How to Maintain and Clean Artificial Lawns

How to Maintain and Clean Artificial Lawns

Introduction – The Benefits of an Artificial Lawn

The Benefits of an Artificial LawnHere in the UK we all love to have a great looking lawn, but for a real lawn to always look good it means work and time, which not everyone is able to do or have. As we all know, the weather we have in the UK is so varied a grass lawn can be affected by a heatwave and long dry periods, heavy rain, snow and ice.

As a result, people are therefore turning to artificial lawns and they have been growing in popularity over the last few years. They appeal to a wide variety of people with their realistic look, practicality, time saving and the fact that they look good the whole year round and are usable, whatever the season. Families love them as kids can play whatever the weather and the bonus – no muddy wellies – nothing worse than having to clean muddy wellies every time it rains, and the kids have been in the garden.

Pet owners also love artificial lawns as there are no discoloured patches or having to water the patch of grass every time your pet urinates on it. Digging holes to bury bones or toys as well as muddy paws and having to wash your dog’s paws will be a thing of the past. Happy kids, happy pets, happy parents, happy pet owners, everyone is a winner!

People who may not be able to do as much physical gardening as maybe they used to, can have a beautiful lawn without the hard work of having to maintain and mow a grass lawn regularly.

There are many advantages to having an artificial lawn, but many people are asking about its ongoing maintenance. I have therefore written this helpful “how to guide” including tips and advice on how to brush and clean your artificial lawn, remove debris, moss and weeds, including my best product recommendations to assist you with this.

In a Hurry? Here are the Best Products for Cleaning Your Artificial Lawn.

Best Overall Electric Brush
Wolf Electric Artificial Grass Sweeper 380mm Garden Lawn Brush Rake...
Best Electric Mini Brush
GARLAND ROLL&COMB 141EUK-V20 - Electric Artificial Grass Power...
Best Manual Brush
Artificial Grass Brush Astro Turf Brush − Artificial Grass Broom...
Best Cleaner Disinfectant
Pro-Kleen Artificial Grass Cleaner for Dogs and Pet Friendly Cruelty...
Wolf Electric Artificial Grass Sweeper 380mm Garden Lawn Brush Rake...
GARLAND ROLL&COMB 141EUK-V20 - Electric Artificial Grass Power...
Artificial Grass Brush Astro Turf Brush − Artificial Grass Broom...
Pro-Kleen Artificial Grass Cleaner for Dogs and Pet Friendly Cruelty...
£142.94
Price not available
£29.99
£9.90
Best Overall Electric Brush
Wolf Electric Artificial Grass Sweeper 380mm Garden Lawn Brush Rake...
Wolf Electric Artificial Grass Sweeper 380mm Garden Lawn Brush Rake...
£142.94
Best Electric Mini Brush
GARLAND ROLL&COMB 141EUK-V20 - Electric Artificial Grass Power...
GARLAND ROLL&COMB 141EUK-V20 - Electric Artificial Grass Power...
Price not available
Best Manual Brush
Artificial Grass Brush Astro Turf Brush − Artificial Grass Broom...
Artificial Grass Brush Astro Turf Brush − Artificial Grass Broom...
£29.99
Best Cleaner Disinfectant
Pro-Kleen Artificial Grass Cleaner for Dogs and Pet Friendly Cruelty...
Pro-Kleen Artificial Grass Cleaner for Dogs and Pet Friendly Cruelty...
£9.90

Last update on 2024-03-19 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

Artificial Lawn Maintenance – What You Need to Know

Artificial Lawn Maintenance – What You Need to KnowMany people who have had an artificial lawn laid are not always made aware that it does require some care and maintenance or are not given advice on how to do this. Caring and maintaining it will help to keep it looking good, prevent unwanted damage and as an artificial lawn normally lasts between 7 to 10 years, help prolong its lifespan.

