Apologies in advance for this very long post, I don’t know if it’s knowledgable enough but here’s here’s my tuppence worth anyway.
I can’t see an awful lot wrong with your methodology but there’s some problems. Firstly, it’s going to be bloody hard work. Sieving, or riddling, as we call it in my area, is a slow backbreaking chore that resides pretty far down the list of jobs I’ll willingly undertake. Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and remove the bad stuff before adding the good. Even if that means getting rid of some of the imported soil. A very wise man once told me that when buying topsoil to check it first before they dumped it because there were a great many cowboys out there who’d sell you any old rubbish. It’s a very common thing for people to get the stuff laid and only discover it’s rubbish after the supplier has trousered the cash and rode off into the sunset. I’m sorry if this has happened to you, you’re not alone and it’s the kind of thing that gives landscapers a bad name.
I don’t know what the levels are like in your garden but at the risk of stating the obvious you’ll be raising said levels when you add sand and compost. This might have a knock on affect for other things. You do not for example want to bury the bottom of your fence spars in soil because they’ll rot quicker. Nor do you want it above the level of your pavers because that’ll happen naturally over time anyway so you may need to re-lay them to raise them up.
When levelling the ground try and acquire a landscape rake if possible because it’s much wider than a standard rake and makes levelling much easier.
Buy your seed from a reputable supplier, there are many online and most will sell small quantities. You’ll find very good guidance for the type of mix and amount youll need, probably an amenity mix with a lot of rye grass in it. When you get your seed give the bag a good shake to mix it up because different varieties of seed are heavier than others so heavy tends to make its way to the bottom of the bag as it jiggles about in lorries etc.. You don’t want to be planting swathes of the same variety in big patches so shake em up.
Once your grass is up you need to have discipline and keep the kids off it (good luck with that 😂😂) to let it thicken up. Play areas get a real kicking because they don’t get days or seasons off and don’t have a team of groundsmen looking after them. The ground becomes compacted particularly where the soil is claggy and there’s no way of overseeding effectively while it’s being used.
It’s only a suggestion but there are alternative ground coverings to children’s play areas eg. forest bark or recycled rubber tiles and they all have their pros and cons. They’re maybe not as nice looking as grass but they might save you a lot of work. Sometimes sitting back and looking at a problem from a different angle can provide good solutions.
I don’t know if any of that leaves you any further forward but I wish you the best of luck.
My soil is clayey and I sowed thickly and it's fine. I'm the gardener, my OH is not but as we were seeding the pond he'd dug 30 years ago and filled in 3 years ago and he had the 'Expert' book on lawns, I let him run the show. We topped off with bought-in loam, foot shuffled to firm, lightly raked, used twice the amount of seed shown on the box and finished off with a light going over with lawn rake and used a plank to tap down. Watered using a fine spray. Weeds did come up but judicious plucking took care of them. It still looks different from the rest of the lawn but who cares. @thezealleys7wq9IJP Welcome to the forum and please try to ignore Mr Mow.
TLDR, no seriously, you admit your post was long. I didn't read thoroughly but have skimmed.
My first heading suggestion would be: Planning
1. Objectives: Drop the "perfect" go for "compromise".
2. Budget: Cash plus your personal labour input. (£2000 on a £200k house is 1%. Think what doing the project well will do for a future house sale. Think what not doing the project might knock off. Think in terms of summer holidays spend, or gym and golf club membership.)
3. Time: Yesterday? This summer? Next Summer?
location: Surrey Hills, England, ex-woodland acidic sand. "Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
The usual charming reply @MrMow. If you want to help people then do so, but lay off the endless broken record snarky comments to other people. It's the reason many people have reported you in the past. It's quite interesting that it's always me you target, and not others [including on other threads] when they say much the same thing. I think it's time for the ignore button for me now. If you dislike everything I say so much, you can always do the same. Have a nice day
It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word....
