Holiday lawn rescue

Save your lawn after your summer holiday

You had a great time on holiday, you arrive home and with all the wet weather you lawn is completely over grown.

The GardenAdvice team explain how to get your lawn to recover.

Often the first problem is the length of the lawn grass itself. It is normally not too hard to cut if you have a rotary mower but can cause problems with a cylinder mover. The way to over come this is to remove the roller assembly that you can find on the front of the mower. Then using the mover by placing additional force on the handles to regulate the cutting height. This solves the problem of the grass being flattened by the roller before the blades can cut it.

Often the mistake many people make is to cut the grass to short to quickly. Ideally you should only cut the grass by a maximum of 1/3 of the total length at any one time. To cut it any further will weaken the grass and encourage weeds and moss. Once the grass has been cut it is a good idea to remove the grass clippings as they can hinder the recovery.

With the grass cut you should then apply a liquid feed such as westland liquid plant food by using a watering can and rose. This will help restore and maintain the lawns colour. After a few days following the first cut the lawn is lightly to turn greenish -yellow the plant food should help to counteract this. 

The next stage is to check for weeds if only a few weeds then it is best to use a weed stick to kill then. However if a large number of weed exist including clover then a better method is to spray using verdone lawn weed killer.

Finally if your lawn has developed bare patches its worth re seeding using suttons Rapid green lawn seed patch packs which is a simple and effective product developed especially for the purpose.