Sowing a lawn

[Broondog]

Hi, I've just moved into a new house and am creating a new lawn to the front of the property.

Help.

Its block paved just now and its getting relocated to the back yard (see my other post!)

Where do I start? Am I best to leave it until next yera?

Whats the sowing vs buying grown turf debate?

I need all the help I can get including indicative places to get the best value ingredients as I'm a novice. Im scared my neighbours will laugh at my limp lawn if I get it wrong!

 

[JohnD]

If you've just moved house, it might not be the most urgent of your things to do. It is labour intensive rather than expensive (unless you insist on buying fine turf). If you are fairly strong but not used to digging and raking, then as well as aches and pains you may cause yourself injury by working too hard. Gardening injuries can be quite nasty and not too good to brag about. I have had tendon damage in my arms through over-enthusiastic gardening (not recently)

probably under the paving you will find lumps of concrete, bricks, diesel spills and hard subsoil. Also, once you have dug it over, it will benefit from being left for a few months to settle while you keep raking it flat.

Having done it a couple of times myself, I would suggest that after you have cleared and dug it, and given yourself at least 150mm of sifted, gritty soil (how you prepare it depends on what your existing soil is) level it as best you can, apply weedkiller, and a thick layer of organic mulch, and put pot plants on it. This will enable the humps and hollows to appear underneath, but it will look fairly tidy. Also any perennial weeds will display themselves so you can deal with them. When you are ready to seed, rake off the remaining mulch that has not rotted down and been taken into the ground by worms, and re-level the surface using sifted soil and coarse sand (unless you have sandy soil naturally) and treading it down.

If you feel the need to hire a cultivator, it will tend to make the ground settle very unevenly with ridges. You will have to rake and tread these flat several times over a few months as it re-settles.

It is useful if you have your own cat, as it will keep its own garden tidy and will fend off intruder cats.

You can certainly leave it the rest of the year, and start work again in spring.

 

[dander]

It's not the best time of year for new lawns - whether you go with turf or seed, you'd be better to wait until the autumn to tackle the job - especially if the weather continues as dry as it's started this summer.

When I did a similar job to you I looked into both grass and turf and discovered that even if you use turf you still have to do a lot of work to get the ground prepared and levelled in the first time - there's no real advantage in terms of effort, only in terms of speed of green. I plumped for seed because it's cheaper and there's more choice of type of seed to get a lawn that's suited to your specific conditions - dry or shady or boggy or whatever.

What you need to do is very much going to depend on what's under your paving - I'd suggest starting by lifting a bit of it and looking at what kind of base you've got and how much of it. If it's been laid as a driveway with a serious sub-base, then there's going to be a lot of work to be done getting that out, and a lot of soil needed to fill back in. If it's just a thin layer of sand, then you could probably dig that into the soil and (depending on levels) just add a layer of topsoil to seed into or turf on.