What Kind Of Compost For Lawn

How Much Material Will I Need To Topdress A Lawn

The table below shows how much material you will need to topdress your lawn to different depths. If you have a particularly problematic lawn, it may take several applications to introduce enough material to achieve your goal.

Top Dressing Lawn By Hand

For this method, youre spreading the compost by hand. Youll need a wheelbarrow, a shovel or garden fork , and possibly a leaf rake. Use the shovel or garden fork to scoop the compost out of the wheelbarrow, then fling it out across the lawn, doing your best to spread it fairly evenly. You can then spread the compost out more using a leaf rake, if its in chunks or if you didnt fling it very evenly . Frankly, its kind of fun to whip shovels full of compost across your yard. Kids love it. It doesnt have to be perfectly spread or 100% accurate but do try to distribute it as evenly as possible to avoid extra green spots where more compost fell or dead spots where too much compost smothered the grass.

Spreading Compost On Top Of Seed

Another option is to spread grass seed and then broadcast compost on top. By covering the seed with compost, youll increase the chances seeds will stay moist until they germinate.

If youre using this method, spread about a 1/4 inch of compost. This is enough to adequately cover the seed without inhibiting germination.

Over time, this compost will infiltrate down into the soil, leading to the previously mentioned benefits.

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Top Dressing Lawn Using A Drop Spreader

This technique of top dressing lawn uses a traditional drop-style lawn spreader with a big hopper. It works best with compost that is dry and finely screened. Wet or clumpy compost will clog the spreader holes.

Drop spreaders have adjustable holes in the bottom and a mechanism on the handle that lets you set the size of the openings. Set the spreader on the setting with the largest openings and close the lever that shuts the hopper holes. Fill the hopper with compost from a nearby wheelbarrow or truck, go to the edge of your lawn, and open up the drop holes as you walk up and down your lawn in a row pattern. Make sure you cover all of the lawn, refilling the hopper as needed. Lawn drop spreaders with a bigger hopper mean you dont have to refill as often, but theyre also heavier to push.

It also may be possible to use a broadcast spreader to top dress your lawn. They have a spinning wheel beneath a single hole where the compost drops out. The wheel spins and tosses the compost out onto the lawn, rather than dropping it directly beneath the spreader. However, in my experience, unless the compost is very finely screened and super dry, broadcast spreaders clog more easily than drop spreaders. Still, if you already have one in the garage, feel free to give it a whirl. You might have a very different experience.

Best 4 Types Of Compost And Their Benefits

There are different types of compost for garden soil that come from a compost pile. Many people make their own compost from weeds, plant clippings, and pet waste. Compost is cheap and environmentally friendly, but some people dislike the smell, so you can buy it instead of breaking it down in your yard. Compost is great for plants.

Compost comes in different forms, including manure, animal manure mixed with other compost material vermicompost, worm castings mixed with other compost material and green manure, which is plant material turned into a plant compost.

• The Process for Making Bokashi Soil

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How To Topdress Your Lawn In 7 Steps

As a DIY project, the process isnt difficult. It is tedious and labor-intensive, however.

Once you have successfully topdressed your yard, now its time to be patient, as it can take a few seasons to see the full results. If done correctly, you will see improvements in drainage and water retention quickly, but it takes time for the microbes to start working and the organic matter to begin breaking down.

Using Screened Compost For Lawns

Fine textured compost works best for top dressing. Because you dont want big lumps of the non-decomposed matter lying on your lawn! Use a compost sifter like this one to remove any large components from your homemade compost.

Youll protect your lawn from potential harm by only choosing screened compost for topdressing.

Screened compost comprises fine particles that have passed through a 3/8-inch screen. These fine particles are essential for topdressing lawns because theyre small enough to nestle between blades of grass instead of smothering them.

You can safely work compost with slightly larger particles into your soil to enrich it before planting grass seeds.

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Choose Compost Carefully When Topdressing The Lawn

Kathleen Connolly has been an advanced master gardener and accredited organic lawn care professional for over 30 years. She specializes in lawn care, horticulture, and landscape design. Kathleen earned a Master’s Degree in Landscape Planning and Design and Sustainable Land Use Planning and Design.

Francesca Yorke / Taxi / Getty Images

Turf experts often recommend “topdressing” lawns with a thin layer of compost. The material is spread one-quarter to one-half inch thick in spring or fall, depending on local climate and soil.*

Compost improves the moisture-holding capacity of the soil, adds nutrients, and feeds soil microbes. These microbes are key to the complex process that makes food available to grass plants. A healthy microbe population encourages a dense green lawn.

Compost spread on top of thatch can also speed thatch decomposition and eliminate the labor of mechanical removal.

Is Leveling Lawn Important

A lawn without bumps, lumps or depression avail us a suitable and smooth surface for our kids to play, and for us to enjoy the outer space.

The smoothness of lawns makes activities like host parties, soccer, croquet, and bocce ball to become more enjoyable.

These activities arent just enjoyable but the players become more safer also.

