To contribute to a healthy lush, green lawn, there are many aspects. Through scheduled watering, regular mowing, quarterly fertilizing, proper drainage, and seeding if necessary, the lawn can be well enhanced. To get your turf strong, green, lush, and soft, there are some other maintenance procedures you can do. In order to aid in the quest of the perfect lawn, we at Hometown Turf Lawn Care would like to shine some light on the benefits of lawn top dressing with this in mind.
Purpose of Lawn Top Dressing
Few know that to begin with, top dressing is essential. Being methodically applied to the surface of the lawn, the top dressing is a sand or pre-treated soil mix. Reducing thatch buildup by supporting decomposition, the thin layer, generally ¼ inch or less, of top-dressing materials are evenly applied for a variety of reasons, including smoothing the surface of the lawn. To help avoid winter desiccation, top dressing is ideal following treatments like seeding, over-seeding, or sprigging to protect early developing of plants as they get established. To speed the turf recovery, the top-dressing material filters into the holes opened during the aeration process. The composition of the soil used in the top dressing should closely resemble that of the soil sprouting your grass to reach maximum results.
Importance of Soil Profile
Top dressing can assist your efforts over the course of several years if you are looking to modify your soil profile. The top-dressing soil composition can differ from the composition of the current soil when undertaking this task. Being often either sand or sand-organic mixtures, are applied to high clay content, which are fine-textured soils, top dressing is often used in conjunction with core aeration, with a coarse-textured material. With the use of top dressing, it alleviates compaction problems and optimizes water, air and nutrient movement into the soil.
The top dressing for soil modification can have negative impacts instead of beneficial gain if not performed accurately. Throughout the entire process is to ensure the efficient consistency that maintains adequate water movement and encourage root growth, the same material determined for ideal top-dressing materials must be used.
Problems of DIY Lawn Top Dressing
Often the most common mistake that produces inefficiency, a fine-textured soil forming a layer on top of a coarse-textured soil. Before it absorbs into the bottom layer, the water’s ability to reach the turf-grass’ roots is hindered due to the fact that the water moves throughout the top layer of soil texture. Uneven depths of material across the lawn will emerge if the process of applying the top dressing is done poorly or inadequately among other additional issues. The impact the turf’s growth and the overall lawn’s aesthetics, water and nutrients will deter accessibility creating wet and dry areas. In addition to too frequent applications, the existing thatch layer can be buried by applications of excessive volumes of top-dressing material. We can potentially cause the roots grow into and within the thatch layer rather than extending into the soil profile, this can make the turf more susceptible to drought, heat and other such stresses if the soils is without proper aeration.
Lawn Top Dressing, Core Aeration & Other Landscape Services in Forsyth, Macon, McDonough, Locust Grove, Stockbridge, Barnesville, Thomaston, Milner, GA | Middle Georgia
Apply the perfect mixture so your lawn can reach its full potential and the beneficial gain if your lawn could use a lawn top dressing, contact the professionals of Hometown Turf Lawn Care and let our experts evaluate the soil and get the right top dressing.