image of bright green lawn being mowed for lawn care tips

Our Top 5 Lawn Care Tips

Our Top 5 Lawn Care Tips

Lawn care might not be your favourite job, but with Rock N Soil's lawn care tips you'll keep your neighbours green with envy!

Regular lawn care. It might not be your favourite job, but it is an essential part of growing and maintaining a great lawn. And for many homes, the lawn is the biggest feature of the garden. Of course, keeping your lawn green, healthy and looking its best can be particularly tricky at the best of times. And that’s especially true given Australia’s tough conditions (droughts, hail and flooding rain to name just a few!). So read on for our top five lawn care tips and keep your neighbours green with envy! mowing-the-lawn

Our Top 5 Lawn Care Tips

Our top five lawn care tips to maintain healthy, lush turf are:
  1. Fertilise.
  2. Water.
  3. Mow.
  4. Aerate.
  5. Control weeds and pests.
fertilise-your-lawn

Tip #1: Fertilise

Fertilising might be the most important lawn care tip that we can offer. For most lawn varieties, you should aim to fertilise about three to four times a year. And it’s good to keep to this schedule. Correctly fertilising your lawn will give it the essential nutrients needed for sustainable growth. This is even more important if your lawn is new. Fertilisation will give it the best chance to take hold. Lawn launcher is specially formulated for newly laid turf. It will also feed flowering plants, shrubs and trees. For more established lawns, a premium lawn fertiliser will give it the extra boost needed to keep it green and lush. Nutrients are released to your lawn over time, which keeps it healthy for a longer period. When you fertilise, spread it out as evenly as possible. Then give it a good water to ensure the fertiliser soaks in, is off the leaf and away from any family pets. water-your-lawn

Tip #2: Water

Our next lawn care tip, watering, is an essential part of good lawn maintenance. But different seasons mean different watering requirements, and that make it hard to set a schedule you can stick with. So, we’ve done the hard yards for you. When it comes to watering your lawn, we recommend:
  • Watering before the sun heats up. This means more water will be absorbed into the soil and less evaporation will occur. The ground also won’t stay damp for too long, which minimises its susceptibility to disease.
  • Watering more deeply, but less often. This improves your lawn’s drought tolerance, as roots grow further into the soil.
lawn-mower-cutting-grass

Tip #3: Mow

Regular mowing is a simple way to maintain a great-looking, healthy lawn. But how often do you mow? Depending on the type of turf, the season and the weather conditions an overgrown lawn can sometimes sneak up on you. Other times, they seem to grow on their own sweet schedule. Because of this, there’s no quick answer to ‘how often should I mow my lawn’. (However, you can find our full answer in our blog, How Often Should I Mow My Lawn.) If you’re looking for a starting place, a good rule of thumb is to consider mowing every one to two weeks in summer, and less regularly in winter. aerating-the-lawn

Tip #4: Aerate

Aeration can be an overlooked, but it’s an important part of your lawn care and one of our top lawn care tips. It improves your lawn’s ability to absorb water, which encourages strong root growth. Aerate twice each year – in spring and in autumn – to help water penetration and encourage strong root growth. Don’t be put off if you’ve never aerated your lawn before. It’s very straightforward, and all you need is a garden fork. Drive the fork around 100 mm into the soil. Wiggle it back and forth a little to break up the soil. And that’s it. Repeat this all over your lawn, at regularly spaced intervals. If you have heavy, clay-based soils you can also use a gypsum clay breaker mix, which can improve drainage and aeration in lawns and garden beds as well. fresh-green-lawn

Tip #5: Control Weeds and Pests

Staying on top of weeds and pests in your lawn will give you the best chance of maintaining it in top condition. A multipurpose herbicide and fertiliser like Lawn Solutions Oxafert can help to control the spread of weeds while giving your lawn a boost. If you’ve ever experienced the heart-sinking sight of bare patches of lawn, you’ll want to stay ahead of pests like lawn grubs, black beetles and other enemies of the backyard. At the first sign of trouble, a single use application like Acelepryn GR can protect your turf all season from a range of pests. It’s low environmental impact and easy to use.

BONUS Lawn Care Tips

We love lawn care, so we popped in a few bonus lawn care tips!
  1. Don’t forget to spend time removing compacted turf if that becomes a problem. Simply opening it up a bit with your garden fork is a great start.
  2. Edging your lawn gives it a beautiful clean look. And it stops the turf from encroaching on areas of your yard where you just don’t want it!
  3. Fill the bare patches! If your lawn is looking patchy, you can certainly save it. One quick way is to fill the bare spots with grass seed over raked soil. (You can read our blog, How to Save Your Lawn, to find out more.)
We love our lawns! If you do too, we also recommend checking out our 7 tips for keeping your lawn green this summer. Of course, at Rock n Soil we’re about much more than just lawn care. Head over to our product info page, and keep tabs on our how to page to find helpful blog posts like this and more. And if there’s anything else, you can contact the expert team at Rock n Soil any time!