If you’re looking for ways to keep your lawn happy and healthy, you may have stumbled across the idea of top dressing. Lawn top dressing is often done to help boost a lawn’s growth and health, and it can be a relatively simple way to care for your grass. Here, we’ll take a look at the basics of top dressing a lawn, including what it is, why it’s important, and how and when to do it.

All About Top Dressing

What is top dressing?

Top dressing means placing a layer of sand, organic compost, or a similar material on top of the lawn to help improve its health and appearance. How does it do this? Top dressing works by creating a protective layer for grass, helping to keep roots cool and protect them from the sun. Along with this, top dressing soil can also improve drainage and increase the quantity of nutrients a lawn can hold.

Why is top dressing important?

There are a few key reasons why you might want to consider top dressing your lawn, starting with soil drainage. If you have a poorly drained section of your yard, top dressing can help break up thick layers of clay or dirt, increasing the overall water drainage ability. This will help to keep your lawn healthy and prevent waterlogging.

As we mentioned above, top dressing also increases the availability of essential nutrients within the soil, meaning there’s more there for grass, plants, and flowers to soak up while they grow.

When should I top dress my lawn?

The best time to top dress your lawn is at the start of spring. This is because the lawn should be transitioning from a slower growing period to a quicker one, so those extra nutrients will be needed! Be careful not to do this too late in the season, as top dressing a lawn when it’s hot out can lead to heat stress and damage to your grass. If you have a cool season grass such as Bluegrass or Fescues, you’ll likely want to take care of top dressing in autumn when the temperatures are lower.

Newly laid lawns shouldn’t require top dressing, and once established, you’ll only need to include this on your spring gardening checklist every couple of years.

How much material do I need?

You don’t need to apply inches of material to top dress, and a 1 centimetre layer should do the trick without suffocating your lawn. The amount of top dressing material you need to get will depend on the size of your lawn, and it can be very difficult to judge! This is one of the reasons why we recommend utilising professional top dressing and lawn care services.

How to top dress your lawn

If you do choose to take top dressing into your own hands, then here are the steps involved!

Gather your supplies

Before you get started, you’ll need to source a few top dressing tools. These include:

• Wheelbarrow
• Gardening gloves
• Lawn leveller
• Rake
• Lawn aerator

Step 1: Decide on the material

First, you’ll need to decide on the type of material you’d like to use for your top dressing. This could be sand, compost, or a combination of the two. If you’re choosing to use compost, it’s important to make sure it’s well-aged and has been broken down into a fine consistency. Generally, sand works well for clay soils, whereas compost can be beneficial for both clay and sandy soils.

Step 2: Dethatch and aerate your lawn

Once you’ve decided on the material you’ll be using, it’s time to start dethatching your lawn. Alternatively, you can take advantage of our handy lawn dethatching services.

While a little bit of thatch can be helpful for keeping your lawn healthy, too much of it can prevent water and air from getting into the soil. Lawns can be dethatched using a rake and your hands, or a lawn aerator, which you may be able to rent from your local nursery or hardware store.

Just like dethatching, aerating your lawn will prevent soil compaction and let air, water, and nutrients get deeper into the soil so grass roots can access them more easily. Before aerating or coring your lawn, we suggest watering it to make inserting the aerator easier.

Step 3: Mow your lawn

The next step in the top dressing process is to mow your lawn. Use a catcher to remove the cut grass from the surface of your turf as you mow so it doesn’t build up on your newly dethatched and aerated lawn. These clippings can be added to your compost for future use around the garden.

Step 4: Top dress your lawn

When you’re ready to get started, use a wheelbarrow to deliver small mounds of top dressing material around your lawn. Then, use a rake, soil spreader, or leveller to evenly distribute your top dressing material over the area. We suggest working in small sections to ensure that you don’t miss a patch, as well as to make it easier to spread out.

Make sure you keep the top of the grass visible rather than covering it in soil, as this allows your lawn to still receive sunlight. When the top dressing is spread evenly across your lawn, give your grass a good water to allow the soil to settle in.

Reliable Lawn Care

Top dressing for lawns is a relatively straightforward process that’s incredibly beneficial. That being said, it still requires preparation, time, and work which can be physically demanding for some.

If you want to simplify this process even more, then contact Jim’s Mowing to arrange for one of our gardening experts to lend a hand.