When planning to establish a lawn, you have several options. The most convenient and fastest is laying turf. Unfortunately, it is also the most expensive option. Therefore, many people decide to sow grass. For this, suitable soil for the lawn is essential to provide the blades with the right conditions for proper development. Of course, not everyone decides to bring in new soil for the lawn and instead sows seeds directly into the existing garden soil. Each of these solutions has its pros and cons. What are they? Find out from our article!
Soil for the lawn
Turf vs. sown lawn
On the other hand, there is planning a lawn from scratch on the soil already present on the plot. If the earth is valuable and rich in nutrients, nothing stands in the way of sowing seeds after prior digging. This is, of course, the most budget-friendly solution as it uses the soil already on site. However, sometimes the soil on the plot is of low quality or heavily weeded, and the ground too stony to plan a beautiful and even lawn. In such cases, a simpler and faster solution is to bring in new soil for the lawn.
Source and quality of soil for the lawn
If we decide to bring in soil to the plot, we must find a suitable supplier. We can buy soil in specialist garden centres or online. Sometimes we can also obtain it from excavations.
You can use garden centre soil without worry. Usually, it is a special soil for the lawn with the correct pH and properties. For small gardens, this will be the best solution, but it is generally not cost-effective to bring in such soil for a plot of several thousand or several hundred square metres. You would need hundreds of such bags…
You can also get garden soil for the lawn online. Here, purchases are made in tonnes rather than kilograms, so it is a better solution if you have a large garden. Some suppliers provide access to soil quality tests. However, sometimes you do not know what you are dealing with or what is actually hidden in the purchased soil. It is similar when you bring in soil from an excavation or construction site yourself, or buy it from someone who has a lot of soil and wants to get rid of it. With this last solution, the low costs (sometimes you can even get such soil for free) are the biggest plus. However, you do not know if the quality of the soil for the lawn is sufficient.
Why is it worth testing the soil?
When buying soil for the lawn or using the soil already on the plot, it is always worth testing it for mineral content and pH levels. Why? Only optimal conditions will allow the blades to develop correctly, so that they form a thick and even green carpet. While the content of individual elements such as nitrogen, potassium, or phosphorus changes with the season, the soil pH level is constant and should be around 5.5–7.5.
Some garden centres provide the soil pH value, but this is not the rule. You can carry out a soil test yourself, even before transporting it to your plot. This will help you find out if it is worth investing in. However, even if you have already brought the soil to the plot and it turns out to be of low quality, you can still improve it. If the soil is too acidic, you should carry out liming, which means you need to regulate its pH level using a pH balancer – uptake improvement – Mr. Green Grass®. Usually, it is enough to perform this treatment once every 3–4 years.
Have you regulated the soil pH, but the grass isn’t growing? The cause might be an insufficient amount of micro- and macronutrients in the soil. In this case, comprehensive feeding will be necessary. You can handle this yourself, and valuable tips can be found in our article on lawn feeding. However, if you don’t want to spend time on it, you can order a Lawn Care Programme, and our specialists will do it for you!