How much care and maintenance of your lawn is needed really depends on a number of different factors. Here are just a few:

  • What is surrounding your lawn – e.g. trees, shrubs, flowers?
  • How much sunlight / shade does the artificial lawn have?
  • Does it have heavy usage?
  • Are there objects such as garden furniture, play equipment on top of the lawn?
  • The season of the year?

Don’t worry, care and maintenance of your artificial lawn is nowhere near as difficult or time consuming as a grass lawn. I am here to help and guide you on the best way to care for your artificial lawn and give you tips to make this as easy as possible.

Top Tips for Caring and Maintaining Your Artificial Lawn

 Cleaning Your Lawn

As you know grass lawns love rain, but rain is also a great way to help clean your artificial lawn and is natural, cost free and requires no time or effort from you. There are occasionally times where your lawn will need cleaning, particularly in the summer months where there is less rainfall, usually higher usage, dust and pollen. Cleaning your artificial lawn is easy – just spray your lawn using a hose. You can use a pressure washer, but use it very gently, with care and from a distance as it may damage your artificial lawn. If your pressure washer allows you to allow the pressure or the jet, ensure this is on the lowest setting or widest jet. Older artificial lawns required kiln dried sand to make the grass stand up, and therefore cannot be pressure washed as this will blast the sand away. Most artificial lawns these days will not require this sand, and therefore can be gently pressure washed with no problems.

We love to entertain in our gardens, especially in the summer and sometimes the grass can become soiled. The best thing is to spray hose your lawn as soon as is practically possible. If the grass becomes stained from a food or drink spillage, the quicker you clean it up the easier it is to remove the stain. The same applies to bird poo as the droppings can become baked onto your grass, hence difficult to remove.

Removing Debris From Your Lawn

Removing Debris From Your LawnDebris on your lawn will not damage it, but it can result in weed growth or moss, especially in shaded areas or under trees. To keep your artificial lawn looking its best you should remove any debris from your lawn regularly. Allowing any debris to decompose and break down on your lawn may provide the ideal environment for weeds and moss to grow.

If you have trees, shrubs, flowers surrounding your grass it is likely that you will need to remove debris more frequently. If you are pruning in the spring or autumn and debris gets on the grass, remove it as soon as possible. In the summer, falling rose petals, bedding plants shredding their old petals may fall on the grass and again should be removed regularly.

Everyone loves Autumn and the beautiful leaves changing colour, but they can fall or be blown on to your lawn and may become wet and again will break down quickly providing a bed for weeds and moss. If you have pets removing pet hair from it regularly will help to prevent build up.

It’s easy to remove debris and doesn’t have to be time consuming. Depending on how big your garden is there are lots of products to help make this as easy as possible for you. Another factor is wind. If your garden is open to the elements or maybe you only have that one day only that you are able to work in the garden, there is nothing more frustrating than trying to rake or brush leaves when it’s windy. No sooner do you get them in a nice pile ready to collect up and along comes a gust of wind to blow them all over the place again, so please bear this in mind when you are considering products to help you with debris removal from your artificial lawn.

Note – do not use a broom or rake that has metal or wire bristles/tines as this will damage your artificial lawn.

Best Selling Artificial Lawn Brush

Last update on 2024-02-27 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

Cleaning a Small Artificial Lawns

Cleaning a Small Artificial LawnsIn the summer using a good stiff brush to remove petals and leaves off the lawn is all you need and is perfect for the job. In the autumn, if you have a lot of leaf fall onto your lawn I recommend either a specialist plastic artificial grass rake (under no circumstances use a broom or rake that has metal or wire bristles/tines as this will damage your artificial lawn) or leaf blower/vacuum. It is easier to remove the leaves when they are not soaking wet, so if it has been windy and raining and lots of leaves have fallen onto your lawn, leaving them for a few days will not harm the lawn, but try to remove any leaves or debris once a week during the Autumn season.

