Growing Grass On Clay Soil

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Growing grass on clay soil.

The grass roots will work to break up and loosen the clay soil below. Once you re sure that your soil is good and healthy consider adding some earthworms to help keep your topsoil nice and loose. Aerators remove plugs of dirt from the lawn and break up the soil allowing grass roots to spread. Even though clay soil isn t good for growing grass you can set up a covetable lawn on this soil if you prepare it well.

In the first season or two after adding organic material to the soil you will want to take care when watering. Even where a clay soil contains for example 40 percent clay particles a relatively modest content compared to heavy clay soils the proportion of clay in the top cultivated part of the soil would have to be reduced by half to make the soil easy to work. Follow some basic steps to make grass grow in red clay soil and establish a lawn that is the envy of the neighborhood. A bone dry clay soil is going to be rock hard and not allow water nutrients to get into the rootzone when the temperature start to get cooler but before the leaves start dropping start by aerating your lawn followed by an over seeding of appropriate seed type and apply an organic fertilizer.

The key to planting grass in clay soil is to first amend the soil to make it looser drier and more fertile. Varieties that grow in a clay loam soil include annual ryegrass colonial bent grass hard fescue kentucky bluegrass. Because clay soil can become compacted easily place about 3 to 4 inches 7 5 10 cm of the chosen soil amendment on the soil and work it gently down into the soil about 4 to 6 inches 10 15 cm. Clay soil needs regular aeration to allow water and oxygen to move freely through it.

Plant cool season grasses as seed during the fall or early spring. Grass grown in clay soil requires less frequent watering than lawns grown on sandy soil. Aerate after the ground thaws when soil is moist not soaking and during the growing season. It can take up to two months of preparing the soil before you can actually plant your grass.

A good way to determine the soil s moisture content is by sticking a screwdriver into the soil to a depth. Heavy clay red or otherwise is inhospitable to most plant life but there are things that you can do to make sure that your property has a healthy green lawn. This would require 250kg per sq m 460lbs per sq yd of grit or gravel.