Time to get the scarifier out?

NI based.... Is it time?

The weather here has been brutal for a month or so, rain rain rain rain rain, and the weather forecast never seems to be right!

Next couple of dry days I think I have to take advantage.

 

If the soil is really wet, the scarifier or spring tine rake may do more damage than good as it may tear up grass by its roots, rather just rake out thatch (or moss). If you get a couple of nice days to dry it out a fair bit, it would be ideal. Please ignore the below if you don't have moss issues in your lawn.

If you've got moss, I recommend killing it off with ferrous sulphate. Ideally, a feed and weed approach isn't recommended according to some as it may add too much nitrogen to the soil, causing over-active growth durning the autumn and winter when frost, disease, plus certain pests may find your lawn preferable to others i.e. leatherjackets and chafer grubs to name a couple.

There seems differing opinions of whether to kill moss as scarifying should remove moss as it does not have roots, but IMO, you could end up shifting live moss to other parts of the lawn if it's not killed off beforehand. Ferrous sulphate turns it black so you know it's dead, and is also much easier to spot when it's black.

Also, there are a lot of weed seeds floating around at this time of year and if there's any bare patches, you need to over-seed with grass seed to help the grass blanket out the weeds. Thistles, cats ears, ragwort, fox & cubs, willowherbs etc can be somewhat of a nuisance if they take root before the grass seed does. Having said that though, you could always kill 'em off with feed and weed and do a light scarify in the spring, if they break through the grass.

The soil temperatures will stay warm enough for a good few weeks, well into Autumn to enable grass seed to take hold... fast.

 

I've already started Zola, bit warm the last few days but rain tomorrow then I'm doing my Mums lawn on Saturday with the help of rather young niece who will try his best
I tend to use a GreenMaster pro-lite Autumn feed once scarified which helps the lawn recover from mechanical damage. Nice and fine particle size with iron in a small dosage to strengthen up the turf and deter moss.
As its dry and unless the customer wants to water I've not applied the fert yet and the rain forecast tomorrow looks too heavy to risk it looking at the warnings.

 

Well I'm glad I held back on the fert. Had one cracking thunder storm last night and we had local flooding.
Managed to cut one lawn only before spending the day sat in another customers house having a coffee and chat while I watched the heavens open up.

 

@Zola , Mowermans point above is a good one . I scarified my lawn early this year . As it goes , the day before I could do it we had several downpours . Scarifying did tend to make a bit of a muddy mess . The lawn recovered OK , but it is best to wait until the ground is dryish before scarifying.

 

I have had a crazy few weeks, and havent been able to scarify, any time I have been able to it has been raining!

Is it now too late to do this now, for the grass to recover? It is starting to get darker and colder!

 

i done a weed & feed a months ago, let the weeds go black, then raked.....seeded with Miracle Grow grass seed, the grass was growing in five days, just like it said on the packet.

 

Gotta get some of that !

 

Should still be fine but if your weather outlook looks like it's going to change dramatically you could do a light scarify rather than a heavy one then in the Spring do another scarify or if the grounds too wet and you are worried about doing more harm than good then wait till spring.