Having a lush lawn instantly makes your garden stunning; a green lawn is inviting and beautiful. But it is also very difficult to achieve. At least it could be if you didn’t have top dressing to create an incredibly green lawn. In our article, we’re going to look at what top dressing is and how it can benefit your laws so that you get the most out of it.
Benefits Of Top Dressing
Top-dressing a lawn has multiple benefits, and these benefits create a beautiful green lawn that is just begging for you to lay on.
Some of the benefits of top dressing a lawn include:
- Relief for soil that is too compacted for optimum growth.
- Top dressing can completely change the structure of the soil.
- It can reduce the risk of disease in your lawn.
- Creates an even and smooth grass terrain.
- Nutrients absorb better.
- The soil flora, which is the bacteria, fungi, and algae in the soil, increases. This makes the soil healthier.
- Reduces dead grass and other debris on the lawn.
- You can use less fertilizer.
- The soil can drain more easily.
- Because soil is healthier, weeds can be killed more easily.
- Grass will become greener and appear less matted.
These factors can impact your lawn quality massively, so as you can see top dressing can create the lush green lawn you dream about.
Things To Keep In Mind
There are several things to remember when you want to put top dressing on your lawn. After all, you can do more harm than good if you don’t follow the correct steps.
For example, you can actually kill your grass instead of making it greener and lusher. That will completely counteract the benefits of top-dressing lawns. Since the last thing you want to do is have an unhealthy or dead lawn, we’ve listed a few of the things you need to keep in mind.
Lawn Length
One of the first things to keep in mind is that you want your lawn to be short when you add a top dressing to it. This is because you want the fertilizer to reach your soil as quickly as possible to start feeding the soil and, in turn, the grass.
That is why mowing your lawn just before you apply the top dressing is so important. Mowing also removes a lot of dry or dead grass from the lawn. This dead grass can stop the nutrients from getting to the soil as quickly as they should.
Aerating Your Lawn
After your lawn has been mowed, there is another important step to follow before you put a top dressing on your lawn. This step is to aerate your lawn.
If you perforate your lawn with little holes before you add the top dressing, it can penetrate further into the ground and feed the soil. Aeration also allows your lawn to create a stronger root system that goes deeper.
Not to mention, when you add the top dressing, it also helps to create an even lawn that looks stunning.
Dangers Of Top Dressing
Adding top dressing to your lawn has many benefits, but there can be dangers too. As we said before, you could damage your lawn if you don’t know what you are doing. Let’s look at two dangers below:
- A top dressing that is applied in a too-thick layer can suffocate the grass.
- It takes a lot of effort to apply, so mistakes can be made. That’s why it’s often better to get experts to do it for you.
Types Of Top Dressing
There are different types of top dressing to choose from, and they have different benefits. These are:
- Sand-based top dressing.
- Peat-based topped dressing.
Sand-based top dressing helps the soil drain easier, which can help when there is a lot of rain. The peat-based dressing is for times of drought to help the lawn retain more water.
Ultimately, it depends on your needs. But when using compost for your top dressing, you need to ensure that it is a good quality compost with plenty of time to mature. That is why they need to buy your top dressing from a trusted source.
Top Dressing Summary
As you can see, there are many benefits of top dressing lawns but ultimately top, dressing is a great tool for creating the lush green lawn you dream of. There are some dangers to top-dressing your lawn, but when it is done well, the benefits far outweigh any dangers.