Now is an excellent time to begin preparing your lawn for the start of the mowing season in a month or two’s time – and lets face it with the increasingly milder winters we’ve experienced in recent years that first cut seems to get earlier and earlier. Indeed one or two of our customers have reported in recent years that they are now mowing virtually all year round. That reminds me, I remember being interviewed by a newspaper a few years ago for an article they were writing on the effects of global warming in the garden.
I think it must have been 2002 or 2003. I was able to recall for the purposes of the article that the start of the mowing season traditionally had been the Easter weekend when it sometimes seemed as if the whole neighbourhood descended en-mass to garden machinery dealers such as ourselves to get an on-the-spot deal and we competed furiously against DIY chains seemingly aiming to shift almost their entire stock in the space of just a few short days at whatever price they could get.
The internet has changed all that as has have weather patterns and many of our customers are now as likely to be buying lawnmowers from us in February as they are March or April – or indeed September. One of the problems of the old buying patterns – and we are going back ten, twenty years here – was that many people ended up buying whatever they could get hold-of or whatever machine was being advertised at the craziest price. People ended up buying sixty quid petrol lawnmowers which were hopelessly insufficient for their needs or lawn mowers that were far too big or far too small for the size of their actual garden; or simply they purchased the wrong type of machine altogether because that’s all that was left on the shelf.
One of the great advantages of being able to buy your new lawnmower online from MowDIRECT is that with the help and guidance we provide on the website you can locate the lawnmower that best matches your needs. For example, if you were in the market for a self-propelled 4-wheel petrol lawnmower – the most popular type of petrol lawnmower we sell – you would be able to choose the most suitable model for your needs according to the size of your lawn or garden, the price you want to pay for lawnmower or the brand of lawnmower you are shopping for.
Anyway I have digressed somewhat. The purpose of this post was to discuss a product you should be making full use of in January and the weeks ahead. If you’re looking to have a green and lush lawn this year now is the time to start preparing and with all the wet weather we have been having recently the ground at the moment is very soft and conditions perfect for rolling your lawn with a lawn / garden roller. This will help to even out any bumps in your lawn and assist you in achieving a more even cut when you eventually get out the lawnmower in the coming weeks for the first cut of the season. As well as helping to prevent the disfigurement of your lawn from scalping, where your lawnmower literally slices into the soil, a more level lawn achieved through lawn rolling will help to prevent the costly damage to your lawnmower that can occur when the blade comes up against firm ground.
One of the other benefits of rolling your lawn is in tackling uneven ground caused by mole hills. If you suffer from moles, a good trick is to use the soil from the mole hills to help fill in any little dips on your lawn and then roll over this area with your lawn roller to produce a more level surface. The other thing of course lawn / garden rollers are useful for is to press grass seed into your lawn to assist germination. If your lawn is anything like ours at this time of the year, there will be horrible brown splodges in amongst the green and if you are going to achieve a healthy thick growth across your lawn you will need to press some grass seed into these areas with your lawn roller whilst the ground remains soft.
There are some great benefits therefore in owing a lawn / garden roller and we have a wide range of models from the traditional hand push/pull rollers with their all-steel construction through to a larger-sized push/tow roller from Agri-Fab for use on larger sized lawns. This model, as well as three larger-sized tow only rollers, also from Agri-Fab, can be attached to your ride-on mower or lawn & garden tractor for effortless lawn rolling. Just a few other tips on rolling your lawn and lawn / garden rollers before I finish. If you have slopes on your lawn always roll across rather than up and down the slope as this can be extremely dangerous.
For more weight, add sand to your roller rather than water, although nor more than half full. Sand also has the benefit of not freezing so if you are filling your roller with water, be careful at this time of year not to leave it out in freezing temperatures or empty it of water after use, so as to avoid cracking the drum.
The Editor
