I already missed out on scarifying the lawn last year and I was not overly pleased with the condition of the lawn last year. I do feel that scarifying you lawn once a year is a good idea, but I would not wait longer than every 2nd year.
"Now why would you scarify your lawn?"
Now I don't know all the science behind it and I don't pretend to either but the process helps remove organic stuff from your lawn, such as moss and thatch. Now the thatch and moss gets in the way of the lawn plants spreading their roots across the surface of the lawn. By removing these organic matter you now give the lawn chance to grow its roots. In addtion with the moss being gone your lawn now has a better opportunity to make use of the water it gets. It also helps with the prevention of certain lawn diseases.
So without any further delay lets gets started.
Saturday morning March 12th. The lawn is not in a bad state but it could do with some help. It ended last season looking fairly good but I neglected to provide it with an Autumn / Winter fertiliser and I also did not scarify the previous season. The plan is to make more informed lawn care decisions.
Closer inspection showed moss and a fair amount of thatch underneath the lawn. The lawn has that typical green patches with large yellow areas and moss more dominantly in the yellow areas.
I gave the lawn 2 cuts. The first cut was on 2nd heighest wheel setting and the 2nd cut on the 3rd heighest wheel setting. I would estimate it to be a cut just above what would be called scalping the lawn. My logic behind the short cut to allow more light to reach the soil and help warm it up. The short cut exposed even more issues along the northern edge of the lawn, which get significantly less sun light due to a 2.5m hedge that blocks out most sun in winter and part of the afternoon sun in the summer months.
Now I was at this point ready to start scarifying. Unfortunately the scarifier did not feel like scarifying that day and I did not have time the same afternoon to fault find the issue. As it turned out a bit of a blockage in the carburator was the cause of the delay. The scarifying work was done on March 21st. It worked out fairly well as there was still a good few mornings with frost before I got to do the scarifying. Frost is not ideal after you scarify the lawn so very glad that I missed out on the frost.
On March 27th my son and I purchased some good quality compost. We chose compost that was very fine with no big bits in it. This compost had additional seaweed also added to it. I only needed 15 x 60 litre bags as the total lawn area is 145m2. We applied all of it by hand and spread it out by hand. Prior to adding the compost I overseeded the lawn and repeated the overseeding after spreading the compost. Please note that if you opt to use compost as your top dressing make sure it is a peat free compost. Peat can be problematic as it is very difficult to get wet when dry and very difficult to get dry when wet. Compost of my choice as I feel it offers more nutrients to the lawn, just make sure it is a fine compost with no peat.
This was taken on April 6th at this point there has been some mornings still with frost and no real rain yet. I would water it occasionally just in the areas that looked like it could do with water.
By April 12th it had already rained a fair bit during last 5 days with a moment of sun here and there. The lawn was growing and getting greener.
The next 5 days was great weather for the lawn with a good amount of rain and sun throughout the week. I decided to give it a nice high cut on April 17th about a week and a bit ealier than I planned to but as the lawn was growing so fast I did not was to risk putting white spots on the lawn because I allowed it to grow too long. Some areas has not filled out well yet, more so on the shady side. I used a roller aerator this evening on April 20th on those areas and will now leave the lawn alone for about 2 weeks.
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