I want to re-do my lawn completely. Most recommendations are for the old turf to be removed completely but I want to consider an alternative approach and I would welcome your views.
My idea is to hire a turf cutter to cut the turf and then flip the turf completely over. Then the plan is to spread about 2 inches of top soil on top and then sow grass seed with a little fertiliser.
One reason for doing this is to save carrying lots of turf and hiring a skip. I also want to raise the overall level of the lawn.
This will give you a soft and uneven surface as the grass decomposes. It's far better to cut it off and use new top soil to build up the height you want before sowing the seed. As they say: BTDTGTTS. If I was doing the job again I would use turf rather than seed - you don't need to fend off birds and I suspect it would give a more even result.
If I give the grass a really close cut then scarrify deeply, might this reduce the amount of softness and uneveness? Also maybe if I rolled it heavily several times and tramped it in?? I do really want to build up the level of the lawn so am reluctant to remove any soil if possible.
You've not explained why you want rid of the existing grass. There's seldom any good reason to. Without yet hearing why, the most likely options is to add soil where wanted & seed. Repeated mowing is all it takes to remove almost all non-grasses.
My old college had wonderful lawns. When asked what the secret was, the gardeners would say "Just give it a close trim twice a week, every week mind, and after 200 years it looks like this."
Never tried it, but it's quite common to invert grass turves and cover them with a *thick* layer of topsoil to make flowerbeds. But in your case I would be concerned about a couple of things. First, if only buried a couple of inches the old grass may well grow back through. If you're re-doing it because it's full of coarse grass and weeds, things may not be better in the medium term. Second, in making a lawn you need to heel-tread the soil several times in different directions to compact the soil, raking it level to even out high and low areas between passes. This has to be done before sowing the seed, otherwise you end up with a very soft spongy lawn that'll show depressions as you walk on it. This will particularly be the case as the grass in the inverted turves rots away. On the plus side, the rotted turves will provide a good medium for the new grass to root into.
I think if it were mine, I'd first just consider re-seeding into the existing grass. If what's there is really too poor for that, I'd kill it all down with glyphosate, wait a few weeks for it to die and rot, then hire a rotovator and go over it to break it all up, or simply fork it over it by hand if you're young and fit. Then roughly level it and do the heel-walking/levelling routine before finally sowing the seed. Keep the young grass watered through the summer, as the plantlets won't have developed extensive roots and may die if we get a dry spell.
Ask on uk.rec.gardening and you may get a response from someone who's got more experience, with the pitfalls.
You want a selective lawn weedkiller like Verdone, that you spray onto the individual dandelion plants, as here
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but not necessarily from Amazon. Your local garden centre will almost certainly have it. Only takes a few minutes to walk across the grass and treat each weed, which will then turn up its leaves and die in a couple of weeks.
I poke a hole into the "heart" of the swines and pour salt into the hole. This kills them, but they come back in different places. All the gardens near me seem to have the same infestation. Something to do with the mild winter.
Your grass probably has a lot of dandelion seeds in it, and these are germinating. Salt will kill them, but it may also kill the grass in that immediate area and poison the soil until it all washes through, so you can end up with little bald patches all over it. Go for Verdone, and make sure you pick off any dandelion flower heads before they make 'clocks'.
The grass is totally weed-free, but it has a mix of varieties -giving inconsistent colour and texture. Currently it gets mowed every two days.
One of the coarser varieties tends to spread out horizontally so, in my view, is an undesirable. But all that aside I want to get closer to getting a much better lawn - lawn that makes a real impression - level, smooth, consistent , rich green etc etc
Okay and thanks Sir. This is the first year that I've had this problem. I was probably going over the top with my Dandelion problem. I've encountered about four of them, four too many! Mrs Pounder Esq is not too happy with the front lawn. The fact that it has only had the second mow of the year falls on deaf ears.
I would guess it'd be ok, but try it and see. If after the compactor treatment, it's still soft to walk on and you leave impressions of your feet, then you need to heel-walk it.
Only to the extent that very few people manage such a council of perfection with a domestic lawn. But I have read that if you close-mow a lawn frequently, and at least once a week, preferably more often, the coarse grasses and weeds will eventually give up and you'll be left with a very clean lawn after a few months or so.
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