Top Dressing Your Lawn with Topsoil for Winter.
Consider using lawn topsoil for top dressing: a great way to help your lawn through winter
Winter is an especially hard time for your lawn: frost, snow and wind can damage the leaves while lack of sunlight, saturated soil and dead leaf matter can all suppress growth and prevent drainage, causing rot. Growth slows, however poor conditions often prevent even light cutting. As a result, your lawn will often start spring looking patchy, wild, unkempt and unhealthy. There are a lot of reasons to look after your turf during the winter, with unpredictable conditions sure to prove a setback to your lawn. Topsoil top dressing one such way you can protect your garden from cold.
Top dressing your lawn can help protect it over the cold winter months and is best done in the autumn to give the dressing a chance to filter down into the topsoil.
The first thing you must do before applying a top soil top dressing is to tackle thatch and moss. Thatch and moss can cause damage to your turf by preventing it from getting the appropriate sunlight and nutrients.
By applying moss killer to the affected areas - usually under trees and bushes or in places where drainage is poor - you can easily kill it. Remove the dead moss by raking, which will also remove the layer of thatch that has formed from old clippings and other debris.
Once you have removed the moss and thatch layers, you need to improve the drainage before applying your top dressing. Improve the drainage by sticking a garden fork all the way into the ground, then maneuver it back out whilst tilting it backwards and forwards slowly. This creates air channels in the topsoil layer and allows water and air to get through, providing more effective drainage.
This needs to be done every 10cm on your lawn to provide adequate drainage for the entire area. This is very time consuming but you will be rewarded with a hardy lawn that will withstand the British Winter.
Once you have done this you can apply your top dressing. The best kind of garden topsoil to use for your lawn is one that is high in sand, as this will fill the air channels but still leave enough space for water to drain through to the roots in the topsoil. When choosing the top soil for your dressing, make sure that it will be compatible with the topsoil the turf is rooted in. If you use topsoil that won't blend well with your current topsoil then you will not see any benefit to this technique.
It is important to use loose topsoil as this will easily fall into the air channels you have made without have to be compressed. You can buy bulk bagged topsoil and other loose topsoil varieties from Topsoil Shop online. Only a thin layer topsoil is required to be successful, you only need to ensure that there is enough dressing to fill all the drainage holes with topsoil. Too much topsoil in the dressing could have an adverse effect. Lawn topsoil should not obscure the lawn or appear thick or lumpy- ideally only a very fine layer of soil should be used. When dressing your lawn, topsoil should be screened and kept as light as possible.
Once you have completed your top dressing, boost your lawn's chances by adding a feed to it. Be wary of using spring feed mixtures as these promote softer, leafy growth which will have a negative effect on the lawn in the colder months. Instead use an autumn fertiliser mixture which contains a high amount of phosphate and potash to promote string, healthy roots going into winter.
Lawn topsoil for topdressing is available from our shop and can be delivered straight to your garden from our network of farms.
Contact our team today to learn more about the benefits of lawn topsoil dressing or read more about top dressing on our blog.
