A perfectly laid lawn has many contributors. Quarterly fertilizing, proper drainage, regular mowing, scheduled watering, and seeding if necessary are the primary examples. In order to get your turf strong, lush, green, and soft, there are some additional maintenance procedures you can include. To aid in the quest of the perfect lawn, we at Showplace Lawns would like to share the benefits of lawn top dressing.
What is Top Dressing Fertilizer?
Since most people do not know, understanding what is top dressing is a good place is to begin. Being methodically applied to the surface of the lawn, the top dressing is a sand or pre-treated soil mix. To smooth the surface of the lawn and decrease thatch buildup by supporting decomposition, a thin layer, generally ¼ inch or less, of top-dressing materials are evenly applied and for additional reasons. In order to help avoid winter desiccation and to protect early developing plants as they get established, top dressing is ideal following treatments like seeding, over-seeding, or sprigging. During the aeration process, the top dressing material filters into the holes opened, which recovers the turf faster. the composition of the soil used in the top dressing should closely resemble that of the soil sprouting your grass to reach maximum results.
Improve Soil Health
Top dressing can assist your efforts over the course of several years in the event you are looking to modify your soil profile. The top dressing soil composition can differ from the composition of the current soil when undertaking this task. With a coarse-textured material, being often either sand or sand-organic mixtures, top dressing is often used in conjunction with core aeration. It is applied to high clay content, which is fine-textured soils. With the use of top dressing, air and nutrient movement into the soil is the goal to alleviate compaction problems and optimize water. Instead of beneficial gain, the top dressing for soil modification can have negative impacts if not performed accurately. To ensure the efficient consistency that maintains adequate water movement and encourages root growth, the same material determined for ideal top dressing materials must be used throughout the entire process.
Top Dressing Mistakes for Lawns
The most common mistake that produces inefficiency is often fine-textured soil forming a layer on top of a coarse-textured soil. Due to the fact that the water moves throughout the top layer of soil texture before it absorbs into the bottom layer, the water’s ability to reach the turf-grass’ roots is hindered. Uneven depths of material across the lawn will emerge, as additional issues arise if the process of applying the top dressing is done poorly or inadequately. The turf’s growth and the overall lawn’s aesthetics is impacted by water and nutrient will deter accessibility creating wet and dry areas. In addition too frequent applications, the existing thatch layer can be buried by applications of excessive volumes of top dressing material. If the soils are without proper aeration, this can make the turf more susceptible to drought, heat and other such stresses and this can make the turf more susceptible to drought, heat and other such stresses.
Lawn Care Maintenance & More in Shady Hollow, Circle C, Dripping Springs, Buda, Sunset Valley, Manchaca, Oak Hill & Greater Southwest & West Austin, Texas
Contact the professionals of Showplace Lawns if your lawn could use a top dressing. To help you reach its full potential and the beneficial gain, our experts can evaluate the soil and apply the right top dressing mixture to help your lawn.
