You may have known that compost is very beneficial to soil and would love to apply it to your lawn. In this article, you’ll learn how to use compost soil mix for your lawn.
Composting or topdressing grass can be highly useful. When organic matter is added to soil, it improves the soil structure and adds nutrients, providing a variety of benefits. The act of putting a thin layer over the surface of anything is known as a top dressing.
We’re applying a thin coating of compost to the lawn’s surface in this example, and it doesn’t take much to get the job done. You want to apply just enough compost to provide your lawn a decent balance of nutrients and helpful bacteria, but not so much that it becomes suffocating.
You just need to apply ¼ to ½ inches of compost over the grass when top dressing it. Rain, wind, soil organisms, and human actions all help to carry compost down through the lawn and into the soil, where it may do its function.
How to use Compost Soil Mix for Lawn
Both new and old lawns can benefit from compost top-dressing.
1) On a seeded lawn
Apply a thin layer of compost as a top-dressing after sowing lawn grass seeds. This will help keep the soil moist while the seeds germinate and the delicate grass seedlings establish.
Top-dressing is especially beneficial in desert locations or during dry or windy periods when the soil and seeds can quickly dry up. (If a seed dries up after germinating, it’s doomed.)
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2) On an existing lawn
Top-dressing with compost might help revitalize it. Due to foot activity, play, and mowing, lawns become compressed over time, preventing air, water, and nutrients from freely moving through the turf’s root zone.
When To Use Some Compost Soil Mix
To adjust the acidity or drainage of the soil, you can also apply certain composts and other top dressings.
Adding a top dressing of sharp sand to your lawn to increase drainage is a typical practice, especially after spiking the lawn in the autumn or if your lawn is waterlogged in the winter.
Adding peat-based compost, which you can get from compost suppliers, can also acidify the soil and keep worms away. If your grass has a lot of worm casts, top dress it with peat.
Best Time For Adding Compost Mix To The Lawn
The best time to aerate and top-dress your lawn is while it is actively growing, regardless of where you reside. This helps the grass to bounce back quickly after being punctured.
Spring to mid-summer is the optimal time to aerate your lawn if you reside in a cool or “transition” area and have one permanent turfgrass (such as bluegrass or fescue). Avoid aerating these grasses during the hot summer months to avoid stressing the roots.
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If you reside in a warm region where lawns may be kept all year, you have a few options. When your warm-season lawn (such as Bermuda grass) is actively developing, the optimal time to aerate and top-dress is early to mid-summer.
After overseeding your summer lawn with cool-season grass (such as ryegrass) in the fall, you should apply compost top-dressing (without aeration). There’s no need to top-dress in the fall if you don’t oversee.
References
- How Use Compost Soil Mix For Lawn, retrieved from here
- How to Topdress Your Lawn with Compost, retrieved from here
- How do I use my compost?, retrieved from here
