Whether it’s because it has been used as a football pitch, suffered from a hot, dry summer – or a cool, wet one – lawns can look more than a tad worse for wear come autumn. Luckily, autumn is one of the two best times to do something about it and get it looking great again. So, how do you get your autumn lawn lovely and lush and make your neighbours green with envy?
De-leaf
Allowing fallen tree and other leaves to stay on the lawn over winter can kill the grass below them. Get out your soft plastic lawn rake and gather them all up. But don’t throw them away, use them to make leafmould, a lovely soil improver. On large lawns, save yourself time by setting the lawnmower to one of its highest settings and collect them into the grass bag.
Deal with excess thatch
Thatch is the dead and decaying grass and other plant material that sits at the base of the grass and prevents the movement of air, water and nutrients into the soil. You can remove excess build-ups by scarifying with a spring-tine rake or powered lawn rake.
Scarification is usually considered as something only carried out when problems arise, but it should be done every year, either in autumn or spring. The soil needs to be moist, but the grass dry.
Mow the lawn the day beforehand, around 2cm (¾in) high. Go over the whole lawn with your rake or scarifier, in one direction to remove the uppermost layer of loose thatch and again at right angles to remove more. You don’t need to remove all the thatch; a layer less than 13mm (½in) is beneficial and acts as a mulch, helping to conserve soil moisture. And don’t worry if the lawn looks a mess afterwards – it’s meant to!
Patchwork
You can repair patches that are worn out, damaged or bare by sowing fresh grass seed over these areas.
Start by mowing the lawn. Then rake over the area with a spring-tine rake to remove any thatch or other debris and rough up the soil with a hand fork or soil cultivator to make a seed bed. Scatter the grass seed evenly over the area at the rate of 15-25g/sq m (½-¾oz/sq yd). Then cover the seeds with a light sprinkling of compost or lawn topdressing and water well with a watering can fitted with a fine rose.
Richard’s Premium Patch Fix or Premium Grass Seed are perfect for this.
If the whole lawn is looking patchy, bare, pale in colour or needing a more complete overhaul, go for the trick of the trade.
Trick of the trade
Want to know the secret used by professional greenkeepers to keep the turf they care for looking beautiful? Apart from mowing, watering and feeding, it’s overseeding – applying new grass seed over the whole area – since even in well-maintained turf, up to 25% of the grasses can die each year. They carry this out every year, as it increases the density of the grass, achieving a thicker, lusher lawn that retains its colour for longer and reduces weed and moss invasion.
Before overseeding, deal with any thatch, mow the lawn to 2.5cm (1in) high, then sow grass seed evenly across the lawn at the rate of 35g/sq m (1oz/sq yd). Use the back of a garden rake to work the grass seed into the lawn and keep the soil moist until the grass seedlings have established.
Again, Richard’s Premium Patch Fix or Premium Grass Seed are perfect for this.
Wet, wet, wet
If your lawn sits on heavy, clay soil, this is likely to have become compacted by regular use. Compacted clay doesn’t drain well and is likely to become waterlogged, a condition that grass hates and doesn’t grow well in, but moss does and then proliferates. If this is the case, autumn is the perfect time to aerate the soil with a hollow-tine aerator; on large lawns, it will be easier on you to hire a powered aerator.
Mow, mow, mow
Grass grows at temperatures of 5C (41F) and above, and in mild autumns and winters it will keep on growing. So, I’m afraid you may not have an excuse to put the mower away, except if the grass/soil is too wet and/or frozen!
Cut it whenever it’s growing, ideally aiming to remove no more than one-third of its height at any one time and keeping the height in autumn and winter to around 4-5cm (1½-2in).
Feed, feed, feed
And yes, you’ll need to feed your lawn in autumn. But you’ll need to use a specific lawn fertiliser, which will be high in potash and low in nitrogen. This will help to keep the grass looking a gorgeous green throughout the colder months, as well as strengthening it against the cold and wet winter conditions.
Weeds & moss
If weeds have taken over the lawn, you’ll need to dig them out or otherwise physically remove them, since autumn isn’t a good time of year to use a lawn weedkiller – they’ll have limited success.
As the majority of “weeds” are actually wildflowers, maybe consider converting very weedy areas into a wildflower meadow.
Moss on the other hand, can be treated with a lawn mosskiller. Richard’s “no rake” Premium Moss Remover is the perfect easy solution to getting rid of moss and can be used when the soil temperature is 10C (50F) or above.
Just bear in mind that moss is a symptom of poor grass growing conditions. It is always worse on compacted soils, lawns with a lot of thatch and those in shade. You can treat it with a mosskiller, but it will always keep coming back if you don’t cure these underlying conditions. And bear in mind that raking live moss will only spread it further. Kill it first or straight after raking.
Find out more about controlling moss in lawns.
Want to know more?
If so, I can thoroughly recommend an excellent book on lawns. I can recommend it because I wrote it! GROW: LAWNS, is published by Dorling Kindersley and will be available in January 2024.
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