APRIL LAWNS

Photo: Organic wildflower meadow.

As the weather warms up this month, the organic matter in the lawn resumes its natural decomposition. This releases natural fertilisers. There are a lot of factors that take nutrients away from the grass. The winter rain depletes this natural source of food and so does collecting the grass clippings every time the lawn is cut. Some of us who like a green, weed free lawn like the man on the donkey, will now be ready to add a lawn fertiliser or a mix of fertiliser and weedkiller. This is fine if you enjoy getting the mower out twice a week to cut the heavy growth, although it is a bit of a fallacy thinking that if you do not feed the grass it won’t need cutting so often. We would be left with tufts of irregular growth that would look just as untidy if the grass was not fed. Wild flower areas on the other hand need not be fed. The idea of these is to make them nutrient poor. This condition favours wild flowers in their struggle to fight off the grasses. Lawn weedkillers should not be used on wildflower lawns, as this will kill all of the wild flowers that would grow in the lawn.