Winter Lawn Care Tips

While Winter signifies a semi-dormancy state for lawns in South East Queensland, most varieties of lawn found in Australia will continue to grow, just at a slower rate. For this reason it is still important to keep an eye on your turf during the cooler months and follow these Winter lawn care tips:

The slow growth may be quite deceptive and you might feel that mowing isn’t important but it is. Less frequent mowing, but still mowing, will provide a tillering effect which will encourage green leaf growth.

While the grass may be on a go-slow the weeds may not be. The colder months are a perfect time to remove any weeds before the ‘growth’ phase begins again. When your lawn kicks into the growing phase the last thing you want is for it to have to compete with the weeds that have taken up residence.

Another deceptive one – because it’s not hot you might think that your lawn doesn’t need much in the way of watering and that may be true. However, we recommend monitoring the amount of rain and dew that your lawn receives and top up as required. Winter rainfall may not be enough to deeply penetrate to the root system and the first very warm day will send the grass into shock and cause it to turn brown.

While you should have applied fertiliser at the beginning of Winter, mid-Winter is also a great time to fertilise. Even though the lawn will only make minor use of the applied nutrients it will still be extremely helpful to the overall health of the turf.

Instead of applying every two months you can apply fertiliser every four weeks but in smaller amounts. If this is your desired cause of action, we recommend applying only half of the recommended quantity. Applying a full dose of fertiliser can be a waste, can cause damage from over-fertilisation and can cause damage to the local environment as the excess nutrients are washed into our water systems.