Summer Care – How to keep your lawn looking good over summer The Summer sun is out and we Aussie’s love getting outdoors with our mates for a BBQ and cricket on our back lawn. So you’ll need to keep your ‘outdoor room’ in tip top shape & looking its best. Watering: • Watering is most critical in hot weather. • Firstly, check for dry patches? Check your watering system is working well, • or it could be your soil has become non wetting causing your lawn to dry out. • Ideally during the summer months, watering for at least 1 hour per week over one or two timeslots should be sufficient What can we do if have persistent dry patches? • You can apply a wetting agent to increase your soil’s water absorbency, especially on sandy soils, and to ensure that your soil isn’t ‘hydrophobic’ and repelling water. • Simply applying a product such as Lawn Lovers Lawn Soaker Mowing: • Mow regularly each 7-12 days • Your mower should be raised by now • Keeping a bit of length on the leaf blade will actually keep your lawn healthier. • Shorter lawns need a lot more watering as the soil is more exposed. • Keeping a bit of length on the leaf shades the soil, keeps it cooler & much less exposed for evaporation. • Another tip is to make sure you never mow more than 1/3 of the leaf tip off in any single mowing. What if your lawn looks white after mowing? • Your mower blades need sharpening! When the blades are blunt they tend to ‘tear’ the blades rather than cut them. Fertilising: • Your lawn may have used all its spring fertiliser and be hungry again. • Applying fertiliser early in the summer to top up your lawn through the hotter months. • Apply a good complete granular slow release fertiliser at the recommended rate • To test if you need more fertiliser… in one section of the lawn in the space of roughly 1m x 1m, apply twice the amount. If in a few weeks’ time this area has better colour & performing a lot better than the rest of your lawn, fertilise again at the recommended rate. Sometimes your lawn may just need an extra boost. THE TURF FARM WATCH THE CLIP