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
1) Spray more or less everything with glyphosate to robustly kill the couch and other weeds (which is going to make me for my new grass - bless it, it's trying its best - but I don't think Neo's amazing xanthan-thickened-Weedol trick is viable for the amount of couch I've got coming up);
2) Dig up and sieve all of the soil, probably with a rotary riddle, to remove as many stones (and remaining large chunks of clay/chalk, of which there are a fair few in the zone not yet tackled at all, which also had the least new soil added) as possible, going down to the working depth of an electric tiller;
3) Bring in some sharp sand and quite a lot of compost, and till that in thoroughly across the whole garden;
4) If 2 and 3 go unexpectedly quickly, wait at least several weeks post-glyphosate for it to degrade in the soil;
5) Water regularly and heavily to try to build up as much moisture as possible in advance of sowing;
6) Re-rake in autumn to till the top few inches, sow new seed;
7) "Integrate" the seed using tiny circular motions with a fan rake, instead of light sweeps with a soil rake as I've been doing to date, to try to avoid it growing in lines with patches between them;
8) Flatten down with the walk-along-a-plank method again;
9) Water using an even gentler method (the mist setting on the hozelock head), and hopefully less frequently (if I've been able to build up some moisture in the soil beforehand), again in the hope of avoiding disturbing the seed distribution.
1) No. Or no, no, no ... Couch will be killed by mowing. Other weeds will arrive later anyway. 2) No. Too much hard and unnecessary work. 3) & 4). Yes, but. 5) You can overwater. Natural rain should have done enough. Only the surface for new seed will need a little topping up. 6) & 7). I hope we can save the current germinateed seed. 8) No. For playing tennis you ned a firm surface walking all over on your heels will achieve this. With raking inbetween walks. 9) Yes. But once germinated and rooted the seedlings should not move.
I hope this post was in time to stop precipitate action.
re Budget. In the future when the grass is growing and the children are playing, giving the lawn a rest from time to time is important. I recommend boarding school.
location: Surrey Hills, England, ex-woodland acidic sand. "Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
Firstly, many thanks to all but one of those who have offered comments and advice! I'm very pressed for time today and will not have a chance to respond to everyone, but I am digesting your suggestions
MrMow, you criticise fairygirl for the information she offers and yet your own remarks are largely without substance and certainly lack any evidence that you have read my query with remotely the care she evidently has. Kindly troll elsewhere!
You only have an hour after posting to edit. It's the little cog wheel top right of your post that's the edit button
Thank you for the tip!
Clay is harder to deal with if you don't amend it first to make it freer draining. Any stones bigger than about 10mm are a bit too big, but anything of that size and smaller helps drainage too. You don't really need to have set amounts of sand/compost either, Just mix in as much as you want. Make sure the sand is really gritty stuff if you use it though - not the stuff for making concrete, for obvious reasons
Appreciate the guidance on stone size!
It would be very helpful to have some idea of what might constitute a sensible ratio of sharp sand:compost:existing soil, although I appreciate it's probably hard to guess that from a few photos. Perhaps it would be sensible to cordon off a small area and do some experiments? Although I'm not sure I'd know what end result I'm looking for...
I don't mind ordering bulk bags (heaven knows we've had enough of them sitting around the property for the past two years) but as mentioned I'd rather minimise the weight the new steps are subjected to, insofar as possible.
There's no need to worry too much about firming the soil either once you've added all that - just rake and firm it lightly, and let it settle before lightly raking and sowing seed. The seed needs to have good contact with the soil though.
That's interesting, thank you. The question of whether or not it's necessary to firm again after sowing is probably the one I've found the most contradictory opinions on - I think I assumed it would help keep the seed from wandering around too much (and/or being too tempting to passing birds), but I'll try skipping that for the next section and see what difference it makes.
Your climate is also a factor with how well grass does. In wetter parts you rarely have to water, if at all, if seed is sown in spring. In dry areas, that's more difficult and will need decent watering in the first few months, especially if sown in spring going into summer, and it's also better to keep the grass longer if that's the case ,so that you don't have a brown lawn rather than a green one.
