Lawn care services
From time to time it is recommended that your lawn would benefit from certain other key treatments such as aerating, over seeding, scarification, top dressing, disease and insect/pest control. Lawn Style can provide a quotation for these services as required.
Aeration
Aeration is one of the most beneficial mechanical procedures, besides mowing, that you can give to your lawn in order to allow air, water and nutrients to penetrate into the soil, improve bacterial activity and reduce thatch. Aeration improves drainage and encourages the grass to not only root but root deeper, producing a stronger and more drought tolerant lawn. Reducing the thatch layer and improving the quality and density of the grass in the lawn is also a great way to keep moss at bay. A lawn requires aearating on a fairly regular basis especially when the soil has compacted which typically occurs in areas that receive the most wear such as around childrens play areas and along established pathways. When soil is compacted the soil particles are squeezed closer together which means that air and water can't penetrate resulting in a dull unhealthy lawn. Hollow core aeration removes hundreds of finger sized cores from the soil effectively de-compacting the soil and allowing a healthy supply of air and water to the grass roots. Aeration is a simple but back breaking task that involves driving either solid or hollow spikes several centimetres into the lawn surface and Lawn Style use professional aerating machines to accomplish this.
scarifying
Scarification is the process of removing thatch (a fibrous layer of old grass stems, dead moss and other debris) which builds up on more established lawns to form a semi-waterproof cover that impedes air, water and essential nuetrients from reaching the grass roots. It is important to remove this thatch so that the lawn can thicken, disease is discouraged and moss development is kept at bay. Regular light scarifying is required to keep levels of thatch at an acceptable level of less than 1cm deep; however, on lawns with a thick thatch layer an initial heavy scarification will be required that will involve several passes with a professional scarification machine which will remove huge amounts of waste material and leave the lawn looking a bit sad. But we sometimes have to make something look worse before it can look better and to give the lawn all the assistance it needs after such a stressfull operation we strongly recommend that it is followed imediately with over seeding and top dressing.
Top dressing
Top dressing can be applied every year to build up an ideal soil layer which will encourage an increase in grass roots and a thickening of the turf. .
Over seeding
When moss and weeds have been killed, or where grass is growing sparsely it may be necessary to over-seed which is the application of additional grass seed to help the lawn to stay thick and dense. Over seeding with a variety of different seed species can be carried out in late summer/early autumn or mid spring particularly after scarifiction, aeration or when top dressing.
insect/pest control
Pests such as leather jackets (the larvae of the Crane fly or “Daddy long legs") and the chafer grub feed on the grass roots and stems bases resulting in serious damage appearing as patches of yellow or brown grass. Lawn Style can identify insect pest problems and treatments are efficient and effective. In some cases, espesially with new lawns, it is recommended that a preventive treatment is applied rather than waiting and then trying to cure a problem.
