Laying turf for new lawn

Hi

I've got my first garden. It's on a new build property and I'm looking to put down turf in the next couple of weeks. I live in the North West of England.

I've had the house for a couple of months and initllay neglected the garden a little. A considerable number of weeds grew and a few weeks ago I spent several hours hand weeding it, breaking the compacted surface of maybe 80% of the garden and removing any stones larger than a squash ball.

The soil doesn't appear to drain too well. It feels soft to walk on and clings to your boots like it's almost magnetc (very messy). I've jabbed it with a garden fork in the worst area, which seems to help.

I'm now ready to lay some turf. The plan is to hire a small rotavator to break up and mix in some kind of sand or fertaliser. Reapeat. Rake it. Then walk it flat before laying the turf.

I was looking at buying several bags of multipurpose compst from B&Q to chuck on the surface before rotavating http://www.diy.com/diy/jsp/bq/nav.jsp?action=detail&fh_secondid=10288013

Does this sound like the right stuff? Should I use some kind of sand in there?

How long can I leave the soil 'prepped' before I actually lay the turf?

Any suggestions of tips would be greatly appreciated.

Is it ok to order turf from B&Q?

Thanks

 

I returfed my lawn in May this year using rolawn medaliion turf which has turned out really well,i bought it from dobbies,they had a deal on i think it was 3 rolls for a tenner,which is still on,much better than b and q turf in my opinion.

With regards to soil quailty and wet patches,now is the best time to do something about it before you lay turf,you should consider draining or creating a small soakaway for the wettest areas.... If you feel the soil quailty is poor,you could always purchase some good quality top soil for the top 2 or 3 inches before you lay turf... rolawn also supply this or you can purchase from elsewhere...

Just remember when the turf is laid to keep it watered (rain water or sprinkler) for the first few weeks til the roots take...

Hope this helps...

 

If possible try to match the turf with your type of soil.

It sounds like you have heavy clay tpye soil and if you buy turf which has been grown on peaty dark soil or light sandy soil you are gonna definatly have problems with the lawn.

The root system will grow very happily in the soil it came with, but it really wont want to grow deep into your heavy sub soil, and it will grow along the top of it, which will end up thatchy and grow in a tight layer, so not producing good root system. This will need much mechanical work sooner than normal, in the form of scarifying and aeration.

You will be much better to source turf that is much more compatable with your soil type.

This will cost more to start with, but will save lots of money and hard work later.

Hope this helps.

 

Thanks for your responses. I'm going to order Rolawn medallion turf from their website and will be rotavating this weekend so long as the soil isn't too wet.

I tried to find some turf that was specifically for heavy clay solid but I couldn't find any references to it. Any suggestions?

The soil is slightly better since I hacked into it again with the garden fork. I'm going to see how it drains after the roatavating. It it doesn't improve I might try a couple of small a soakaways at either end of the garden. It is only a small garden though (4m x 7m & south facing). What's the smallest sized whole I could dig that would make a significant difference to the drainage?

On a side note, hostaholic's handle made me Google Hostas. I like them. I may well just get some.

 

So I did the rotavating this weekend, which seemed to go pretty well. The soil was heavily compacted and it took the little HSS tiller a few runs to get it broken up. I threw in some sharp sand and a bit of compost for good mesure, but I'm not sure it'll have done much.

I used a tarmac rake to level it and raked in on some lawn festirliser. I didn't bother treading it down as I'm not doing the turf until thursday.

As if to test my handywork we had flash floods the day after. During the downpour water still pooled a lot in some areas but drained within a few hours, which is not perfect but a big improvement.

When the rain stpooed, out of nowherer surfaced hundreds of small stones and bits of builders rubble. Now it looks like Brighton bloody beach. It turns out the rotavator had broken up the soil but also raised a load of small stones from beneath the surface.

I've no time or access to get a big delivery of topsopil so I'm going to by 12 x 25ltr bags from B&Q. I'll spend an hour removing rubble and hope to spread a fine layer over the soil. I worry that it's not going to go very far though. At £10 for 4 bags it's quite expensive too. Should I mix it with another large bag of compost (which only costs a fiver)?

 

Picking up the stones, as best you can, would be good enough I think.