We're near Newmarket in Suffolk, which these days seems to be a fairly dry area - especially over the summer months. Fortunately I work from home, so keeping the soil watered regularly isn't an issue.
I took the following photo just now to illustrate the difference between the soil after a few hours of sun, versus freshly watered. And today has only been around 17º - if this year is anything like last, we'll get to mid-to-high 30s by late June...
Sow more thickly than you think you'll need - do it in both directions too, to ensure a decent coverage. You can resow bits in autumn if there are gaps, and if the soil's not draining too well, you can do the aerating process in spring with a fork or one of the hollow time rakes which remove a plug of soil. You then brush in grit or that coarse sand.
I exceeded the recommended seed quantity for a new lawn (per the bag) by about 25%, would you say that's still insufficient? I will definitely aerate in autumn, if not sooner, if I don't do a full dig-out-and-amend process this summer (as some other posters seem to be suggesting I not).
Bear in mind that if you have children playing on it regularly, it's not worth doing too much. They wreck it quite quickly
They're quite young and both seem to be rather gentle souls, so I'm hopeful it will have time to gain a bit of strength before they do - but certainly, I do expect to have to do some end-of-summer repair each year. This is a large part of why I'm resisting my innate urge to be super-perfectionist about the result, though
If you do any weedkilling just now, you'll have to wait a little while before sowing seed, and also - even if you did it soon, it'll be wrecked quite easily if you start using it over summer, so it's probably better to wait until later in the year to start sorting it out.
The early weedkilling step was based on the assumption I'd be giving up on this iteration of the process entirely, accepting no lawn at all this summer, and starting over in autumn. I'm starting to lean back towards instead trying to salvage what we've got already, in which case I will definitely not be poisoning anything in the near term.
I'd never heard of "Seeds [are] treated with Aqua Gel technology for improved germination".
Not sure that extra "gel" was needed; why not go for "normal" lawn seeds?
Honest answer: I had approximately twenty minutes in Wickes, with a one-year-old riding in the trolley, to purchase everything I needed for this exercise (tools and seeds). I picked the option for seeds that sounded like it was the most tolerant to limited time and effort, and which claimed to produce a hardy result regardless of insolation (the central zone of our garden gets direct sun nearly year-round, but a good third of it is shady for most of the day except in high summer).
Also, I will confess that until I started reading around this forum, whilst I was aware there were many species of grasses I didn't realise there were meaningfully different kinds of lawn grass - thought it was all the same stuff so seeds + extra coating to help them survive erratic watering/dubious soil quality seemed unambiguously better than seeds without.
As in many things gardening, soil preparation is essential, and also taking your time... You should probably have waited until this Autumn before sowing...
I'd have loved to have been able to do that (and indeed to do a lot more research in advance) but it is a recurring feature of my life at present that I either press very hard to do a given task just barely well enough, or accept it won't get done for years I really did want to give the girls somewhere to play this summer, and a realistic assessment of available time said that meant getting started ASAP without giving in to my pre-parenthood preference to plan in great detail before taking any action.
You write "There's a significant amount of clay in the soil (although the newly-added stuff is not as bad as the original ground was)." "Not as bad" is rather vague; do you mean it was kind of "bad"? in what way? Again, newly added stuff takes some time to settle in, and you should have given it more time... What is that stuff made of? Where does it come from???
When I was raking over the earth (to a depth of a few inches, in what I hoped would suffice to skip the other instruction from the seed packet to cover the entire area in several inches of their very expensive proprietary topsoil mix), I noted that the newly-added soil is much less sticky and forms much smaller chunks than the old. It still forms a crust on top pretty briskly, but not such a hard one; I'm pretty sure the clay content is meaningfully lower.
