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Lawn sand or dressing
madpenguin
Posts: 2,543
I had a new lawn laid last September but the weather has been so wet it is looking a bit patchy.
I am thinking of putting on a top dressing but don't know whether to use lan sand or a lawn dressing (balanced blend of sterilised loam, peat, silver sand and perlite).
Not a big lawn so 1 bag should be sufficient of either one.
Also when would it be best to apply it?
Any thoughts please.
“Every day is ordinary, until it isn't.” - Bernard Cornwell-Death of Kings
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It really depends on the type of soil you have: My lawn is a fairly heavy clay underneath and last year we had red thread and the grass became very patchy. We were using 'Green Thumb' to look after the lawn but they were becoming a bit ineffective and didn't listen to requests to 'Not' treat the front lawn and offered no solution to the 'Red Thread' so I did my own research, sacked Green Thumb, went online to RHS and treated the lawn myself with a nitrogen rich fertilizer, forked the entire back lawn with a border fork, then scattered a few bags of horticultural sand over it & raked it in. Lawn is looking much better now, all nice & lush green and ready for its first mowing of this year. John H
I would think then that just sand would be OK.As I said it is a brand new lawn with good new soil underneath though below that is clay that is like concrete in the summer.
It may mean a combination of the 2,dressing in spring and sand in the Autumn?
If you've laid a lawn on clay, even with topsoil on the clay and NOT improved the drainage first your'e going to be in trouble. You'll get hard pan in a good summer. The topsoil will dry out. Just adding lawn sand or dressings won't help anything.
Im also on heavy clay, and there is nowhere to drain excess water to. The clay is so deep that soakaways dont work, they just fill up with water and remain full.
The original lawn was laid as turves directly onto the clay with a smidgen of topsoil to level it off by the builders on the new estate.
The lawn was OK to start with but over the years I had patched,seeded,treated for leather jacket damage etc.
Last year I decided to get the whole lawn removed and replaced.The man who took up the old lawn said that there was a crust underneath!He removed the crust and about 4 inches of the subsoil and then rotovated underneath to break it up.Then he put on some nice new topsoil to get to the original level and then turfed it.It may not be perfect but it is certainly a lot better than it was before and I would like to keep it that way!