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Lawn on clay soil
Rachel Kirkman
Posts: 2
in Talkback
The lawn in our garden has been laid directly on clay soil with no topsoil underneath. The ground is quite uneven and the condition of the grass gets worse every year with increasing amounts of moss etc. My questions is, would top dressing work to solve the problem or do we need to take the turf up, remove 4/5 inches of clay soil and replace with topsoil and then lay new turf? Obviously this option will be more expensive but I don't want to waste time and money on top dressing if this isn't going to solve the problem. I would appreciate any advice.
0
Posts
Rachel, clay is always a problem as you're finding out. Importing topsoil would be an expensive option. One method a client of mine did was to import several tons of pea shingle which he spread over the lawn then rotavated in. The result quite surprised me. It seemed the combination of shingle and broken turf, which subsequently rotted down gave exactly the same results as adding tons of well rotted manure and grit. Which when thought through is exactly the same process, but less expensive. It took a whole year to get to the point where he could then re turf it but it worked.
Obviously the classic route would be to carry out a programme of spiking and brushing in grit, which over several years improves the drainage.