Green Stripe Lawn Care

We recommend five treatments per year to give the best possible results and get that lush, green lawn you’re looking for. As well as our regular treatment programme, we can also carry out scarification and hollow tine aeration, and deal with lawn pests and lawn diseases such as Red Thread, Snow Mould or Fusarium Patch.

Spring

Our Spring Treatment, carried out between March and May, is when we apply our spring feed fertiliser and moss control agent. This balanced formula gets your lawn off to a great start and helps to strengthen and green-up the turf so you are left with a healthy green sward. If appropriate (and if the temperature is favourable) then a weed control application is also applied at this stage. This Spring treatment is an excellent treatment to carry out one or two weeks prior to scarifying.

In the Early Summer Treatment, which is done between May and July, we apply our second application of fertiliser which is specifically designed to feed your lawn with the correct balance and ratio of Nitrogen, Phosphate and Potash. Our Granules are true compounds with each granule containing the desired spread of nutrients. This ensures even growth, quality and colour over the whole area and prevents the unsightly speckling effects, which can occur with blended fertilisers. We also spray for weeds at this time of year to tackle any weed seedlings that may have germinated since the last treatment.

Late Summer

Between July and September we apply our late summer feed which is also balanced with seaweed derivatives which encourage microbial activity in the soil. This acts by supplying a source of trace elements, although not usually deficient in healthy turf, trace elements can inadvertently get removed with grass clippings and therefore needs to be replaced. Our specially developed fertiliser also contains active minerals which not only improves turf colour, but are an important component in the vital photosynthetic pathways within the grass plant. We also apply another weed treatment if required, to catch any of those troublesome weeds that may have survived the earlier summer treatment.

Autumn

In the autumn treatment we shift our emphasis toward strengthening the green sward in your lawn and pay more attention to the root structure and plant strength. Our specially developed Autumn feed is packed with trace elements which help to strenghten the turf. We also apply an autumn helping of our moss control agent in this treatment which sits in the moss, weakenening it and helping to control it over the forthcoming winter months. Our Autumn treatment “packs a punch” that is so effective that most moss plant species cannot survive it.

Thatch is usually one of the worst problems to affect a lawn that has not been regularly maintained. Lawns are just like the rest of the plants in your garden – grass needs the right conditions in which it can flourish. Sure, it will limp along quite nicely in a poor state for years, but if you have never had your lawn scarified, never had it treated or aerated, can you honestly say, (if you look out of the window at it right now) that is has not got thatch, weeds, moss and other undesirable conditions or diseases?

Scarifying helps to reduce or remove thatch and moss. Thatch is a real problem for UK lawns because it can prevent the water from rain showers getting through to the roots and it also locks up valuable nutrients and oxygen. These are all crucial elements for a successfully strong, and healthy green lawn. Thatch also makes conditions ideal for unwanted weeds, diseases and moss to thrive in. So you can see then, it is in your lawns interest for you to have the thatch reduced

Scarifying is actually one of the most important maintenance and renovation activities in the lawn care calender. If you consider how good a Bowling Green looks or how excellent a Putting Green on a golf course looks, its worth remembering that these types of greens have some sort of scarifying or moss reduction programme sometimes as much as weekly or several times a month during the growing seasons. Now we are not suggesting that you should have your lawn scarified every week! On the contrary, if you had your lawn scarified once a week with the machinery that we use (just like the ones those professional golf courses and bowling greens use) you wouldn’t have much lawn left after week three because your lawn has not been used to it.

Therefore, what we recommend is that your own lawn may benefit from being scarified once each year – either in the Spring or Autumn. If the thatch and moss is a significant problem, it may even benefit from being scarified in both seasons for the first year. Our professional scarifying is now more affordable than ever, so now you can get your lawn professionally scarified and it won’t break the bank!

Hollow-Tine Aeration is a professional service which we will be happy to provide you with and incorporate it into your individual lawn care programme.This type of aeration is carried out on compacted lawns or lawns with poor drainage. Compaction can cause your lawn to be more susceptible to certain weeds, moss and also hinder drainage as well as causing dry patches.

Hollow-Tine Aeration is a specialist professional service which involves passing a machine over the surface of your lawn to remove approximately 50 cores per square metre. These cores vary in size from 10mm – 14mm wide and are 75mm or 100mm deep. By the time the whole lawn is ‘cored’ many thousands could have been removed.

Hollow-Tine Aeration allows water, oxygen & valuable nutrients greater access to the root zone. It is also encourages the grass rooting structure to grow into and colonize these voids thereby thickening and strengthening grass blades above. This in turn, helps to give a lush green sward. Our Hollow-Tine Aeration service will also reduce compaction in your lawn and make it stronger, healthier and thicker. It also helps to significantly reduce thatch.

A Cross sectional view of hollow tine aeration. See how the roots have been encouraged to grow into the void.

Its a simple process that enables Mother Nature to work better. Most people know that we get oxygen (O2) from the leaves of vegetation after they have soaked up Carbon Dioxide (CO2).

In simple terms the reverse happens with the roots of plants to that of the leaves. The roots soak up oxygen (O2) and give off carbon dioxide (CO2) Therefore by aerating the lawn, we can increase the availability of Oxygen to the roots.

Chafer Grubs and Leather-jacket larvae can cause devastating damage to your lawns. Some of the damage is caused by the grubs chewing at the roots of the grass plant which subsequently kills that area of the lawn. However, much of the physical damage is caused by birds such as Rooks, Jays and Magpies and larger animals such as Badgers and Foxes which scratch away at the turf/soil surface when searching for these tasty little grubs.

At Green Stripe, we offer an affordable and very effective treatment to help eliminate the grubs from your lawn, thereby ridding you of those annoying visits by animals that come in and dig up your lawn. Our treatments will kill off the grubs and stop the birds and the badgers from digging your lawn up. If left untreated, the damaged areas will increase each year until treatment is applied.

The treatments we use can only be used by professional, licenced operatives such as ourselves. The treatment can also be used purely as a preventive measure to stop these gruesome pests from visiting your lawn in the first place. Please call us today if you suspect that you have these pest in your lawn or if you would like an annual preventative treatment and we will be happy to carry out a free survey and quotation.