Most of the questions people ask about a new lawn focus on feeding. When do I feed it, what do I feed it with, why is it not thickening up after a few months? The honest answer is that for the first six months of a new lawn, feeding is not the priority and in many cases it is the wrong thing to reach for altogether. What a new lawn needs in order to establish properly is good soil. Get the soil right before you sow or lay turf and the grass will look after itself. Rush to feed a lawn that is sitting on poor, compacted or unimproved ground and you will be spending money on a product that cannot do its job because the conditions below are not right to support it.

The single most valuable thing you can do for a new lawn is invest time and effort in preparing the soil before a single seed is sown or a single roll of turf is laid. This means digging over the area to a depth of at least twenty centimetres, removing stones, breaking up compaction and improving the structure of the soil throughout the root zone. If the soil is heavy clay, working in sharp grit and organic matter will dramatically improve drainage. If it is thin and sandy, organic matter will help it retain moisture. In both cases, incorporating a biochar-based soil improver at this stage does something that ordinary organic matter alone cannot do as effectively. Biochar improves the structure of the soil, increases its ability to hold nutrients and water, and supports the microbial activity that makes soil genuinely healthy rather than just structurally adequate.

Once the lawn is down, whether from seed or turf, the priority for the first six months is establishment rather than feeding. The grass needs to develop a strong root system, and that process is supported far more by good soil conditions than by additional nutrients applied to the surface. If bare patches appear in a seeded lawn during the first season, the answer is overseeding rather than feeding. Overseeding simply means scattering fresh grass seed over the thin or bare areas, raking it lightly into contact with the soil, and keeping it moist while it germinates. Done in spring or early autumn when soil temperatures are warm enough for germination, this fills gaps reliably and costs very little. It is a much more effective response to patchy establishment than feeding, which will do nothing to fill in areas where the seed simply did not take.

The temptation when a new lawn is not thickening as quickly as expected is to apply a lawn feed in the hope of speeding things up. Resist this for the first six months. Grass plants in their first season are focusing energy on root development, and premature feeding with high-nitrogen products can push top growth at the expense of those roots, leaving the lawn looking green briefly but ultimately weaker and shallower-rooted than it should be. Patience is the better option. A lawn that has been properly prepared, seeded at the right time and kept watered during dry spells in its first summer will establish well without any additional feeding.

After the six-month mark, when the lawn is properly established and actively growing, you can begin a feeding programme. At this point, the choice of product matters. Avoid anything based on sulphate of iron. This is sold widely in Irish garden centres and garden superstores, often as a component of combined lawn treatments. It will green up the grass temporarily, but it does so by acidifying the soil, and lower soil pH creates exactly the conditions in which moss thrives. In Ireland's warm, damp climate, moss is always ready to establish wherever soil conditions invite it. Choosing a feed that maintains or gently raises the soil pH, rather than lowering it, keeps the lawn in conditions that favour grass over moss throughout the growing season. The Lush Lawns programme is designed around exactly this principle and is what I would recommend once your lawn is ready to feed.

A word on mowing height in the context of a new lawn: keep it high. Cutting a new lawn too short removes leaf area the plant needs to photosynthesise, slows root development and exposes bare soil to moss and weed colonisation. Three to four centimetres is the right cutting height through the first season and beyond. Taller grass is healthier grass. It has deeper roots, retains moisture better and is significantly more resistant to both drought and moss than a lawn that is regularly scalped. For more on timing and approach for the first cut of a new or existing lawn, see the advice on the first grass cut of the year in Ireland.