Alternatively, if you are not physically able to brush or rake the lawn a compact, lightweight electric artificial grass power brush would make this a lot easier or for even more ease a small lawn raker with a loading collection box to gather up the debris as you go. They are lightweight, easy to use and do the job quickly.

Cleaning a Medium Artificial Lawns

Removal of debris from medium size gardens can be done in exactly the same way as for small gardens, but this can be quite physical work. A small electric lawn raker that collects the debris for you is perfect. They are lightweight and quick and easy to use.

Cleaning a Larger Artificial Lawns

For larger gardens using just an artificial grass rake or leaf blower can be time consuming and quite physical. You will also see later on in this article the importance of brushing your lawn regularly and again with a large lawn this can be time consuming using just a manual brush. An ideal solution to help with both debris collection and brushing your lawn is an Artificial Grass Power Brush and Lawn Sweeper combined that includes a collection box, which will do both jobs for you simultaneously saving you both time, effort and storage space.

 Pet Hair Removal from Your Artificial Lawn

Pets love to roll around and lay on an artificial lawn and just like when they lay on a carpet their hair can become embedded in the artificial grass. To remove pet hair from the lawn a good stiff broom can be used, but may not pick up everything so a small lawn raker with collection box is a good option. For bigger size gardens the Artificial Grass Power Brush and Lawn Sweeper combined that includes a collection box mentioned above for collecting debris will also do the job for the removal of pet hair.

 Brushing Your Artificial Lawn

Brushing Your Artificial LawnBrushing your artificial lawn regularly is an important part of maintaining the just laid look. Once your artificial lawn has been laid, after time the fibres can slightly lean or become matted or flattened. Also, if you have heavy objects on your artificial lawn such as children’s play equipment or garden furniture this can make the artificial lawn flatten, so it is good to occasionally move these and brush your artificial lawn fully. It is very easy to brush your artificial lawn and bring the fibres back up to the upright position. Here is a guide on the best things to use to brush your artificial lawn.

Small/Medium Lawns – A stiff broom with synthetic bristles or a dedicated artificial lawn brush is great for brushing. Alternatively, if you are not physically able to do this or to save time a compact, lightweight electric artificial grass power brush can be used.

Larger Lawns – As mentioned above an Artificial Grass Power Brush and Lawn Sweeper combined that includes a collection box will both remove debris and brush your artificial lawn with ease.

Preventing Moss in an Artificial Lawn

The main reason moss accumulates on an artificial lawn is shade and lack of daylight. Moss loves shaded, wet, warm and moist areas. Artificial grass needs daylight to be able to dry out. If you have overhanging trees, branches or shrubs, prune back regularly to allow the daylight on to the artificial grass.

Moss also builds up where leaves or debris is left for long periods of time, so remove these regularly. Also check under any heavy objects such as garden furniture that are on the lawn as they have not seen daylight and can become moist and moss could grow there. Another reason for moss build up could be poor drainage, but if your artificial lawn has been laid correctly then this should not happen. All of this should help to prevent moss building up on the artificial grass.

Removing Moss from Artificial Lawn

Removing Moss from Artificial LawnIf moss has been allowed to accumulate on your artificial lawn it can be removed one of two ways. Using a pressure washer, you can gently blast the moss out and remove from the lawn. Just remember, as mentioned above too much water pressure could damage the artificial grass fibres, so you will want to ensure that the widest jet setting is used. If you find that the moss doesn’t want to budge, don’t be tempted to apply too much water pressure. If this is the case, you may be better to kill the moss first using moss / weed killer and then lightly pressure wash or brush out of the grass.

The second method is not to use the pressure washer at all, but to simply kill the moss using moss / weed killer and then gently raking or brushing it out. If you are fortunate enough to have a powered artificial grass brush, then this will make the process much easier.

Just remember, that moss will be killed off if the conditions become too dry or too cold. So if you simply don’t want to remove the moss from your lawn, a blanket of snow or deep frost will do the job for you. Just remember, to brush the dead moss from the lawn when possible.

