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A beautiful, well-groomed lawn near the house – this picture pleases not only the eye. Emerald grass emphasizes architectural solutions, highlights flower beds, ridges, alpine slides. It doesn’t take much time to make a lawn with your own hands, but you need to know how to do it right.
The basis of almost all lawns is grass. It is of different types, with different characteristics, different colors. Not all of them feel good in the climate of central Russia. Therefore, if you are going to buy a ready-made mixture, pay attention to zoning: in the very first wintering you risk losing the entire lawn.
Be especially careful with ryegrass. It quickly rises, creates a thick beautiful carpet, but does not tolerate frost well and freezes out in our climate. When buying a ready-made grass mixture, look at its composition: there should be a little ryegrass. If it freezes, it won’t do much harm.
When to sow grass
Grass can be sown from May 1 to August 15. When spring sowing, slightly increase the consumption of seeds per square area (by 10-15%). So you will quickly get a beautiful lawn and the lawn will leave stronger in winter. Due to the high density, plants will begin to compete with each other and the weak ones will be forced out. Only the strong will survive until autumn.
When sowing in the summer, adhere to the application rate. Due to lack of time, weak plants will not have time to force out, but everyone will be weakened by this struggle. Therefore, good care is important for summer lawns.
What is the best lawn grass
The most beautiful color and dense herbage is in fescue and bluegrass. Their greenery is delicate and emerald green. When creating a parthen lawn, they are used. But for other types of lawns that they will walk on, they cannot be used: they will quickly trample. On such lawns, bent grass of different varieties is often sown. Not so tender, it tolerates some degree of stress well.
For shady lawns, fescue is also more suitable. But even it will not grow in deep and permanent shade. Sunlight is the basis of photosynthesis. And at least for some time the lawn should be illuminated.
Types of lawns
We are accustomed to the fact that the lawn is necessarily grass covering the soil. It can be arranged flower beds, ridges, alpine slides and other decorative elements. This is not entirely true. There are at least three varieties of flowering lawns. They are undoubtedly more decorative, but it is unlikely that you will be able to walk on them.
flowering lawns
Their basis is cereals, but significantly “diluted” with perennial or annual flowering plants. They are selected so that flowering takes place throughout the growing season – from mid-spring to late autumn. Depending on which plants are included in the composition, there are three types of flowering lawns.
Meadow
Already by the name it is clear that it contains plants that can be seen in a real meadow. Only rarely in full composition and in strictly measured proportions. Such traditional inhabitants of the meadow as clover, chamomile, daisy, coined loosestrife, yarrow and other flowering or ornamental foliage plants are added to the cereals. Despite the abundance of flowers, the main ones are herbs.
It is clear that you will not often mow such beauty, but you have to cut it off once or twice a season for renewal and rejuvenation. Plants are perennial, therefore, with proper watering, they quickly restore decorativeness. It is not always appropriate to sow the entire territory with such a mixture, but some areas are very pleasing to the eye.
Mauritanian
It differs in that the flowers used are annuals. Because such a lawn is not mowed at all. Cereals are picked up by undersized ones, there are fewer of them than flowers. The Mauritanian lawn is dominated by flowers. Both in height and quantity (see photo).
They are selected so that flowering is as long as possible. Usually composed of self-seed poppy, cornflower, calendula, matiola, large-flowered flax, escholcia and other bright annuals.
non-herbal
This is a completely unusual lawn, consisting of ground cover plants. Sowing them in open ground is a hopeless business, growing seedlings is long, and buying ready-made is expensive. Therefore, a non-grass lawn is grown for more than one or two years: plants are planted in small quantities, waiting until they grow. It is most difficult to grow such a lawn with your own hands: the results of labor are visible only after a few years, but the effort is worth it.
grass lawns
In the eyes of a non-specialist, different types of grass lawns are almost the same: the color may be slightly different. But besides a different shade of greenery, they have different characteristics: one can be walked on, the other is contraindicated, the sowing rate is different, different care is required. Naturally, different herbs with different characteristics are used.
Ordinary
The most resistant to trampling, you can walk on it. Herbs are selected with tough, rough-looking. But it is easier to take care of it, weed less often, some mistakes that are often made during self-sowing are not visible. An ordinary lawn is an excellent choice for giving.
Ground floor
This is one of the most decorative and ceremonial lawns. Differs in high decorative effect, herbs are selected gentle, beautiful flowers. The herbage is low and dense, with proper care it looks simply gorgeous. Such lawns are arranged in open areas, but where no one will walk: cereals that are too soft will not withstand such a load. Therefore, the parterre lawn (see photo) is sown where they walk only along the paths.
