Before taking any action or spending any money on fresh grass seed, it’s important to work out what may be causing your grass to turn yellow.

Your yellow grass could need a feed!

Just like your garden plants need to be fed to look their best, so does your lawn! Regularly feeding your lawn can help it fend off disease and stay super green and lush. At a minimum, you should aim to feed your lawn twice a year – once in spring / summer, and once in autumn / winter. Yellowing due to a lack of nutrients is one of the most common reasons for all grass yellowing, and when the grass is fed again, it will return to its normal greenness.

To get quick results, it's best to use fast-working lawn food such as our Oh So Green which will help green up your lawn in just six weeks. But before applying this, rule out the rest of our suggestions on our list.

Dog pee patches can yellow your lawn

If you have a dog, you may notice suspicious yellow patches dotted throughout your lawn where you have an inkling that your pup may have gone potty. All dog urine contains a chemical called nitrogen that will burn your lawn if not diluted. The best way to stop these patches from burning and becoming yellow is to water them well. When we say a ‘good watering’, we mean that you need to drown that area with water to lessen the effects of the nitrogen on your lawn! If you’ve forgotten to do this and now have a green and yellow polka dot lawn, you can read our blog on how to repair these areas here.

Pests can cause patches to appear

From time-to-time unwanted visitors of the creepy crawly kind can end up on your lawn. If you take care of your lawn and don’t have a dog, yellowing grass in random patches is usually the most obvious sign of pests. A quick way to test this is to use a garden shovel to lift up part of your turf. Leatherjackets and chafer grubs are common pests in UK lawns and will be easily visible in your soil. They damage your grass by eating at the roots causing it to die and turn yellow. If you find that you have leatherjackets or chafer grubs in your lawn, you can use a product called Nemasys which will help to get rid of them. Unfortunately, the damage they have caused is irreversible, but you can use our patch repair guide to get these spots looking their best again.

Bad mowing could be why your grass is yellow

Mowing your lawn should be a relatively easy task, but bad mowing can affect your lawn more than you realise. Blunt mower blades can badly cut your grass, so it struggles to grow back, and mowing your lawn too short can also stunt its growth. If you've had a mowing mishap, you'll probably notice the tips of your grass blades going yellow and straw-like. Most grass will recover, so if it has been damaged, it's best to let it grow out again on its own.

Even with sharp mower blades, your lawn can still fall foul to bad mowing. It's important to mow your lawn at the right height for the amount of use it gets. High-traffic family/pet lawns should be mown at 20-40mm, and low-traffic lawns can be mown slightly shorter at 10-20mm. Your first and last mow of the season should always be on the highest setting of your lawn mower, and never mow your lawn in a drought.

Drought or flooding

Too little water and too much water can cause your grass to turn yellow. Water helps the flow of nutrients get into the roots of your grass, so if there's too little or too much of it, this can stop them from reaching your roots effectively. This can then cause yellowing. Unfortunately, drought and floods are beyond our control, so there's not much you can do to prevent this from happening, but the same can be said for watering your lawn too often or not enough, so make sure to do this correctly.

Now you know the answer to 'why is my grass yellow'

However, if your garden still has issues and doesn't want to turn green again, please contact us, and we will help you achieve the lawn of your dreams!