I honestly don't remember where our groundworker said he got the added earth from - it was a local dealer he has a good relationship with, and who were able to provide what he rated as decent soil for ~40% of the price major-brand stores in the area were charging. (We were by that point something like £15-20k over our original total budget for these works, and trying very hard to control further costs. I do have a really good history with said groundworker, by the way; I honestly don't think he intended to screw us, although he may have been pushing the limits of his expertise.)
A final thought, your picture #2 shows a very badly drained soil. When it rains over it, how is the rain expected to flow through it or away from it? Do you have drains somewhere?
There is a really big soakaway right in the middle of the lawn, but it's quite deep (~1m, because it had to catch drains from the passageway floor, which is for the most part a good couple of feet lower than the garden). The puddle in that photo is more or less on top of it, ironically. I suspect the intervening soil is too compacted, especially to the left of the level-guide planks running down the centre line, to allow water to penetrate anywhere near that far.
Other than that there is a gully along the right-hand fence (between it and the concrete gravel boards installed to support the increased soil level without burying the bottom foot or two of said fence), and a partial Aco drain at the rear wall of the extension, where water could overflow to if the soil level were as flat as I'd hoped it would be (I confess I didn't anticipate the problem, I naively thought water would in general just soak into dirt). The left-hand side of the entire plot is a brick wall, the rear is fenced.
I have never seen drains in a lawn though - am I misunderstanding your question?
Don't despair, lawns can be established, but you do need to re-think the soil condition and to be patient.
Bon courage, as we say in French!
When you say "re-think the soil condition", can I consider that a vote in favour of "start over, amend the soil thoroughly and try again in autumn"? I'm trying to distil the answer to that from each post, since it's the thing I most urgently need to decide...
Posts
I don’t know what the levels are like in your garden but at the risk of stating the obvious you’ll be raising said levels when you add sand and compost. This might have a knock on affect for other things. You do not for example want to bury the bottom of your fence spars in soil because they’ll rot quicker. Nor do you want it above the level of your pavers because that’ll happen naturally over time anyway so you may need to re-lay them to raise them up.
When levelling the ground try and acquire a landscape rake if possible because it’s much wider than a standard rake and makes levelling much easier.
Once your grass is up you need to have discipline and keep the kids off it (good luck with that 😂😂) to let it thicken up. Play areas get a real kicking because they don’t get days or seasons off and don’t have a team of groundsmen looking after them. The ground becomes compacted particularly where the soil is claggy and there’s no way of overseeding effectively while it’s being used.
I don’t know if any of that leaves you any further forward but I wish you the best of luck.
We topped off with bought-in loam, foot shuffled to firm, lightly raked, used twice the amount of seed shown on the box and finished off with a light going over with lawn rake and used a plank to tap down. Watered using a fine spray. Weeds did come up but judicious plucking took care of them. It still looks different from the rest of the lawn but who cares.
@thezealleys7wq9IJP Welcome to the forum and please try to ignore Mr Mow.
My first heading suggestion would be: Planning
1. Objectives: Drop the "perfect" go for "compromise".
2. Budget: Cash plus your personal labour input.
(£2000 on a £200k house is 1%. Think what doing the project well will do for a future house sale. Think what not doing the project might knock off. Think in terms of summer holidays spend, or gym and golf club membership.)
3. Time: Yesterday? This summer? Next Summer?
"Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
I think it's time for the ignore button for me now.
If you dislike everything I say so much, you can always do the same. Have a nice day
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
2) No. Too much hard and unnecessary work.
3) & 4). Yes, but.
5) You can overwater. Natural rain should have done enough. Only the surface for new seed will need a little topping up.
6) & 7). I hope we can save the current germinateed seed.
8) No. For playing tennis you ned a firm surface walking all over on your heels will achieve this. With raking inbetween walks.
9) Yes. But once germinated and rooted the seedlings should not move.
I hope this post was in time to stop precipitate action.
re Budget. In the future when the grass is growing and the children are playing, giving the lawn a rest from time to time is important. I recommend boarding school.
"Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
Cricket and lawn tennis are played on grass roots.
"Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
I would start a soil investigation by digging a 2 spit deep hole (perhaps several) and seeing what is down there.
On Beechgrove recently they were digging down to sort out a drainage problem caused by compaction.
"Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
MrMow, you criticise fairygirl for the information she offers and yet your own remarks are largely without substance and certainly lack any evidence that you have read my query with remotely the care she evidently has. Kindly troll elsewhere!
It would be very helpful to have some idea of what might constitute a sensible ratio of sharp sand:compost:existing soil, although I appreciate it's probably hard to guess that from a few photos. Perhaps it would be sensible to cordon off a small area and do some experiments? Although I'm not sure I'd know what end result I'm looking for...
I don't mind ordering bulk bags (heaven knows we've had enough of them sitting around the property for the past two years) but as mentioned I'd rather minimise the weight the new steps are subjected to, insofar as possible.That's interesting, thank you. The question of whether or not it's necessary to firm again after sowing is probably the one I've found the most contradictory opinions on - I think I assumed it would help keep the seed from wandering around too much (and/or being too tempting to passing birds), but I'll try skipping that for the next section and see what difference it makes.We're near Newmarket in Suffolk, which these days seems to be a fairly dry area - especially over the summer months. Fortunately I work from home, so keeping the soil watered regularly isn't an issue.
I took the following photo just now to illustrate the difference between the soil after a few hours of sun, versus freshly watered. And today has only been around 17º - if this year is anything like last, we'll get to mid-to-high 30s by late June...
I exceeded the recommended seed quantity for a new lawn (per the bag) by about 25%, would you say that's still insufficient? I will definitely aerate in autumn, if not sooner, if I don't do a full dig-out-and-amend process this summer (as some other posters seem to be suggesting I not).They're quite young and both seem to be rather gentle souls, so I'm hopeful it will have time to gain a bit of strength before they do - but certainly, I do expect to have to do some end-of-summer repair each year. This is a large part of why I'm resisting my innate urge to be super-perfectionist about the result, though
Also, I will confess that until I started reading around this forum, whilst I was aware there were many species of grasses I didn't realise there were meaningfully different kinds of lawn grass - thought it was all the same stuff
I'd have loved to have been able to do that (and indeed to do a lot more research in advance) but it is a recurring feature of my life at present that I either press very hard to do a given task just barely well enough, or accept it won't get done for years
I honestly don't remember where our groundworker said he got the added earth from - it was a local dealer he has a good relationship with, and who were able to provide what he rated as decent soil for ~40% of the price major-brand stores in the area were charging. (We were by that point something like £15-20k over our original total budget for these works, and trying very hard to control further costs. I do have a really good history with said groundworker, by the way; I honestly don't think he intended to screw us, although he may have been pushing the limits of his expertise.)
There is a really big soakaway right in the middle of the lawn, but it's quite deep (~1m, because it had to catch drains from the passageway floor, which is for the most part a good couple of feet lower than the garden). The puddle in that photo is more or less on top of it, ironically. I suspect the intervening soil is too compacted, especially to the left of the level-guide planks running down the centre line, to allow water to penetrate anywhere near that far.
Other than that there is a gully along the right-hand fence (between it and the concrete gravel boards installed to support the increased soil level without burying the bottom foot or two of said fence), and a partial Aco drain at the rear wall of the extension, where water could overflow to if the soil level were as flat as I'd hoped it would be (I confess I didn't anticipate the problem, I naively thought water would in general just soak into dirt). The left-hand side of the entire plot is a brick wall, the rear is fenced.
I have never seen drains in a lawn though - am I misunderstanding your question?
When you say "re-think the soil condition", can I consider that a vote in favour of "start over, amend the soil thoroughly and try again in autumn"? I'm trying to distil the answer to that from each post, since it's the thing I most urgently need to decide...
Also, thank you for the comments!