Thinking about laying a new lawn?
Your soil preparation is the most important factor in successfully establishing and maintaining a new lawn. Whether it’s a new build or an old home, chances are the ground needs a bit of work to make it perfectly suitable for a new lawn to go down.
An unprepared area can suffer in the future from poor soil drainage, compaction, pH or fertility problems that could have easily been prevented.
We always recommend to leave lawn as the last thing to do on your construction list as heavy traffic is not recommend for the first 6-8 weeks.
Start by clearing your area of any weeds and debris – ideally, you want to start with a clean slate.
Any old lawn and pesky weeds will need to be poisoned to stop them from becoming an issue in the future.We recommend to use a non-residual glyphosate-based herbicide such as Eraze total.
Start digging
We recommend to remove around 150mm of your current soil base and replace with a good quality soil. Our favourite bases for lawn (depending on the amount of organics you would like) are either 80/20 sandy loam, Lawnhubs premium turf mix or Jeffries special soil.
TIP: Most lawns harvest between 30-40mm thick, so ensure to keep this in mind when levelling.
Fluff and level
You want to make sure your soil is nice and level so your lawn grows level. It doesn’t need to be perfect though, as your new lawn is likely to have undulating soil attachment due to the harvesting process. Uneven levels can be dealt with once established.
It also needs to be firm but not compact, so roots can penetrate the soil easily and water can be retained.
Check the pH
The pH of your soil can affect the success of your lawn as some essential nutrients become available or unavailable based on pH. For lawn, we are aiming for a fairly neutral pH of around 6-7. If you find your soil is further up or down the scale, there are ways to rectify it. For alkaline soils, sulfur is used to raise acidity and for acidic soils, lime is used to raise alkalinity.
Don’t forget your starter fertiliser
Even if you chose a soil high in organic matter and nutrients, it’s still a good idea to apply a starter fertiliser to the soil before laying the lawn. Lawn Launcher starter fertiliser is a blend of the 3 essential macronutrients used by plants to grow (NPK – Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium) with moisture magnet water crystals which can last for over a year in your soil.
Give us a call!
If you haven’t arranged your lawn yet, now is the time! Spring and Summer can be extremely busy in the turf industry, so it’s best to get a quote and book your order in advance where possible!
