Renovating a lawn in spring

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Moss creeping across the turf, weeds staking their claim and bare patches where the grass has simply died off: an old lawn can be brought back without much effort at all. Tackle it when growth is at its most vigorous, in spring or autumn, and weeding, mowing, dethatching and reseeding will hand you back a lush, green sward.

Summer, with its extended dry spells or winter with its scathing frost are also difficult times for old lawns.

Timing to renovate your lawn

The best season to renovate a lawn is when its growth is the most vigorous, in spring or in fall.

Indeed, you’ll make the growth of your lawn an asset to speed up the renovation process.

• At the beginning of spring or in fall, avoid days of heavy rain.
• You can renovate your lawn until the end of spring without expecting any problems.

• Wait until soil has warmed to about 10°C (50°F) before oversowing, since cool-season lawn seed germinates slowly or not at all in colder ground, leaving it exposed for weeks.
• Hold off if the ground is frozen or waterlogged.
• In autumn, aim to sow at least six weeks before the first frosts are expected, so the new grass roots before growth stops.
• In spring, wait until the lawn has needed mowing once or twice, proof that the grass is growing strongly enough to recover from dethatching.

Choosing the right grass for overseeding

The seed you scatter into the bare patches has to match your climate, your light levels and the traffic the lawn takes. The varieties below are the ones most often found in mainstream seed ranges.

Settle the climate column first, because it rules out half the table. Cool-season grasses grow hardest in spring and autumn and go dormant through a hot summer; warm-season grasses do the reverse, greening up only once nights hold above about 18°C (65°F) and browning off after the first frost. Read the species as closely as the variety name: seed is sold by species, with the cultivar in small print on the back of the bag, and most bags are a mix of two or three.

How to renovate a lawn

Renovating a lawn or span of grass isn’t very difficult but simply implies the following tips.

These steps must be performed on a regular basis every 2 or 3 years depending on your soil and the type of exposure of your garden.

Choose products used in organic farming to keep your soil pristine for the next generations.

• Start with weeding your lawn, ideally this step is done manually, with special care given to removing the whole roots.
• After weeding, you can mow your lawn quite short.
• Then, dethatch your lawn, following the advice on dethatching that we’ve prepared.

These steps all have a certain impact on your lawn’s vegetation phase.

The space left by the weeding, the mowing and the dethatching must be conquered quickly with new lawn seeds.

• Sow the barest spots with lawn seed.
• At this stage, topdress with soil mix to ensure proper root development and soil fertilization.

4 to 6 weeks after having been sown, special granulated lawn fertilizer must be spread on the lawn.

• This type of fertilizer has the advantage of having a slow and steady impact on your lawn.
• Adding lawn fertilizer after this step will guarantee your having a very beautiful, lush, green lawn.