Why is my lawn yellow? A question I have asked myself many times (and for different reasons!)
The answer to the question could be a few different things:
Lack of water
The obvious reason! A rare occurance in the UK – sometimes we can have periods of warmer weather when there is very little rainfall.
This causes the grass to naturally start dying, as any plant or weed would if it didn’t have access to water.
Grass roots don’t go as far down as larger plants or tree roots (or invasive weeds!) so cannot find water from very far down if the first few inches of the ground dries up.
The solution to this is to give the lawn a good watering in really dry weather for it to maintain its luxury green look.
Letting it get too long
I have been guilty of letting the lawn get too long – especially for that “first cut” after the winter!
When you then cut the long grass back, it can start to get a bit patchy and yellow. The bottom of long grass doesn’t get much sun and this can naturally look “not green” when cut or even a few hours after cutting.
The key factor here is to mow your lawn fairly regularly and not let it get too long and then keep mowing it.
Animal Urine
If you own a dog who urinates on your grass, this will cause yellow patches – the urine burns the grass causing it to die.
The surrounding grass will grow longer though as the urine helps to feed the grass (but kill the grass that takes the direct impact!)
I have also found that other animal urine will cause yellow patches. In my old house, there were hedgehogs, rabbits, foxes and the occasional badger appearing on my lawn – one of these was definitely responsible for yellow patches! There were no dogs or cats around!
Too much shade from trees
If you have large trees that cast a shadow over your lawn, they could be the culprit for yellowing, poor growth or even no grass at all.
Take those large conifers for example, you quite often see a completely brown patch of soil surrounding the base.
They block the sunlight and the roots also drain the soil around them of all water.