/rubbish out. If you are keen (or areas are compacted, maybe lots of moss) you make little holes in lawn with garden fork and brush sand in. good luck. don't water in summer as encourages roots to go to surface. hope your lawn looks better than mine which suffers from oak trees, dog, football.....

Thanks dreaming. Watered like a fiend in Summer!

Will check out weed and feed.

Kick over all the toadstools as dont want DD touching/tasting them.

It's all lovely grass apart from the dandelion, newish lawn and reckon they laid sod.

Cut very short now to make it easier to rake out moss, then fork it thoroughly. Then give light mowing thereafter on a longish setting until grass stops growing.

Fertilise in spring time, not now. Also you can use a special broad leaf weedkiller for lawns in Spring and Summer when weeds and grass are growing strongly This aids take up off the weedkiller by the weeds and the grass growth quickly fills in the spaces that dead weeds leave behind. Use of weed killer now will just leave empty spaces over winter which weeds will just colonise in Spring.

Love the halloween name - definately a contender for the prize.

Thanks for the advice, no moss so no raking necessary. Will hold off on fertilizer till spring.

Thank you.

My guilty lawn care secret is that I let my chickens scratch at ours in carefully controlled bursts. They are regular little fertiliser spreading raking machines and actually like doing it.

Ha ha, no chickens either.