welcome to my channel it's matt the garden and lawn care guy and today we're going through
April's lawn care tips i'm going to be covering all the different types of fertiliser in terms of
pre-seed fertiliser granular fertiliser all-in-one products weed control seeding top dressing
the full works so really this is one of the key videos of the whole year this video is sponsored
by skillshare and for those of you who regularly watch the channel will know that i've been trying
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subscription is as little as 10 pound a month but i've teamed up with skillshare to offer the first
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can access by clicking the link below i've been using skillshare to improve my photography skills
after watching the dslr photography fundamentals course by justin brides i've learned in that
course how to control my exposure the iso and generally overall improve the quality
of pictures that i've got and here's some examples as an introduction to this video of
how the garden's looking in April and some of the things that i've been getting up to
the first tip for April is start mowing it's the most basic and fundamental thing that
regular mowing of the lawn at the right height will significantly increase the quality of your
overall lawn care previously i've done a few light trims with the rotary mower because it's a little
bit lighter and i've just done my first cut with the cylinder mower as the ground's starting to
firm up a little bit and i'm starting to reduce that height ready for the spring
so we've just talked about mowing the lawn can get you up to 75 percent plus of the way there through
your lawn care journey the second biggest thing that you can do is implement a correct fertiliser
plan now in terms of the different fertilisers there's quite a lot of different types out there
and all the products that I'm mentioning today can be found in links in the description or directly
on my own shop garden lawn care guy dot com starting from the left this one here this is a pre
seed fertiliser and what this means is if you plan to renovate your lawn in the spring or the autumn
time pretty much the only thing that i would be putting onto the lawn is a pre-seed fertiliser
the reason for this is we've got lower nitrogen and higher phosphorus nitrogen is good for pushing
new growth which we don't really want when we're planting new seeds because we don't want our
seeds to end up leggy we want root development and the thing that gives us root development is
phosphorus so look for a pre-seed fertiliser when you're sowing new seeds on your lawn if you're not
seeding your lawn then i might look at moving to something which is a spring-based fertiliser
such as this one now a spring-based fertiliser will be higher in nitrogen so for example it might
be a nine seven seven and the nine corresponds to nine parts nitrogen you've got higher nitrogen
which is going to boost the lawn out of spring wake it up and trigger lots of new growth
the third type of fertiliser is an all-in-one type of product now when you're using an all-in-one
type of product it's going to have your fertiliser itself it's going to have things like weed killers
in there and it's going to have things like iron in there to control moss now these products can
be useful if you're quite new to lawn care but they do need to be used with caution and make
sure you follow the application rates i do see a lot of people burning the lawn with these products
because of the type of chemicals in there however they can be used to great effect if you've got
an area to cover and you just want a one size fits all type of product my lawn i don't have
many weeds at all growing in it because over time i've reduced the amount of weeds that are grown
in the lawn if you've got to a certain point where you don't have lots of weeds in your lawn you can
do something called spot spraying spot spraying will basically be just targeting the weeds as they
come up throughout the lawn and from April onwards it can be an ideal time to start doing that
it's a little bit early because you want to get the weeds while they're most actively growing
and you can apply a product similar to this and you need to make sure it says for lawns
and it'll say something on there like kills weeds not lawns don't use the regular products because
they will kill everything that they touch you need to use a selective weed treatment for your lawn
so let's come and have a little look at the garden and see what we've got going on
there is a telltale sign that spring is coming
so you can see here in the garden beds we've got some weeds here in the soil
just kind of starting to come through and also we've got weeds here a bit of weed grass here
some more weeds this is thistle and also here we've got a dandelion
and this is actually couch grass
which you need to get rid of so overall even though none of this stuff is coming in the
lawn yet the best way to tackle weeds in the lawn is actually be on the offence
and by that i mean keeping a thick and healthy lawn in the first place
and it's gonna dampen the ability of the weeds to grow you can see that where there's
hardly any weeds in the lawn but there are weeds in the bed and the weeds in the bed
are germinating because they haven't got as much competition as weeds in the lawn
so now we've covered the basic parts of the lawn care regime fertiliser and mowing i'm going to
move on to some more advanced things that you can be doing in April if you've got any thin areas of
your lawn or patchy areas you want to stay tuned for this bit because i'm going to tell you how to
fix a patchy lawn and how to thicken up that grass moving into the spring and get ready for summer
so come and have a look at the next part so next up i'd like to talk to you about seeding so
here these are some products that i've got available in the shop right now
and there's a couple of different types of mixes that i'm going for i've produced a full video on
how to pick the right seed for your garden which i'll link up in the card above but in
essence there's a couple of different types of mix here we've got a shaded mix for the shady garden
i've got a hard wearing mix which is a bestseller for family lawns and this is going to be most
suitable for areas with high wear and tear and usage in a family hard-working lawn but where
you want a premium finish and i've got the last variety which is one that i'm probably personally
going to be using in my renovation plan which is an all-american dark green mix i also wanted
to show you this handy little tool that i've just bought this and basically it's the evergreen easy
whiz now when you're applying seed you can apply it using a rotary spreader and that can be great
if you've got a larger area to cover but when you've got a smaller area to cover or perhaps you
don't have enough storage space like for my area for example and you can use something like this
this is a great little product it comes with some batteries in the bottom and you've got a guard
that you can set on the front to choose your application rate and it's also got
this little strip on the side here which stops the seed spreading into your beds so as you're
walking down the edge you can lift this strap up and it'll basically keep the seeds from falling
into your beds and then when you're doing the rest of the lawn you can pull it back
so you can see here it works by you pull this trigger that mechanism is going to agitate the
seed it's going to go drop through the hopper onto this spinning disc and fire out on the lawn this
is a brilliant bit of kit it's going to be around 20 to 30 pounds really easy to store stick it on
the shelf put some batteries in and it can really help you make a light work of seeding an area
and especially if you're not quite comfortable with applying by hand or you don't know your
application rates set this put your seed in it off you go brilliant bit of kit how i like to
apply seed is if you need to do some scarification or aeration they are also brilliant processes to
start this time of year i'll link a link to some videos i've already done on those topics in the
card above if you're interested in that but first of all scarify and aerate clear the debris out of
the lawn so the lawn can breathe and give it an opportunity to receive any of the new seeds and
the fertiliser that you're going to put down in the spring after you've done that i like to put
the seed down if you are going to top dress put the seed down first and then the top dressing on
the top of that and then after i've put the top dressing on i'm going to tread or roll it in now
rolling the seed into the ground or compressing it with the top dressing or topsoil is a really key
step that a lot of people miss what this is going to do is create a layer of seed to soil contact
if you think of the seed it wants to germinate in the ground so when you tread it into the ground or
put a layer of soil on the top and roll or tread it in that's going to help promote great seed to
soil contact and it will improve your success rate of germination this is a step that most
people miss but a really key one and a top tip for anyone at home looking to overseed their lawn i've
just ordered all my materials for my spring lawn care plans if you're interested in that all of the
products that i'm using are found on my shop or in my description below and if you're interested
in seeing some of the results i've got subscribe to my channel and turn the notifications on thanks
for watching this video it's matt the garden and lawn care guy and i'll see you in the next video