Common Lawn Problems
Moss
Moss is usually associated with damp and shaded areas, but it can take over just about any lawn if the sward is thin, or if spaces appear due to other problems such as drought, disease or poor drainage.
Our aim is to give you a dense, fine sward of grass. growing on healthy soil that naturally deters moss.
Where moss is already a problem, we can treat it without pesticides and then remove the dead moss by scarifying the lawn.
Combined with our grass feeding program and lawn aeration work we will ensure your lawn is moss free and looking good.
Thatch
Thatch is the layer of dead grass, roots and shoots that can build up at the surface of your lawn.
In summer time thatch can dry out and become repellent to water, making your lawn struggle to get the moisture it needs to keep growing.
In winter, the opposite can happen. As the thatch layer gradually re-wets in the autumn, it can start to behave like a sponge, holding too much moisture at the surface and this can encourage disease and poor drainage.
Your Greenmaster Greenkeeper can advise you on the best way to deal with existing thatch and on how best to control further build up.
This might involve hollow coring, scarifying or spiking your lawn from time to time.
Weeds
Some lawn weeds are not only unsightly, but left untreated they can end up taking over large areas of your fine turf.
We can kill off any troublesome weeds during our regular lawn treatment visit. Our Greenkeepers use special weedkillers that only remove the broadleaf weeds, leaving the grass unaffected.
There’s no need to spray your whole lawn either. When it makes sense, we will only spray the weeds, cutting down on the amount of pesticides we use on your property.
Of course, our greenkeepers are all fully qualified and experienced in this type of exacting work.
Lawn Disease
Fungal lawn diseases like Fusarium Patch can wipe out a fine lawn in one fell swoop.
Autumn and Winter are the most likely times for disease outbreaks so stay vigilant for yellow or brown patches starting to appear on your lawn.
Greenmaster Greenkeepers are all qualified in identifying and treating lawn diseases quickly and without fuss. So, at the first sign of anything you think is worrying, please give us a ring and we’ll come and have a look.
Of course prevention is better than cure, so have a look at our Winter Lawncare Tips for ideas on keeping your lawn free of disease in Winter.
Dry Patches
Hydrophobic Dry Patch is a big problem on golf and bowling greens in summer, but we are seeing it increasingly crop up in fine lawns too.
Waxy residues from soil fungi can coat individual soil particles making areas of your lawn unable to accept water.
We can treat the lawn with non-pesticide wetters and other specialist materials to overcome dry patches and get your lawn back to full health.
Repairs
Regardless of how particular you are about maintaining your lawn, sometimes a bit of damage can’t be helped.
This can be from a leaking lawn mower, pets, foxes or even grand children!
Whatever the problem, Greenmaster has the knowledge, training and experience to undertake lawn repairs, so that you’d never know it was damaged in the first place.
Natural Lawn Care
We never forget that the main reason you want a nice lawn is so that you, your family and pets can use it and enjoy it for a multitude of reasons. For this reason we follow a natural approach to lawn maintenance to ensure you are safe and that your lawn thrives.
Mower Sharpening and Servicing
It seems obvious, but it’s often overlooked that one of the most beneficial things you can do for your lawn is to make sure your mower is sharp and that it is set up properly to give the cleanest and most accurate cut.
When blades are blunt or the settings are wrong on your mower it can tear at the grass plants leaving them damaged and leaking vital fluids. When the grass leaf is cut cleanly with a sharp mower, these injuries are minimised and plants stay healthy and recover more quickly from mowing.
Mower Sharpening
We provide a professional mower sharpening service so that you can be sure your machine is always set at its optimum to keep your lawn healthy and vibrant.
Our mower sharpening service includes pick up and delivery at your convenience.
Mower Servicing
To keep them reliable and working at optimum efficiency, petrol mowers should have a full service after every 25 hours of use. We can pick up and service your mower at our fully fitted workshop.
All servicing and sharpening is carried out by a fully qualified and experienced mechanic.
Pick up and drop off service available.
Treatments
Scarifying
When your lawn is full of moss, the grass can struggle to get enough light, moisture and food. And through continued use and lack of aeration your lawn can become compacted, often resulting in a build up of thatch at the surface.
In either or both of these cases we will sometimes recommend that you have your lawn scarified.
Scarifying is a mechanical treatment where our machine removes moss and thatch using a series of fast spinning blades. The overall effect is like a very severe wire rake has been over the lawn.
In addition to removing a lot of unwanted debris, scarifying helps air, moisture and nutrients to reach the plants where they are needed.
Weed & Feed
We can make regular scheduled visits to your lawn to apply our organic lawn fertiliser and take care of any weeds.
Your lawn needs different combinations of nutrients at different times of the year. In spring, it’s important to give the awakening grass plants the right mix of Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium to ensure they have everything they need to get off to a good start.
Mid summer treatments will usually include a little more Nitrogen than the spring time treatments whilst autumn feeds concentrate on providing your turf with a higher level of Potassium to harden up the grass plants for winter. This helps them to stand up to the pressures from cold and wet weather and resist disease attacks more easily.
At the same time, we will take care of any weed problems with our selective herbicide to make sure your grass isn’t crowded out by these intruders.
Aerate
With continued use and mowing, the soil in your lawn can become compacted, making it difficult for grass roots to penetrate deeply enough to get the moisture and nutrients they need. Compacted soil can also lead to drainage problems and puddles on the surface of your lawn.
To combat these problems it is important to aerate your lawn regularly. Typically this will be done in spring and again in autumn.
When we aerate your lawn we use a specialised machine that punches holes into the turf to make space for water, air and food to get into the soil more easily.
We can aerate your lawn using either solid or hollow tines on our machine. Solid tines create hundreds of holes in the lawn surface but don’t remove any material.
Hollow tines do the same job but also remove a plug of soil/turf and this can be very useful if your lawn has a lot of thatch in addition to compaction.