Preventing Weeds in an Artificial Lawn

How on earth does artificial grass get weeds you might be asking yourself. How can it possibly grow in artificial grass? The good news is that very few weeds grow in artificial grass compared to a normal grass lawn, but artificial grass does occasionally get weeds. This can be where weed seeds have blown into the garden and onto the grass. Weeds also tend to thrive around the edges of artificial grass, so may occasionally need to be pulled out.

To prevent weeds from appearing, brush your garden regularly especially in the summer and after strong windy days to prevent weed seeds growing on the lawn. Applying a weed killer that is pet friendly and specially for artificial lawns either once or twice a year may help prevent any weeds popping through.

Best Selling Artificial Electric Lawn Brush

Last update on 2024-02-27 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

Removing Bad Odours from Your Artificial Lawn - Pet Urine

Removing Bad Odours from Your Artificial Lawn – Pet Urine

Although rain water and hosing your artificial lawn is adequate for washing away pet urine, the smell can still remain. The smell can be particularly noticeable in the summer, especially if you are laying or sitting on the grass or in warm damp weather when the smell will be stronger and linger more. Don’t worry, you can remove these smells very easily using a special artificial grass cleaner that disinfects and deodorises.  There many products available on the market, some have the added bonus of that “just cut grass” smell, similar to the smell of natural grass. Other fragrances such as lavender are also available, so you will be spoiled for choice. For most of these cleaning products, you simply need to dilute according to the manufacturer’s instructions and apply using a watering can with a rose nozzle or a manual pump sprayer. If there are areas that are heavily soiled just use the solution undiluted and scrub using a hard brush.

Now, I was very sceptical that these type of products would work and eliminate pet urine smells long term. Well, I was pleasantly surprised just how well the products actually work. I purchased the Pro-Kleen Artificial Grass Cleaner (Fresh Cut Grass) and mixed as per instructions (1 litre makes 10 litres when diluted) and covered my artificial lawn. The fresh smell was surprisingly good, strong and masked out the bad odour from the pet urine. A few days later, although the fresh smell had somewhat diminished, the bad urine odour was gone. I believe this is down to the disinfectant in the cleaner and I was really pleasantly surprised that it worked as well as it did. A great cost effective solution, for sure.

Best Selling Artificial Lawn Brush

Last update on 2024-02-27 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API

Conclusion

The easiest and best way to care and maintain your artificial lawn, is prevention. Prevention is not time consuming, and a little bit of time spent on prevention will save you a lot of time, work and possible costs in the future. The tips above will assist you in doing this and keeping your artificial lawn looking good all year round.

For more information on the best products to help maintain your artificial lawn, please see the list above.

Now, this may all sound like a lot of hard work, but believe me an artificial lawn doesn’t require nowhere near as much maintenance compared to a real lawn. What’s more you will be able to enjoy a clean, usable and perfectly manicured lawn all year around.

 

 

 

 

Lawnmower Product Expert, Reviewer and Author at EasyLawnMowing.co.uk | 01284 615144 | info@easylawnmowing.co.uk | Website | + posts

As a seasoned expert in the field of garden power tools, I have dedicated over a decade to working with and reviewing a wide variety of lawn mowers. My extensive experience has allowed me to gain a deep understanding of the benefits and limitations of different types of mowers and garden tools.

Over the years, I have honed my skills in writing informative articles and creating helpful videos for various blogs and publications. This has given me the ability to not only recognise what makes a good lawn mower, but also to help you choose the perfect garden tool for your specific needs and requirements.

With my wealth of knowledge and expertise, I am confident that I can provide you with valuable insights and recommendations when it comes to selecting the right lawn mower for your lawn. So, whether you're looking for a battery cordless, electric, petrol, or robotic mower, you can trust in my expertise to guide you towards the best option for your garden.

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