Seed or Turf 400m2 garden

[iMCaan]

Hi.

 

We have hired a digger with a driver to excavate the top layer as it's overgrown and has rubbish.

 

Is it just a matter of levelling the top soil and adding some fertiliser before seeding or turfing?

 

Would it better to seed or turf (expensive) the large 400m2 garden?

Is this the September/October right time to seed/turf?

 

Thanks

 

 

 

 

[TheMitchells]

quite a  lot there - 

no it is not just a matter of leveling and adding fertiliser.  If you have used a digger, the soil will be very compacted where the wheels went and the grass there will not establish and grow very well.  If you want a nice lawn, then you really need to level, but then uncompact the soil - digging over the conpacted areas (by hand or with a machine), level with a rake, gently compress with your flat feet, rake again and then spread seed.  Turf is instant but quite expensive.  Seed is cheaper but will take the winter to establish.  

There are plenty of video's which show you how to do it.  

https://www.gardenersworld.com/how-to/maintain-the-garden/how-to-prepare-the-ground-for-laying-turf/

https://www.rhs.org.uk/lawns/lawns-from-seed

 

While it is a lot of work, you'll be looking at the lawn for a long time so it is worth doing it properly.  Good luck.

And now - September is the perfect time to do this! 

Edited Monday at 15:35 by TheMitchells

[nod]

We brought in 70 tons of new top soil and seeded it Similar area to yours 

[iMCaan]

Thank you. Will check out the videos later tonight.  I agree needs to be done properly. 

Photo from last year. It's well overgrown now.

 

Will be getting a digger to remove the top layer and levelling it before spreading the top soil. I take it there's two ways to spread the top soil, digger and manually using a wheel barrel?

What should be the depth of the top soil for seeding, 100mm?

 

I googled lawn seed and realised they come in a few varieties. What type would you recommend?

 

Thanks

 

Edited Tuesday at 08:09 by iMCaan

[Mr Punter]

Have a good sort through to separate and dispose of the asbestos, timber and building waste.  You may be able to burn the pallets on site.  You don't want a digger tracking through that lot.

 

There is a lot of prep needed.

[iMCaan]

Thanks, It's rubbish from our new self-build. There's no asbestos. There's a quite a lot of cardboard, wood, mdf and laminate and LVT flooring waste.

 

[Mr Punter]

That's good.  What are the corrugated sheets at the back?

[Thorfun]

5 hours ago, iMCaan said:

Will be getting a digger to remove the top layer and levelling it before spreading the top soil. I take it there's two ways to spread the top soil, digger and manually using a wheel barrel?

What should be the depth of the top soil for seeding, 100mm?

 

I googled lawn seed and realised they come in a few varieties. What type would you recommend?

 

Thanks

 

What’s your subsoil? We have clay underneath so spread 20T manure across the area and rotavated it in to the clay and then compacted and spread about 100mm of topsoil using a digger and the raked it level-ish, light compaction with a water filled roller, then raked the top, added a new seed fertiliser and then seeded with our seeds of choice. 
 

I had a long chat with ChatGPT about seeds specific for our requirements and ended up with a large variety of different seeds. About 1/3 rye grass for quick establishment, 1/3 tall fescue which does well in clay and dry conditions due to long/deep roots and the final 1/3 a mixture of other fescues and a small amount of bent grass. 

[Beau]

Our ground looked appalling but on the recommend of a friendly landscaper we seeded it up. Within a season a we had a lovely green lawn. Honestly I could not believe how well grass could grow on what was basically subsoil. 

[Bramco]

At 400m2 make sure you budget for a robot lawn mower - if you've prepped the ground well and the seed has established itself, then you'll forever have a lovely trimmed lawn.

 

No more looking out the window at the rain and a mop of grass thinking - I should have got round to it yesterday when the weather was good....

 

And it's great in the summertime on the patio with a GnT watching it trundle round doing it's thing.

 

It's one of our best investments - we have an acre with the house in the middle. The robot mower was half the price of a ride on which would have been the alternative.

[-rick-]

1 minute ago, Bramco said:

And it's great in the summertime on the patio with a GnT watching it trundle round doing it's thing.

 

Living the dream!

[Bramco]

Indeed, especially as I watch the neighbour trundling up and down on his ride on..   looking across at us with envy.    I wait until he's nearly finished before I offer him a cold beer....

[iMCaan]

Thank you all.

 

 

@Mr Punter I'm not sure. The photo is from the last year and I've had rubbished skipped on a few occassions. I've got a feeling it was off-cuts from the floorboards that we used in the loft.

 

@Thorfun I'm not sure but it's definitely not clay. It's a lot more sandy/gritty. According to AI, it could be sandy loam.
Interested you mention manure. I've seen a sign somewhere in the area (have to go for a drive to find it) saying take as much horse manure as you need for free. Could get that and dumped it on my site.

 

Can't wait to move in. 

 

 

[Kelvin]

17 hours ago, Bramco said:

Indeed, especially as I watch the neighbour trundling up and down on his ride on..   looking across at us with envy.    I wait until he's nearly finished before I offer him a cold beer....

 

Our plot is all over the place with slopes, terraces, a burn and a cliff etc so not convinced a robot lawnmower could cope. But cutting the grass on the ride on is my favourite chore. Headphones on, a beer in the caddy, and off I trundle for an hour. The bits I can’t get to the sheep take care of and I strim the steeper bit of the garden. I might eventually buy a robot mower though as strimming it will eventually become too hard. 
 

