Breathing Life Into An Old Lawn

The lawn we have was turfed circa 1983/4.
In the early years it was reasonably well cared for but it's had a very low level of care the past 5 years or so.
Grandpa has been mowing with a Qualcast that's as old as the lawn itself and judging by recent cuts the blades aren't particularly sharp either - it has a definite look of having chewed the grass rather than cleanly slicing it.

As I was looking through this forum I came across a reply by clueless1 that certainly sounds like our lawn, it is compacted, the drainage isn't great and there is moss growing and I'm fairly sure that there hasn't been any top dressing for a long time.

Sticking with a fork - I can figure that out and do that.
Dressing with sharp sand... Do I just spread a thin layer on? How much should I use? Do I do that before or after sticking it with the fork? Do I do anything else with it?

The ancient Qualcast collects the cuttings; there is a fairly new, barely used Flymo hiding in the back of the garage but it doesn't collect the cuttings.
Should I stick with the Qualcast and get some new blades (if they make them for that model any more) or should I unearth the Flymo?
If I do use the Flymo should I leave the cuttings on the lawn or should I be raking them up?

I'm planning to do an Autumn weed & Feed as a bit late to do a spring one I guess.

 

some people fertilize their lawns 4 times a year .... I normally stick with 3

go to a garden centre and get a bag of Scotts lawn builder .... if there are loads of weeds and moss, get some evergreen 4 in 1 instead

before using it, mow the lawn the day before .... then scarify by raking the lawn, then mow again to pick up the raked grass

then use a garden fork and make holes in the grass (it's hard work)

add the fertilizer (35 grams per square meter) ....

if it does not rain within 2 days of adding the fertilizer, you will need to use a hose

wait 2 weeks, then mow .... but only mow the top 1/3rd off

there is no need to use sharp sand etc

 

Thanks *dim*.
I don't think there's much chance of more than 2 days without rain this "summer" =)
We've plenty of weeds and moss so Evergreen 4 in 1 then.
Trip to the garden centre today as there's quite a bit of stuff I need to get this garden project underway.

 

Well, I've raked (and raked and raked...) and removed so much dead moss it's shocking. Unfortunately I'm now in the "it's looks worse before it gets better stage" (well, I hope that's what it is) as there's dry brown areas where the dead moss has been raked out and dark areas where moss is dying off...
I roped hubby and dad into helping with aerating last weekend.
On the bright side the new grass growth is looking (to the untrained eye) fairly healthy and green.
I'm going to overseed after raking this weekend, concentrating on the bare patches more in the hopes that it'll start looking a bit cared for.

 

If you chuck down a couple of bags of sharp sand now, and then rake that it, it will rip the moss out by the handful. How much to use is a matter of judgement based on loads of factors. As long as you don't leave the grass actually buried, I don't think you can over do it. I once enlisted the help of my young nephew (he was 4 at the time). I invented a game on the lawn where I build sand castles and he stamps them down, and its a race to see if I can build them faster than he could destroy them. The aftermath of this game was that the lawn looked more like a beach. Then he went in because it was bed time, and I set about it with the rake, and kept on raking until the grass was back above the sand. That was 5x 25kg sacks of sand on a fairly small lawn.

I've since done a similar procedure at my new house on the front lawn. It was nearly game over for it when I bought the house. The grass had actually stopped grown altogether and large patches were turning yellow despite watering. I was skint at the time but a friend of mine had done some work at his house and had unearthed about half a tonne of sand and grit. I put maybe 100kg on the front lawn and raked it in. I'd raked it previously without the sand and moved a small amount of moss, but raking with the sand/grit just churned up huge amounts of moss. It just kept coming. Of course it also pulled out some of the grass, that's inevitable, but within a couple of weeks of doing it the grass was growing for the first time in months. Now its hardly a lush lawn, but that's by choice. Its now lawn and clover but its quite healthy.