Want A Brilliant Lawn Next Summer? Autumn Is The Time To Start Top-Dressing
Summer is finally over and autumn is in full swing. As the temperature starts to cool, now is the perfect time to think about how to achieve a great looking lawn next summer. As a first-time homeowner, each season brings with it a set of tasks you can do to make sure your garden and grass looks amazing year-round. Consider these pointers about how top dressing your lawn now will lead to an envy-worthy lawn next summer.
What Is Top Dressing?
Top dressing is the method used to add good, nutrition-rich soil to your lawn so it grows stronger and healthier. Because you already have an established lawn, you only have two options to make to grow better. One option is to rip the old lawn up, lay down new healthy soil and then start your new lawn growth from scratch. The problem with this option is there will be very little growth occurring during the winter months. If you wait until spring to rip up the lawn, then your lawn will still be in its baby stages come summer.
The second option is to top dress your lawn now, in the fall. This method helps the lawn to reach a strong, healthy state by summer. Top dressing is the addition of a small amount of healthy soil to your lawn. Too much soil at once will suffocate the existing lawn, but just the right amount will lead to healthy grass growth.
How To Top Dress A Lawn
Top dressing will take a few hours of labour, but it is not particularly difficult to do if you follow these three steps:
- Aerate your lawn to allow extra oxygen to get into the soil. You can hire a powered aerator from your local hardware hire store. You walk over your lawn pushing this machine, and it puts holes into the ground thanks to spikes attached to a roller. These holes let the oxygen flow into the ground and the extra oxygen helps your grass grow.
- Purchase a top-dressing mix and have it delivered to your home. The best mix is a combination of sand, topsoil and peat. Talk to your local soil supplier to see what ratio they recommend for the area you live in.
- Apply the top-dressing mix to one small area of your lawn at a time. Apply a spadeful of top dressing mix to your lawn and spread it out gently using the back of a rake. The top-dressing should be spread out until you reach a level where the existing grass peeks through.
Once you have applied the top-dressing mix to the whole lawn, water it and then wait two days for the mixture to settle. After this time, you can go back and rake down any patches that are still raised up. Finally, order some grass seed and plant this in any noticeable bare patches.
Contact a soil and sand supplies store, such as Freds Lagoon Hardware, and get your top-dressing mix ordered now so you can get this task completed before winter arrives. By doing so, your lawn will look lusher and greener next summer.
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