If you live in an area where there has been a prolonged dry spell and the grass all around you has gone brown consider planting drought tolerant grasses. Grass rarely dies due to drought as it’s very tough and recovers well. Robot lawnmowers are good because they mulch the clippings which is good for the health of the lawn. 

Edited 15 hours ago by Kelvin

[ProDave]

One thing I did when excavating for the digging is I scraped all the top soil off and put that in one huge pile, then all sub soil as trenches, treatment plant etc were dug in a separate pile.

 

The last job my digger did, before I sold it was first to spread all the sub soil to build up the lower parts of the site, then spread the top soil evenly over the whole site.  I finished it off by hand with a rake, mainly because by digger skills were not great, and to pick out stones on the surface.  Then seeded the lot.

 

Personally I think turfing is a lot harder, you would need to get the finished surface for turfing much more level and flat than just for seeding it.

 

I left a small pile of top soil for finishing the strip of garden over the burn, which was not accessible to the digger, so that was a "spare time" job taking it over in a barrow and spreading by hand.

 

I did NOT strip the whole site, just the but that was being built on.  And before spreading and seeding, anything left growing (weeds) were seen to with Gallup360 

 

Don't worry about the digger over compacting the soil.  That's the main point of a tracked digger, they are low ground pressure.

[Kelvin]

Our field was wrecked after the groundswork was completed. I levelled it out bit with a borrowed digger and just left it. It became overgrown but once I started cutting and strimming it I was surprised at how quickly the grass that had been left untouched took hold and spread. It was a grazing field prior to us buying it. It’s not a lawn thankfully so I care a bit less about what makes up the green stuff. 

[saveasteading]

34 minutes ago, Kelvin said:

mulch the clippings which is good for the health of the lawn.

Meadows are the way ahead. So much more interest, less work and better for nature.

Cut just once a year, very low, and all put in the compost heap.

Mulching is good for the the lawn but feeds the meadow too much.

Or have areas of both. Interesting flowers and grasses can be introduced.

Yellow rattle is a must.

Our small experimental area is now a favourite spot to sit. Leaving some lawn for kicking a ball about.

[Bramco]

The spoil from our footings went in a long pile/bank along one side of the plot behind the house. This has now been sown with wild flowers and is spectacular when they are all in full bloom.

 

Like @Kelvin ours was effectively a grazing field. The bits that were wrecked around the house we simply weed killed, rotivated a bit, raked out and seeded - looks great now.

[iMCaan]

Thank you all. 

Robot lawn mover it is (when I get there).

 

Just been looking at the cost of loose topsoil £45 per tonne, over £3k in total for 400m2x100mm=72.00 tonnes. Does this seem correct?

 

Thanks

[Thorfun]

6 hours ago, iMCaan said:

I've seen a sign somewhere in the area (have to go for a drive to find it) saying take as much horse manure as you need for free. Could get that and dumped it on my site.

we thought about approaching local stables to get "free" manure but then when we considered the cost to get it loaded and transported probably wouldn't have been much less than just buying it and getting it delivered! think 20T of manure cost us about £200.

[Thorfun]

4 hours ago, iMCaan said:

Just been looking at the cost of loose topsoil £45 per tonne, over £3k in total for 400m2x100mm=72.00 tonnes. Does this seem correct?

damn that's a lot! we paid £260 +Vat for 20T of top-soil (grade B). grade A was more expensive but it was just grade B mixed with manure which we didn't think we needed for a lawn, especially as we put manure in the subsoil.

 

i suggest phoning around. we got ours from a local muck-away company who processed their own top-soil through a machine that screeded to 8mm.

[Iceverge]

When the ground dries up level it with a mini digger. Rotovate with a tractor and scatter seeds by hand and roll. Make sure you do this preceding some moist mild weather. 

 

For drought resilience plant some deep rooting grasses like @Mr Punter says. Beware continuously cutting the grass too low as you'll impede root development and make it vulnerable to pests like leatherjackets and also drought. Keep it 6-10cm high if you can. 

 

Another option is to do what @saveasteading says and let it seed naturally and grow longer. You'll get a tremendous variation of native wildflowers (AKA weeds to the less enlightened) and they whole thing is quite pleasant really.  

 

 

[Thorfun]

8 minutes ago, Iceverge said:

Another option is to do what @saveasteading says and let it seed naturally and grow longer. You'll get a tremendous variation of native wildflowers (AKA weeds to the less enlightened) and they whole thing is quite pleasant really.  

or do as we're doing and have a mixture of both! part of the "garden" will be laid to lawn as i like nice stripes and a lush green lawn but other parts will be wildflowers to attract the wildlife and give us a lovely meadow-type thing to look at.

 

best of both worlds. 😉 

[saveasteading]

2 hours ago, Thorfun said:

best of both worlds.

I am also taken with some recent publicity on Beechgrove Garden and Gardener's World programmes of 'Prairie planting'. big area of daisy-like plants. I've got a few in pots that grow to 3 ft and flower for months...and produce hundreds of seeds.  Brilliant colours, but subtlety and texture is also possible. 

So it is cheap too, and maintenance is easy. The aim is to have swathes of colours and textures that look natural but dramatic too.

[Kelvin]

Turning the lawn over to a more general purpose mixture ends up being a lot less work in the long run I’ve found. I set the lawnmower to cut the grass but leave the low flowering stuff. I named our new lamb Thistle because of all the thistles on the bank plus he nibbles on them.