How can you make your lawn greener now - during winter?

As we edge closer to the end of winter, you may find your lawn looking fairly ordinary. Even though it may still be in winter dormancy, there are some ways to make it greener - now!

Over the last few months, I’ve written quite a few blogs on why this may be so. As a re-cap, lawns can discolor during winter for the following reasons:

• Poor drainage
• Frost burning
• Overuse while in winter dormancy
• Moss and algae outbreaks
• Disease
• Weed pressure
• Poor health coming into winter
• Poor maintenance practices

It may simply be that you allowed your lawn to brown off last summer during the heat and given we didn’t receive much early Autumn rain it didn’t recover in time for winter. Now you’re left with a patchy lawn dominated by weeds.

The question we get asked a lot towards the end of Winter is, what can be done now to improve the overall appearance of lawn?

There are a few things you can do but before I get to those, it’s important to note that all of the issues above are either preventable or treatable which, if dealt with properly will result in a much healthier, greener winter lawn. Click the links to find out more.

For some fast greening effects, try the following:

Patch your lawn with instant turf:

If you have large dead or dying patches in your lawn, you can replace those sections with roll out turf. Most types of turf are still looking good and while they won’t root in straight away, they will provide some instant greening.

Re-colour your lawn with a photosynthetic pigment dye:

This sounds like an unlikely solution but it truly is brilliant. There are products that have been released recently such as Colour King to re-colour your lawn.  You simply spray these products onto your lawn for an instant greening effect. Especially designed for lawns, they are permanent, non-toxic and pet friendly. Rather than being a paint, they are a dye which penetrates into the lawn blades, instantly turning them just the right shade of green. We did a test on some frost burnt buffalo turf last week and the results were amazing.  Of course this is just a cosmetic solution and won’t deal with any underlying issues but if you need your lawn looking green quickly this could be the solution your looking for.

Apply some Iron Chelate:

There is still some benefit in fertilising in winter with the understanding that you won't see the results like you do in Spring, Summer and Autumn. Most lawns in Adelaide are warm season grasses (couch, kikuyu and buffalo turf) and at this time of year they are dormant which means that no matter how much fertiliser you throw at them, they won't produce much leaf or runner growth however you can green up the blades that are already present. Iron works with the chlorophyl (the green part)  in the blade and essentially helps the blades become greener. 

Over the next few weeks, Ill write some blogs on the solutions above and perhps some others to give you more information of how they can work for you.