Caring For Your Lawn In Spring

Spring means different things to different people. Sports fans will notice a transition in the event calendar come springtime. Winter sports conclude their seasons and fair weather sports start to take up the back pages of newspapers. Motor racing, tennis and golf all reappear, while the main season-long soccer tournaments reach their finales. The milder weather also brings opportunities for people to get outside and enjoy the countryside more often. Joggers go out in the woods and families dust off their bicycles to ride along tracks and footpaths together. For nature lovers, spring brings a huge change to things. Barren looking trees rapidly start to change their appearance and nesting birds like Blackbirds, followed later by Blue Tits, busy themselves building nests for their soon-to-arrive chicks. For gardeners spring brings a welcome change to the cold, short days of winter when there was very little to do and many gardens stayed dormant, on hold until the warming sunshine of longer days to wake them up.

The arrival of spring also inspires and motivates people to get on and do things. That long list of pending household tasks is finally tackled, with cleaning and maintenance jobs being taken care of. Many people also see spring as a chance to change their lifestyles, perhaps challenging themselves to take care of their health more and take more exercise. And anyone with a garden will almost certainly look at spending at least a little more time outside tidying things up and making the space ready to be used again. It's not just enthusiastic gardeners who do this either. Everyone, even with a minimum or equipment, money or time, can make a difference in the garden quite quickly during spring.

he most obvious place to start is the lawn, the centrepiece of many gardens and the area most likely to be used, especially if there are children in the household. The great thing is that lawns respond very quickly to a bit of attention at the start of spring. There is no great requirement to own lots of tools either when it comes to spring lawn care. A quick rake or walk round with a broom will get rid of any surface debris like wind-blown twigs and branches and then, once a run of a few dry days has dealt with any surface moisture, a quick run over with the lawn mower adjusted to a high setting will suddently make the lawn look wonderful again. Just those 2 simple jobs will make such a difference they often enthuse people to tackle a few other jobs.

Some lawns never receive a full programme of maintenance. That's not to say they aren't cut and kept tidy, just that they rarely benefit from any additional care such as added nutrients, scarifying or receiving a weed control treatment. For a lawn that has received only the most basic attention during its life, one or more of these extra tasks will make a huge difference to its health and appearance. Not only are these tasks relatively easy to carry out but they will bring an enormous sense of satisfaction too.

So is there a reason not to go out into the garden and tackle a few jobs at the beginning of spring to give your lawn some extra care? Scarifying even an average lawn can be hard work manually, but semi-professional machines can be hired for very little money and will do a great job very quickly. Once you have aerated the lawn think about adding a top dressing if your lawn needs one. This is ideal for improving the soil structure beneath the lawn, useful if your soil has poor structure already, and is also an easy way of levelling out an uneven lawn. Top dressing can be bought by the bag at garden centres but for bigger lawns a loose delivery may be more cost effective.

Nutrition is a key component of spring lawn care programmes. All lawns need to get their energy from somewhere, so even a very well cared for lawn will benefit from a spring feed. Specialist lawn food for springtime is offered by most of the main suppliers and when carefully applied, will prepare the grass perfectly for the summer ahead.

Finally late-spring is a great time to look at lawn weed and moss control, so before they start to take too much control, an application of a weed and moss control formula will nip things in the bud and leave your lawn with all the nutrients to itself to help it look its best over the rest of the year.