Sizzling Summer Lawn Care

Whether it’s preparing your lawn for the festive season and holidays or helping it recover from backyard games and parties, here are our summer lawn care tips to help create a beautiful lush green lawn:

1. Give the lawn a good feed

A lovely green lawn is very inviting, so to encourage deep green growth apply a lawn food like Yates Dynamic Lifter Lawn Food. It has organic nutrients to help green up the lawn and concentrated organic matter to help promote long term soil health.

2. Watering for dry weather

Give your lawn long sessions of watering. that wets the soil to a considerable depth. This encourages deep rooting and results in a more vigorous, higher quality turf.Short, frequent waterings during hot weather will lead to shallow rooting of the grass. This reduces its intake of water and nutrients. It also makes the lawn more susceptible to weed invasion, fungal diseases and pest damage. Aim to do a ‘deep’ water 1-3 times a week.

To check if your lawn needs to be watered, tread firmly on the grass. After removing your foot, if the grass doesn't spring back and lays flat, it’s an indication your grass needs to be watered. If the grass springs back, then it doesn't need to be watered.

3. Summer mowing

For a greener healthier lawn, increase the height of the lawn mower cut to help conserve moisture. Very short grass allows the lawn soil to dry out quicker and invites weeds to get an easier foothold. Increase mowing frequency to weekly, to keep the verdant summer growth in check. Leave the clippings to fall back on the lawn to return the nitrogen and other nutrients back into the soil.

4. Pre-holiday weed control

Don’t come back from holidays to a lawn full of weeds! Before you head off on a summer break, control common broadleaf weeds like thistles and dandelions with an easy to apply hose-on herbicide like Yates Weed n Feed Hose-on. It’s also boosted with nutrients to promote lush green growth, a strong root system and a healthy lawn.

A word of warning though; selective weedkillers like Weed'n'Feed can cause stress to grass during hot weather. Most lawns in NZ are cool-season species, which are at their best in spring and autumn. Hot summer conditions don't really suit them, so they need to expend a lot of their energy to get through the season. If the weather is very dry and very hot, chances are your grass is already under stress: applying Weed'n'Feed in these conditions can add to that stress and show up as burnt grass. You'll get much better results if your lawn has been well watered in the weeks prior to applying Weed'n'Feed, so the lawn soil retains some moisture.

Kikuyu may be drought-tolerant, but it's especially sensitive to selective weedkillers, which means there's a higher risk of burning it with Weed’n’Feed or Yates Turfix. The risk is lessened during winter while kikuyu is in its dormant phase, but much higher during hot weather or periods of drought. We recommend choosing Yates Weed’n’Feed Granular for kikuyu and couch lawns.

5. Aeration

If your lawn has been well and truly ‘loved’ over summer and been trampled by lots of happy feet (and paws) then it will benefit from being aerated. Aeration will help loosen up hard and compacted soil underneath the lawn, make it easier for water and air to penetrate down into the roots and makes it physically easier for grass roots to grow.

Aerating the lawn is as easy as pushing a garden fork down through the grass and around 10 cm deep into the soil, then gently lever the fork back and forth a little to open the holes the fork tines have made. Do this multiple times over the lawn. For large lawns, mechanical aerators or corers can be hired.