Special
Planted on slopes. As part of its herbs, which have an extensive root system that can keep the soil from being washed out. The decorativeness of such a coating is average, but it performs its main purpose well. A special lawn can be planted on a slope leading to a river or lake, if there is one on your site.
Sports
The mixture is more complex – in addition to traditional varieties of cereals, there are special ones that are more resistant to abrasion. The decorativeness of a sports lawn is not its main characteristic, therefore, even a very well-groomed one, it looks much worse than an ordinary one, and especially a parterre one. But it has a very high resistance to abrasion.
Due to the use of special herbs, its cost is higher, more difficult to care for. Therefore, it is worth sowing with such a mixture those areas that will be actively exploited: a playground, an area where they will actively walk – near the gazebo, sports ground, swing. The rest of the area is most often reserved for an ordinary lawn.
Natural
For this type of coating, mixtures are not bought, they do not carry out any work. Just cut those herbs that are. Most often, a natural lawn is left in the garden: it protects the soil well from drying out, and the requirements for decorativeness are not very high here. Too large plants that do not fit into the desired picture are removed manually. The rest in the process of haircuts become smaller and smaller, forming turf of different colors.
How to make a beautiful lawn
Growing a lawn consists of several stages:
- Soil preparation – removal of weeds, if necessary – adjustment of acidity and increase in fertility.
- Sowing grass, regular watering.
- First haircut. It is carried out after the herbage reaches a certain size.
- Regular grooming and occasional haircuts.
In the process, you will have to monitor soil moisture and remove weeds in a timely manner, fertilize from time to time, sow bald spots that may appear after an overly dry summer or an overly harsh winter. This, in short, is the whole technology of growing a lawn, and then in detail point by point.
Soil preparation
The first thing to do is assess the fertility of the soil. If the soil is clay or loam, grass will not normally grow on it. You will have to carry out serious soil preparation. There are two options: fill the area with fertile soil from above or remove the soil and fill the earth into the resulting pit.
It’s easier, naturally, to just fall asleep, but this is not always possible: in this case, the layer of earth should be about 20 cm. looks weird. Therefore, clay soils are more often removed to a depth of 15-20 cm, and then earth is brought into the formed pit.
If you chose the second option, geotextiles can be laid at the bottom of the pit. It will not let weeds grow through it, and you will not have problems with weeding.
If the soil is normal, preparing the soil for lawn grass is not that difficult. First, remove all weeds. This can be done mechanically – with a chopper and / or hands, you can use herbicides. They are bred according to the instructions, watered the place of the future lawn. After a few days, the vegetation becomes yellower and dries out, it is removed. Simultaneously with the release of weeds, stones, roots, and other fragments are removed that may interfere with the growth of the horse system.
The next step is to check the acidity of the soil. Almost all grasses that are part of lawn mixtures grow well on neutral soils. If you want to have a beautiful lawn, you will have to adjust its acidity. Therefore, in a store for gardeners and gardeners, find a kit for determining the acidity of the soil and check what kind of soil is in your area. This is just a litmus test that you need to lay on the soil, wait until it turns colored and determine the acidity of your soil from the color chart on the package. If the soil is acidic, add lime, if the reaction is alkaline, sprinkle crushed peat. Next comes the digging. Simultaneously with loosening, remove those stones and roots that come across.
The next step is to add a fertile layer. Fertile loose and light soil is brought in and distributed over the entire area in an even layer 6-10 cm thick. The layer is leveled first with shovels, then with rakes. At the same time, it is desirable to form a slight slope towards the fence: this way you will not have problems with waterlogging the lawn during showers: the water will drain from the site. The slope is made minimal – 1 cm per meter or one and a half. This is quite enough to ensure the outflow of water, but it will not be noticeable outwardly.
One piece of advice: imported land contains roots, stones, branches, etc. To remove them, it is sifted through a large mesh (as is done during construction, when sand is sieved). And the sifted one is already transported around the site.
The next step in arranging the lawn with your own hands is tamping or rolling. It allows you to compact the soil, and when a person steps on the lawn, the soil under the foot does not collapse, but remains flat. Also, this process allows you to identify irregularities that will necessarily appear as a result of all land work.
If there is no special ice rink, it can be made from a piece of asbestos or iron pipe. Thread the rod inside the pipe, hook the handles to it (even if you just tie the rope). You made all the lawn skating rink with your own hands. Now he is dragged around the site, tamping the soil until it is possible to stand on it without falling through.
