Surrey Lawn Care: Tips for a Green and Healthy Lawn in Summer
With summer officially here, it’s vital to keep an eye on our garden’s health. The heat this season can cause our lawns to suffer long-term if proper precautionary steps are not taken. In this article, we will be giving you tips on how to keep your lawn green and healthy amongst the changes in weather, from an expert surrey lawn care specialist.
Tip 1: How To Mow Your Lawn In Summer
When it comes to mowing your lawn, it’s important to get it right. Not only does mowing a lawn improperly look bad, but it can also be detrimental to your lawn’s health. One of our top tips would be to keep the blades of your mower set to a higher setting. This will promote deeper root growth and shade to the soil. In turn, this will reduce water loss and keep the grass hydrated in the hot months. We would also recommend mowing your lawn regularly, but still avoid cutting more than one-third of the grass height at a time. This prevents stress on the lawn and encourages it to thrive long until summer.
To give your lawn a better chance of growing, you can also leave grass clippings. Mulching your grass clippings rather than bagging them can help to return essential nutrients to the soil and continue to promote a healthier lawn. These clippings also provide a natural and easy to make mulch that helps retain soil moisture.
Tip 2: Professional Advice For Watering Your Lawn In Summer
As well as mowing your lawn in the summer, it’s important to change up your watering schedule. Homes & Gardens recommend providing your ‘lawn with between 1-1.5 inches of water per week for cool season grasses and 0.5-1 inch of water per week for warm season grasses’.
However, when is the best time to water your lawn? When the sun is high in the sky, we would recommend staying clear of watering your grass. Always water your grass in the early morning or in the evening, after the sun has set. This will minimise evaporation and allow the grass to dry before the next day comes. Wet grass is an open invitation for weeds to thrive and it will also encourage grass and fungal diseases to spread. It’s also important to note that
watering the grass too regularly can actually cause long term damage.
Tip 3: How To Control Weeds From Ruining Your Lawn
In summer, your plants and lawn will thrive, as they are in their prime growing season. Your lawn will look lush and full of life – with the right care. However, alongside plants growing well, so will weeds. It’s vital to keep garden maintenance up during summer, as weeds and other unwelcome visitors also love the vitamin D from the sun.
Your professional gardening team will regularly inspect your lawn for weeds and remove them promptly, preventing them from spreading amongst your outdoor space. ‘The dreaded garden weed will steal root space, light, water and nutrients from your fruit and vegetable gardens’, but not only that, they can also harbour pests, diseases and viruses.
Tip 4: The Importance of Lawn Aeration In Summer
Lawn aeration is a crucial maintenance process that involves creating small holes in the soil to enhance air, water, and nutrient penetration to the grassroots. Lawn aeration helps to facilitate deeper root growth, leading to a more robust and resilient lawn. By improving air exchange, aeration helps the soil breathe better, promoting a healthier root system. Lawn aeration can also be great for encouraging water uptake, as it helps to reduce runoff and puddling – both of which, can lead to root rot, even in summer. Improved water uptake can allow for essential nutrients to reach the roots more quickly. This contributes to a greener, lusher lawn and addresses soil compaction.
Your soil, underneath the grass can also clump together. This can prevent your lawn from growing as the pore spaces are reduced, preventing air and water from moving freely and plant roots cannot grow easily into the surrounding soil. To break up the soil, your surrey lawn care specialist team will use a spike aerator. This can loosen the soil up short term and involves using solid spikes to create holes in the lawn. This gardening tool will create a couple of millimetres in width and several centimetres deep, to help relieve compacted soil.
Tip 5: Lawn Traffic Management in Summer
In the dry months of summer, it’s vital to protect your lawn. One of the main ways you can do this is by minimising foot traffic on grass which is still trying to grow. Summer makes the soil dry, which means it’s a lot more prone to compaction under pressure. As mentioned earlier, compacted soil can restrict the air, water and nutrient flow.
All of these factors can lead to poor root development and a weakened lawn. Not to mention, your grass will already be under stress from the heat and the lack of moisture – even if you are following a thorough watering schedule. With an excessive amount of foot traffic, your lawn can be in danger of suffering from significant damage, making it less resilient in the long run and more susceptible to wear and tear.
BZ Gardens – Surrey Lawn Care
In the summer, we understand that you are going to want to enjoy your outdoor space more than normal. Let us help you with all of the monotonous maintenance tasks, so you can get back to spending time indulging in the warm weather. Here at BZ Gardens, we have a team of experts who are extremely knowledgeable in everything about lawn care. We will be sure to have your grass lush and green throughout the whole of the summer season. Contact our team now to find out more about garden maintenance services.