Boggy clay lawn help
gregshearer
Posts: 1
Hi All,
Very new to gardening after getting a new build house, I've aldo been given a massive garden to deal with too. Finally got grass growing which is an achievement itself. But noticing as winter is coming and rain is coming down how boggy the garden gets, water is laying in little parts but mainly it's just boggy and squelching.
I've looked a little and it is a clay type soil, so have tried digging holes at about 12 inches at three parts of garden. All holes I dug up seemed rather dry or damp, no puddles, I was going to fill it with water but ran out of light, so went out following morning to carry out test to see how it drained and it was full of water all of the holes. Obviously with rain last night it just filled the holes and not draining at all.
Any ideas on best way to go? Next plan I'm going to do is to get the lawn aerated and fill with sharp sand to try break up the soil.
Thanks in advance
Posts
There is no point doing anything now, so don't worry too much about this. You will not be able to work when clay-like soil is sodden which is most days now. In spring when temperatures begin to warm up, you can start mowing the areas on the highest setting and then begin raking and spiking.
Long term management will be slow. You will always need to spike and put down sand into the holes. Regularly top-dress the lawn to slowly build a nice top layer of loam soil. If you want to go deeper into the issues, you will need to peel back the top layers of lawn and then re-condition or even remove and import topsoil in. But all this must be done in dry spells where temperatures are a lot more warmer.
Last edited: 12 November 2017 11:36:21