How do I rescue my grass from dead leaves?

[teamcullen]

I have never had a garden before so forgive me for being stupid.

I put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into digging up the garden and laying new turf last spring. So my lawn was looking lovely. No weeds and I trained the dog not to wee or poo on the grass.

Then the aumumn came and all the leaves from the trees on the embankment behind our garden fell on the grass. I had heard that you have to rake up the leaves butI didnt own
one so I just left them not thinking they would do much damage to my lovely grass.

Big mistake.. My grass is now full of muddy patches where the leaves have degraded.

So how do I rescue it and make it beatiful again and when do I have to do it. Can I just sprinkle grass seed over to thicken it up or do i need to put some special grass rescue thing down or something else?

Don't worry - grass takes quite a lot of damage before you can kill it off altogether. If you have any leaves still lying on it then remove them - if you still don't have a grass rake then maybe you have a stiff patio brush? You can buy grass fertiliser (various sizes of boxes) at a garden centre and sprinkle it onto the muddy patches. This is a good time of year to do it and your grass will regenerate. Might not be perfect this spring but it will be much improved.

Thankyou firway for your reply, can I sprinkle a bit of grass seed over as well to thicken it up. The garden is not being used at the moment so nobody would be walking on it. Whereas if I wait until the weather picks up, the DC will want to be playing out there.

Don't worry - it will fix itself. That's the great thing about gardens! Frankly, I wouldn't even worry about re-seeding it, although you could if you've got some spare. If you do re-seed it, though, you'd probably best cover the patches with some netting to stop the birds coming along and eating up all your seeds straight away.

Thankyou. Ive actually just walked in to a letter from Network Rail, saying they are going to cut back all the jungle vegitation at the back of us and remove all the trees. They are going to chipping them all on site too. So I think The best thing will be to hold fire until they have finnished.

The poor little robins who come into my garden are going to lose their home