MAY

April and May are the months where you put in the hard yards so that your lawn is looking perfect for the summer. So hopefully, you should be well underway with any work that you have been doing and should be starting to reap the benefits of it. If you are a little late to the party, not to worry, you can soon catch up

April weather is the first month of the growing season, so it can still be a bit changeable and waiting until later in the month is not always a bad idea. But by May, you can really get into your lawn care programme and temperatures shouldn’t be stopping you. 

As always, you want to be looking to remove weeds and moss before you start to regrow parts of your lawn, so hopefully you are at the stage where moss has been removed and weeds are no longer in sight. If so, then you can get to seeding and overseeding.

May should be getting warmer, so you will start to see the benefits of your actions sooner, especially when sowing seed and it can be a great month to really kick into action.. 

As usual, take a look at the tasks below which you can complete this month.

Mowing

You should be a couple of months into mowing your lawn now and the height of your grass should be at a reasonable level. In May, you should be looking to have your lawn about 1.5 inches in height. As always, stick to the golden rule and never take off ⅓ of the height of the grass. 

Throughout May, your lawn shall be growing quickly as we have warmer temperatures and plenty of rainfall. Because of this, you will want to look at mowing your lawn every 7-14 days.

Edging

Make sure you keep on top of the edges of your lawn. You will want to edge the lawn every 2 or 3 times that you mow it, so you will be wanting to edge your lawn a couple of times during the month. 

Fertilise

As it is early in the year, your lawn will not have had much fertiliser on it, so getting a slow release, granular fertiliser on to your lawn is important. This will start to get that deep green colour and resistant roots ready for the summer. If you are planning to sow seed, make sure that you are aware of the effect that fertiliser has on sowing new seed.

• Lawn Feed - wait 4 days before sowing new seed
• Weed & Feed - wait 4 weeks before sowing new seed

May is a brilliant time of year for this too, as we tend to have reasonably high rainfall during the month and it is well into the growing season. So, make sure the conditions are correct and hold out for some rainfall or get your sprinkler out. 

Weed Control

Over the winter, you may have seen a few weeds pop up in your lawn. There is plenty that you can do to prevent this over the winter, but some weeds will inevitably pop up.

You can start to kill weeds from April as this is when the growing season starts, so hopefully you will already have started but it is not too late to start now.

Raking/Scarifying + Overseeding

Now that your lawn will be actively growing, it is a great time to remove any dead material and excess thatch layer by raking or scarifying your lawn. This is a really important step to getting a healthy lawn in the summer, as it allows your lawn to thrive. You will not want to leave it much later mid-late May to rake or scarify, so now is the time to get started on this if you haven’t already. 

Once you have removed this dead material, it is essential that you overseed your lawn. When removing the dead material, this will open up small gaps and you want to replace them with fresh seed.

If you are also planning to kill moss and weeds but haven't done so yet, make sure you have done that before you sow your new seed.

Repairs and re-seeding 

Overseeding is a great method to fill out a lawn that is a little sparse, but if you have specific exposed areas of your lawn, you will want to do targeted re-seeding. May is a great time to carry this out, as you will have the necessary rainfall and it shall be warm enough.

If you are planning to either kill weeds and moss, or rake and scarify your lawn, make sure that you have done these before you sow your new seed!

Aeration

May is about the last chance before the summer to aerate your lawn as the conditions will be getting too dry. So if you have not aerated yet, you will want to get this done early in the month. 

Watering

Depending on weather, you may need to start watering your lawn but we will normally have enough precipitation to not need to. However, if you are seeding or laying new turf, follow the watering instructions for this.

Finally

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