When rolling the lawn, humps and holes will definitely appear. We remove the excess from the humps, we fill the pits. Having leveled the surface in this way, we take a lawn skating rink and once again we pass the site. To get a perfectly flat surface, you can take a long board and stretch it together along the site, cutting off the unevenness with the edge. Or make a device from two boards – as in the photo below. They can work alone.
Application of fertilizers
Fertilizers can be applied at several stages (one of them). In principle, if you pour 6-10 cm of imported fertilizer on top of normal soil, you can not use fertilizers. But for more active growth – you can add:
- after the imported soil was scattered over the site and before leveling with a rake;
- if dry fertilizers are used, they can be mixed with seeds;
- dilute and water the soil.
The best way is watering. It guarantees a more even distribution of nutrients. But with this method, rarely anyone wants to bother themselves, unless there is an automatic watering system. The other two are equivalent. It is more convenient to apply together with seeds: it takes less time.
Planting grass
First, it is necessary to loosen the compacted earth with a rake a little. Just walk with a light rake, slightly loosening the top layer. Now you can sow the grass.
Buying a seeder that costs about $ 200-300 for a single use is hardly reasonable, so pour the seeds for the lawn into a bucket and scatter it over the surface using the old-fashioned method: take a handful and pass a little through your fingers, scatter more or less evenly. For those who want at least some mechanization, we can offer two options for the simplest seeders for lawn grass, which are easy to make with your own hands. This is a tin or a plastic bottle in which holes were made (see photo).
So that it does not turn out that it is thick in one corner and empty in the other, it is advisable to divide the plot and the seeds into parts. Seed consumption is indicated for each mixture. What is the area of the sown area, you can estimate on the spot and measure the amount that needs to be scattered. For those who do the lawn in the country with their own hands for the first time, it is better to divide the measured amount into two equal parts and go through the area first along and then across. This will distribute the seeds more evenly.
After sowing, the seeds must be covered with earth. There are two ways to do this:
- Walk around the site with a rake, trying to sprinkle the seeds with earth. This method is less reliable – many remain outside, they are pecked by birds, and germination is deteriorating.
- Sprinkle the rest of the imported land on top. Layer – 3-5 mm. All seeds are covered with earth, are in better conditions, shoots are better.
On this we can assume that you made the lawn with your own hands. It remains to water and wait for shoots.
Watering and waiting
It is necessary to water the lawn depending on the conditions: the soil should not dry out, but it should not be very wet either. Water should not spurt, there should be no streams or puddles. Break the stream into small streams: install a sprinkler or sprinkler, if you water manually, put a nozzle on the hose. In the photo above you will see several options that will help solve the problem of watering. They are sold in stores.
There are also several homemade lawn sprinkler options. In most of them, this is a plastic bottle with holes made in it, connected to a watering hose. It can lie and irrigate the adjacent area. If there is enough pressure in the system, you can tie it to a column. In this case, the watering area will be larger. Do-it-yourself sprinklers for watering the lawn are very simple to make. Look at the photo.
Another way to get small splashes is to make holes in a piece of plastic pipe or make a thin cut. Either thin jets or a fan are obtained (in the photo on the right below).
Why does water need to be sprayed? Because for the normal development of the root system, the soil must be moist (but not wet) to a depth of about 6-10 cm. If it is simply flooded from above, it will only get worse: water displaces oxygen and the roots have nothing to breathe. So sprinkler or drip irrigation is the best way to water your lawn.
After seven to ten days, the first shoots appear. They are still rare, but do not be upset. Only the seeds of some varieties, in which seedlings appear quickly, just hatched. The rest will grow later. With proper care, after 20-30 days, the height of the herbage reaches 10-15 cm. At this time, the first mowing should be carried out. Leave for the first time about 5 cm in height. At this height, the grass will grow actively. After another 10-12 days, it will again be about 12 cm high. Now you can cut the grass shorter – leaving 3-3,5 cm.
How to care for lawn grass
The main care is timely watering, weed removal and periodic mowing. If you water by sprinkling, the soil will contain a sufficient amount of oxygen and the plants should develop normally.
Problems with a lack of oxygen can occur after long heavy rains, when water is puddles on the site, or if watering is not done correctly with the same result. Then lawn aeration is necessary. For this, a roller is used, similar to the one used when ramming the soil, but this one has points that pierce the turf. Through these punctures, oxygen enters the soil, plants begin to grow better.