When is top dressing not top dressing?

Last autumn I did a full overhaul of my lawn, scarified, top dressed and overseeded. The large bag of top dressing I had delivered (after a bit of research) was a 70/30 finely sieved product that was not quite enough for my entire lawn so I had to go to a garden centre to buy a few bags to finish the job.

The only product available was a Miracle Grow product called "Evergreen Lawn Dressing". This turned out to be sacks of wet compost full of bark, sticks and (unbelievably) stones, lots of stones, some as big as my thumb! Nowhere does it say what the sand ratio is and now it is spring the area that I used that on is just a mudbath.

Now it is spring and I need a few more bags to level and patch so am looking at what is available. I am finding that none of the main brands state what the sand/soil ratio is.

I decided that "westland Lawn and Turf Dressing" looked like it might do the job so I mailed the company to find out the ratio.

I am astonished to report that they replied with (and I quote): "I am unable to give you the exact ratio as it is commercially sensitive".

I have poor drainage and want to improve it, how can a customer do that if the company won't tell you what is in their product?!!

 

If you have poor drainage tim just use are very high ratio of sharp sand / top soil or just sharp sand. I make my own top dressing now with Top soil - Sharp sand and a bit of compost depending on what it needs.

Bought top dressing is wayyyy over priced for what it is. One of the last bag I bought were full of bits of stones as well , no good for a cylinder mower.

 

Not a bad idea. I think I paid about £160 for the 900 litre bag I got last year. It was good stuff though.

 

Oh dear!

Forgive me please, no way do I wish to come over as the ever almighty lawn expert. I must add to my blog a few bits and bobs.

Firstly. Your lawn. Do disrespects but, what is your lawn? Is it simply a grass area of your garden. Have you established it from a simple grass area to perhaps tennis court or the ultimum, bowling green. No my friend, I am not taking the proverbial. In short. What kind/standard of lawn do you want?

 

I would like a bowling green of course, and with some years of tlc I may be able to get a little closer to that ideal. The bottom line on that is that I can do nothing except mow it and I will have an okay lawn, or I can enjoy looking after it and definitely have a better looking lawn.

But regardless, I think it is not unreasonable to expect suppliers of products to detail what the composition of the product is so that consumers can make an informed decision. It is particularly important with lawn dressing as if you have poor drainage (as I do) you want a product that is heavy on the sand, if not then you don't. You wouldn't buy fertiliser without knowing its NPK.

 

Unless you have grass suitable to be cut as short as bowling grass you'll never have a bowling green lawn, You can over seed and with time have a much improved lawn. I am well in to my lawn but its so time consuming, I have to hand weed it to remove unwanted grass plus constant feeding ( I have a base grass of dwarf perennial rye grass greedy ) I have to feed more with cutting short the list goes on , so its expensive and time consuming and I have a quite small lawn.

 

I was being a bit flippant with the "bowling green" comment! I guess I mean that I aspire to having the best lawn I can. It has to deal with a child playing on it and summer bbq parties etc. so it has to be a hard-wearing grass mix. Currently I have been overseeding with a mix that is 50% Rye and 50% various Fescues. So, a fairly all-purpose mix that I can't cut very short.

Whilst it is a time-consuming, and expensive, hobby I enjoy trying to make it the best it can be.

 

Thanks ArmandII. That's interesting. I gave it a winter feed after overseeding etc last autumn, which was obviously to get the roots going well. It is certainly very lush and dark green at the moment, and growing like crazy, I've already done one cut a few weeks ago as it was getting up to about six inches. I was planning a spring feed (which is high in nitrogen) and I'll be putting Mo Bactor on later as I need to keep the moss at bay, so maybe I'll skip the high nitrogen summer feed I had planned for June/July.

 

The problem when you sit down @ARMANDII and a dry sunny day you notice everything you haven't done

 

Interesting. Moved in here in late summer 2018 and the lawn appeared very neglected. I didn't do anything to it until spring last year and it has responded well.

It has never occurred to me that too much nitrogen was a bad thing, but I can see the sense in strengthening the roots.

 

To much of anything can be bad , to much nitrogen in winter damages the grass makes it to soft which can be damage by frost / cold weather . If you used a autumn feed you've probably over dosed like armadii said , autumn feeds are higher in Potassium & phosphates but still contain nitrogen , the dark green affect is from the Iron in the Autumn feed it should of killed the moss ? if it doesn't have iron in you've way overdosed , Iron used a strengthener for winter & moss killer and it will turn the grass a dark shade of green but the grass will barely grow unlike if you used a nitrogen feed.

If you don't mind me asking where about roughly are you in the country ? I normally start my Grass regiment mid March weather permitting.