Scarifying (Scary?) Lawns

I have a new philosophy. I'm only going to dread one day at a time.
Charles M. Schulz

Raking moss out of lawns is perhaps one of the worst jobs in the gardening calendar. Killing moss is easy; simply spread liberal quantities of lawn sand onto dry grass and wait a few days. ( if you spread it onto damp grass, the sand tends to stick to the grass rather than falling onto the moss resulting in mild scorching). That's the easy bit. Then just sit back and watch the moss turn black almost overnight.

Getting rid of the blackened moss is not so easy. There are two choices - hand rake, or hire a scarifier. These are just simply noisy machines that rip the moss out for you in terrifying quantities - and such fun. Unfortunately for me this week one of my clients has decided that the £35 cost of hiring such a machine is too great, so I had to spend an entire day raking by hand. Backbreaking work just to achieve a lawn that looks like a herd of pigs has spent the weekend truffling through it. However it resulted in a few cubic meters of moss for the compost bin (although I will have to wait for at least 6 months until I can use it) and looks of sheer horror from my client. Apparently she has never seen a scarified lawn before.....

The first of autumn grown sweet peas have been planted out this week into a bed heavily manured back in the autumn. The manure was placed at the bottom of a 45cm beep trench before being backfilled. This encourages the sweet pea roots to grow deep quickly, resulting in far superior plants. Around the peas I have also scattered lots of Nigella ("Love-in-a-Mist") seeds. Once they grow and start blooming, I find it is a good way to hide the bare bases of the peas as well as providing an extra splash of colour.

As the sun warms the soil, more and more herbaceous plants are beginning to show their first leaves. So now is an ideal time to lift and divide them. It is also the perfect time to get the Roundup out and spot spray any perennial weeds in the borders, such as nettles, docks, couch grass and creeping buttercups. Although I tend to shy away from all chemicals, Roundup is relatively safe as it immediately breaks down as soon as it comes into contact with the soil.

This week I have been watching blue and great tits busily nest building in boxes, blackbirds in a forsythia in my back garden, grey wagtails in ivy beneath a clients lounge window and a kingfisher speeding along a clients woodland stream. Yes, spring is finally here!

And Jet? Oh dear....why oh why, of all the dogs in Battersea, did we choose her??? It has not been a good week. She has discovered digging holes in lawns is fun (Her excuse? She was trying to catch the mole...), chewing through the bark of prize rose bushes ( 'I'm just teething, Dad....'), running off into a neighbour's property and refusing to recall ( 'Just burning off energy, Dad....') and eating bumblebees ('They tickle on the way down, Dad....').

One day at a time Jet, one day at a time......