Lawns can experience a great many different problems, from weeds and pests and diseases, to soils drying out, to worn or bare patches, frost burn and other issues. A lot of our lawn problems can be prevented from ever occurring in the first place if we had taken better care of our lawns. And many lawn problems won’t just be fixed with a single application of some miracle lawn treatment, instead often requiring to be tackled on many different fronts at once in order to bring our lawns back to full health again.
There are many different aspects to lawn care which should be adhered to throughout the life of our lawn, and working together help to give us a healthy lawn, which is then naturally resistant to many lawn problems. For example, a healthy lawn with a good thatch layer will naturally prevent weeds from developing, and a lawn which has been properly watered will be more drought and heat tolerant, and a healthy lawn may well fight off a slight disease infestation before it gets out of hand and takes over our lawn, and a well edged lawn will greatly slow down the creep of lawn runners into our garden beds… I could continue, but the general gist has been explained.
These lawn care practices are not difficult or time consuming past the obvious regular lawn mowing requirements for all lawns. And one of the most important aspects required in maintaining a healthy lawn is one which most of us will most often ignore, and that is regular lawn fertilising.
Fertilising our lawns gives them the added nutrients they need to stay healthy, like giving them a balanced diet from which to feed. And when we skip these lawn feeding entirely, this is also when our lawns will no longer be maintained in their peak health.
And once optimum health begins to wane, so too can lawn problems encroach and worsen.
Applying Lawn Fertiliser When We See Lawn Problems
As already mentioned, almost all lawn problems need to be tackled from many different fronts at once in order to be effective. Depending on what the problem is, we may need to adjust our watering, put down wetting agents, apply herbicides or pesticides, remove shade from the lawn, aerate the lawn, mow the lawn more regularly, de-thatch the lawn, and the list goes on. Such combined solutions to combatting lawn problems are described throughout the pages of this site.
And just as we may have increased the prevalence of, or worsened the impact of lawn problems due to our lawns being in an overall poor condition, which can be often associated with not fertilising our lawns properly throughout the year, so too must we try to bring our lawns back to their best health possible when tackling many different lawn problems.
And this comes down to applying a quality lawn fertiliser when problems do occur.
Our lawns are often quite capable of fighting off many lawn problems on their own, and maybe with a little assistance from us, so long as they are strong and healthy. So when our lawns do experience problems, one of our first courses of actions should be to strengthen the lawn and promoting growth so as to help it to fight against problems and to also repair any damage which may have already occurred.
In these cases we may want to look for a regular granular fertiliser and not a slow release fertiliser, as we want as many nutrients released in a shorter time frame. So long as we follow manufacturers specifications for application rates there will be no possibility of over-fertilising the lawn, which may otherwise be a problem on its own.
Some Examples
Let’s say for example that we’ve allowed a great big bush or shady tree to get out of hand over the years. Underneath that bush our lawn has all but died off, the soil is water logged, and moss is present. To repair this problem and to restore the lawn to this area would require several different points of action. The first being to heavily prune back that overgrown bush to remove the shade. We may want to dig out the moss with a spade, and we may want to aerate the affected soil if it became waterlogged. We may also need to adjust the watering to that section of lawn. And of course we want any lawn still present to be fully restored, for which we would put down some good quality fertiliser to kick things into action, it just makes sense doesn’t it.
Likewise, if our lawn has become thinned out, weak, and full of weeds, our best courses of action here would be designed to strengthen the lawn to get it growing and to kill the weeds. Applying a lawn fertiliser to the lawn, and the weeds, two weeks prior to applying a weed killing spray to the lawn will achieve many things towards our favourable success. The fertiliser gets the lawn growing again at a faster rate and strengthens it, this helps the lawn to resist the weed spray soon to be applied to it, gets the lawn growing to repair and cover over weedy areas and bare patches, and helps the lawn to drown out and outcompete the weeds. The fertiliser also gets the weeds growing faster too, this means the weeds will take up the herbicide soon to be applied at a faster rate, making the weed killer even more effective. Just be careful though when doing this… we don’t want to apply lawn fertiliser too soon before spraying for weeds, and best not to apply a slow release lawn fertiliser in this instance either.
Now let’s say our lawn has had an attack of Army Worm and is looking the worse for wear. Our first port of call here is to identify the pest as being Army Worm and then applying a treatment for them. Once successful we would then want to apply some good quality lawn fertiliser to help the lawn to repair itself from damage in the shortest time possible also. All makes sense doesn’t it.
These are just a few examples of how an application of a good quality lawn fertiliser can help us overcome many different types of lawn problems. Not that the fertiliser will cure any particular problem on its own, rather that we want to help strengthen our lawns to naturally fight off many different problems when they do occur, and to help the lawn to repair itself faster after damage has occurred.
In most cases also, when we are dealing with lawn problems and utilising a lawn fertiliser to help in our cause, we most often won’t want a slow release fertiliser that will act over months. Instead we would aim towards using a regular granular fertiliser, applied as per manufacturers recommendations, to release a full hit of quality nutrients in the shortest time possible.
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