|
Did you know that top dressing your lawn is one way to guarantee its thick, green and healthy growth? Top dressing lawn means adding a thin layer of soil –preferably your own ‘home-mixed’ soil. Another option is to purchase high-quality top-dressing mixture or bagged lawn soil. Here’s how to do your own mixture.
Mix loam and sand with high quality peat– this is preferred to compost which may contain weeds which may invade your lawn. The proportion of the 3 ingredients varies depending upon the dominant type of soil in your garden. If you have loam soil, mix 3 parts loam to 3 parts sand to 1 part peat. For clay soil, increase the amount of sand and decrease the amount of loam. Top dressing lawn with sand entails reducing the amount of sand. Before mixing your ingredients make sure that they are dry for them to mix well. Take note that your sand should be free of lime – never use sand that came from the sea or ocean.
Your top dressing mixture should be very fine for easily penetration through the soil in your garden. You may, thus, want to use a garden sieve or soil sieve with ¼” mesh hole in this regard. Be sure to evenly spread the mixture over the whole area of your lawn. Why? Because none of the top dressing should stay in the surface – they should seep deeply into the soil.
Top Dressing Lawn Basics - Why Top Dress Your Lawn
Over time, top dressing builds up the quality of your soil to stimulate the growth of new grass – and prevent it from the invasion of weeds and moss. Top dressing increases the capability of sandy soil to retain moisture and makes it resistant to drought. Clay soil drains better, improving the growth of the roots of your grass.
Top dressing also smoothens out rough surfaces in your garden and evens out lumpy areas for a more pleasing garden experience.
Top Dressing Lawn Basics - When Do You Top Dress Your Lawn
Top dressing is ideally done after the lawn had been aerated - meaning that top dressing should be done at least once a year. The best time to do top dressing is either during spring or early fall. You have the choice of top dressing in stages or you can do it one time. If you are a meticulous gardener, you can top dress small patches as you find them.
|
Author Bio Box: Patricia Wainwright
Get all the facts about gardening for beginners and gardening articles at GreenThumbArticles.com!
Didn't really find what you were looking for?
|
|
|
| |
|
|
![[Valid RSS feed]](images/rss.gif "Subscribe to our XML Feed for RSS")
(Read 500+ times)
