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Seasonal Lawn Care

Lawn Care Tips for June

Coming into winter, lawns face new challenges. June’s hints discuss how to help both cool season turfs and warm season grasses cope through the cooler weather.

BEATING the Winter Chill

Winter is officially here! As June brings frosty mornings and colder days to Adelaide and the Southern Suburbs, your lawn faces a completely new set of challenges. Whether you have a warm-season grass going to sleep or a cool-season turf braving the chill, how you care for your lawn this month determines how well it bounces back in Spring.

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Here are our top tips for helping your lawn survive and thrive through a South Australian winter:

1. Adjust Your Mower Height (Know Your Grass Type!)

Your mowing strategy needs to completely change in June, and it all depends on what type of grass is growing in your backyard.

For Warm-Season Grasses (Couch, Kikuyu, Buffalo): These varieties are heading into dormancy as soil temperatures drop. Growth slows dramatically, so you won’t need to mow as often.

The AAA Tip: Raise your mower blades! Leaving the grass a bit longer increases the leaf area, allowing it to capture more of the limited winter sunlight to produce energy.

For Cool-Season Turfs (Fescue): These lawns are actually in active growth right now!

The AAA Tip: Keep mowing them to a height of about 4 to 5cm until shoot growth completely stops. Letting cool-season grass get too long and “matted” over winter creates a damp, shaded environment where fungal diseases love to spread.
2. Hold the Fertiliser (Usually!)

It’s tempting to throw down some fertiliser to perk up a dull winter lawn, but for dormant warm-season grasses like Kikuyu and Couch, it’s a waste of time and money. As the sap flow has practically stopped, the grass simply can’t absorb the nutrients.

The AAA Solution: Fescue lawns are the exception! They respond beautifully to frequent, light applications of Potassium nitrate in June. But be careful – Fescue is highly intolerant to phosphorus (the “P” on the fertiliser bag). If you’re unsure what your lawn needs, let our experts assess your turf and feed it the exact, safe blend it requires.
3. Melt Away the Morning Frost
Those crisp, icy Adelaide mornings might look beautiful, but heavy frost can “burn” the grass leaf and cause your lawn to lose its green colour much faster.
The AAA Tip: Try setting your sprinklers to run for just one or two minutes first thing in the frosty morning. The tap water is actually warmer than the frost, which helps melt the ice quickly and maintains a slightly higher soil temperature.
4. Evict Turf from Your Garden Beds
Sometimes, the most annoying weed in your garden is actually your own lawn! Grasses love to creep into garden beds over the year, flourishing around young trees and stealing their energy. While standard weed killers like glyphosate work wonders in summer, they become incredibly slow and less effective during the cold winter months when weedy plants are near dormancy.
The AAA Solution: Don’t waste a freezing weekend fighting a losing battle against creeping grass. We use specialised, commercial-grade chemical blends designed specifically for cold-weather weed control. We can efficiently eradicate invasive turf from your garden beds without harming your surrounding plants.

Need help managing your winter lawn?

Winter lawn care is all about precise timing, correct identification and knowing exactly what your specific turf needs. If you’d rather stay warm inside while the professionals handle the frosty mornings, the team at AAA Lawn Services is ready to help.

From Rose Park and Marion all the way down the coastline to Sellicks Beach, we provide expert mowing, targeted weed control and custom winter care programs.