Preparing a lawn for Autumn Winter

Can anyone help? I have spent a lot of time this spring and summer bringing my lawn back to life after a year of abuse (we had an extension built and the builders used our back lawn as a dumping ground)but I am concerned about the harsher weather in Winter.
Does anyone have any good ideas of the things that I can be doing to prepare my garden for the winter months to ensure that I still get lush green grass back in Spring 2011?

 

Good evening Floss and welcome to the site. Can we have some pics so that we can see the extent of the problem?:thumb:

 

Hi Floss! and welcome!

Apart from the the usual "three in one" and scarifying in the spring, I give my lawn a weak feed every couple of weeks or so during the summer and I'll give it an autumn feed at the end of this month. But I'll carry on cutting it as often as it needs and that'll probably be up until Christmas.

Remember this?





Given that and the unprecedented amount of cold weather we had during the winter, it seemed not to affect my lawn at all.

 

should your lawn be kept to a specific length around this time of year.I've seen soem gardens in the summer go a nice Brown colour if the person cut the lawn to short.:dh:

 

You need to keep an eye on the temperatures and the amount of sunshine. I use a Flymo on it's lowest cut for most of the time, but raise up the blades one spacer during the very hot weather. But my lawn gets plenty of water, it's no hardship for me now since installing pop up sprinklers, just a turn of a valve..

Lawns going brown apart from diseases is usually just a lack of water, many people are on water meters and are reluctant to water them regularly.

If you think of golf courses, on well-kept greens they don't go brown and they are practically "shaved" every couple of days or so, but the sprinklers go on very early in the morning on most days.
The "received greenkeeper's opinion" is that you shouldn't water lawns before May each year to encourage the roots of the grass to search down for water rather than up.

 

rake out and scarify the lawn soil, rake in sharp sand and throw Growmore over your lawn to get a nice green lawn before winter. I dont cut after October to protect the grass and the soil underneath.

 

I can't leave my lawn that long as last year it was still contuing to grow well into November. We're in a sheltered situation and sdouth facing. On our golf course too, they were still cutting the fairways for about the same time. I believe grass is supposed to only stop growing when the temperature falls below 13C.

 

Grass grows above 5c, growth at temperatures lower than this is possible but it becomes practically imperceptible.

IIRC I cut my lawns about three times between last November and March. I was thankful for the snow otherwise I would have had a full year of cutting :dh: I hand-edge my lawns once a month through winter though, it's a handy and quick way to keep the lawns looking tidy over winter without having to do a full cut. A lot of my neighbours cut in late November/ early December last year as well so i guess it's contagious :skp:

 

well i cut mine today.God it was long.But all nice and tidy now and did my hedges,but i think if i#m lucky i may just get one more cut with my mower.Bert has been with us for 12 yrs now but i think its time he went to the big DIY plce in the sky.
Never changed the oil think i may have changed the plug once.But his body work has rusted away with time.....engine is fine just makes a cutting noise when i pick the back end up to do my lines on the lawn.
So its either a new lawn butty for christmas or spring for me:(

 

Thank you all so much for your advice. I have a push lawn mower so height of cut isn't an issue - it's quite long compared to cuts I used to get with my old Flymo. I do use the edging tip during the winter to keep it looking tidy though. We definitely try the raking and scarifying tip with the sand idea - funnily enough somebody else I was talking to about this the other day also said the same thing.
Thanks all.

 

As far as I could have experienced, winter in our latidudes in western Europe is not much a threat for the "health" of a lawn.
However it might be "cold" a winter in western Europe, it is hardly colder than 10 celsius degrees below freezing point.
We live not in such continental Europe countries like eastern europe or Russia.
Nor we live in Siberia, central asia, North America or what-have-you where winters are defenetely severe.
During the last winters my country experienced some cold temperatures, heavy snowfalls days.
On some days the high temperatures got hardly above -10 degrees.
The road surface was an ice sheet.



The snow was as dusty as floar.




On other days, the snow cover was as deep as 1ft or deeper.





Despite of that, the following spring my lawn looks like nothing had occured.




Someone could argue that my lawn is facing south and consequently gets rapidily a great amount of sunshine to be restored from the severe winter cold.
It may be. I do not say It may not.
Someone could argue that my lawn is small and consequently can get enough "shelter".
It may be as well. I do not say It may not.
Anyway, still I do not think that winters in Britain, France, Italy, Ireland, etc could be harmfull for our lawns...
As I said, we do not live in the siberian taiga or in Alaska... :D
Probably others are the diseases that are harmfull for our lawns...
I think that a hot dry summer like those that can be experienced in south Europe (Spain, south France, Italy, Greece, etc.) and - only occasionally - in Britain , Germany, etc. are much much much much more harmfull to our lawns.
Expecially if those hot dry periods last many days in a row (as it always occur in my country on summer).
But in Britain you do not have this problem.
You are in luck.
You have one of the best climate in the world to grow a healthy lawn.
Lucky you !!! (I feel a bit of envy).