How healthy your lawns are, depends on how often you maintain them. To maintain lawns is easy when the surface is level without bumps.

A level lawn results in a better quality cut. Mowers become easy when you have level lawns in your yard.

The work of mowing becomes faster in a level lawn because your mower will not be scalping under the lawns.

To mower over bumps is a difficult work that most people will not like to do. Thats why level lawns are very important.

Its not just about the mower only, smooth lawns add value to outer space. Make it more attractive and appealing to the eyes. Therefore, level lawns are important in the yards.

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Use A Trowel & Wheelbarrow

This is another quick way to get compost on the lawn however, its time-consuming. Fill a wheelbarrow with the desired amount of compost and move it on the lawn. Divide your lawn into imaginary parts and spread the compost with a hand trowel on one part before moving to another. As we mentioned earlier, it may be a cumbersome process, but it works. Dont do it if you have a large lawn.

Ive heard a ton of people ask, Can you put compost in a spreader?

Yes, you can put compost in a spreader. But as we mentioned earlier, you should use a compost spreader or a peat moss spreader for spreading the compost. If you use a broadcast spreader, youll be wasting your time, as the designs of the broadcast spreaders are more suited for smaller granules. Thats why its easy to apply fertilizer with them.

Why Bother Feeding Your Lawn At All

You probably fall into one of three different camps when it comes to lawn care.

• Camp 1: You tend your lawn methodically. You fertilize regularly, mow frequently, and perhaps apply weed killers and pesticides a few times a year.
• Camp 2: You ignore your lawn except for keeping it mowed. You apply no fertilizers, you let the weeds flower for the pollinators, and you only consider pests if they happen to show up.
• Camp 3: Youve gone no-mow and let your grass grow tall, only trimming it a few times a year. You dont really even think about your lawn.

Im not here to pass judgment on any camp. Instead, Im here to tell you that no matter which camp you fall into, top dressing your lawn with compost is something you should be doing. Yes, its a way to reduce the usage of synthetic fertilizers if youre in Camp 1. But most importantly, for all Camps, top dressing lawn is the best way to improve the overall health of your turf grass and the soil beneath it. It makes your lawn more resistant to pests and better able to choke out weeds. It encourages a deep root system that can better withstand drought and nurtures the beneficial soil microbes that help grasses thrive, whether you mow the lawn every few days, once a week, or twice a season.

Later in this article, Ill explain each of these benefits in more detail, but for now, lets talk about what top dressing is and why compost is the best top dressing for a lawn.

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What Kind Of Compost Is Best For Lawns

Compost quality varies greatly depending on what went into the compost and how it was made. This checklist will help you find a high-quality compost for your lawn:

• Appearance. Similar to rich, dark topsoil.
• Texture. Fine, light, and crumbly.
• Smell. Pleasantly earthy with no hints of sourness or sulfur.
• pH. 6.0 to 8.0.
• Soluble salt concentration. Less than 6.
• Carbon-to-nitrogen ratio. Less than 30:1.

In compost, weed seeds, pesticide or herbicide residues, and large bits of partially decomposed matter are undesirable things to watch out for.

When To Supplement With Organic Fertilizer

Though adding compost and mulching grass clippings and leaves will reduce the need for supplemental fertilizer, these practices cannot completely replace fertilizer. A slow-release, organic fertilizer like Milorganite will feed the lawn continuously for many weeks, with none of the nutrient-burn concerns that come with synthetic fertilizers.

Fertilizer will help grass grow and will give the lawn that deep, emerald green color. The lawn will be denser, which withstands foot traffic and stops weeds from taking hold.

In northern regions, where cool-season grasses dominate, apply Milorganite once or twice between Labor Day and Thanksgiving, waiting 10 weeks between applications. Apply again, once or twice, between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July.

In southern regions, where warm-season grasses thrive, apply in the spring after the grass breaks its winter dormancy, and then again around Memorial Day. In the fall, apply once or twice between Labor Day and early October.

Fertilizer will help the grass grow and will give the lawn that deep, emerald green color.

Do you feed your lawn naturally by topdressing with compost? Let us know in the comments below.

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Improves The Quality Of Soil

Top dressing is a great way to add organic matter and nutrients to the topsoil. I prefer it to using bags of lawn fertilizer even organic lawn fertilizer.

A high quality screened compost helps to boost poor soil through the improvement of its productive properties.

It also improves the structure of the soil by improving its cation exchange capacity , or the soils ability to hold nutrients and water.

Applying top dressing to your lawn builds up beneficial soil microbes that are essential for your turf to flourish.

Why Get A Compost Topdressing

Applying a compost topdressing is one of the healthiest, safest and surest ways to maintain a lush, healthy and weed-free lawn in the Colorado Springs area. When you routinely get your lawn topdressed, you are encouraging several aspects of an organically grown, weed-free lawn. You are proactively focusing on the health of the soil, instead of resorting to toxic chemicals to kill weeds and subsequently sending your lawn into a chemical spiral .

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Tips For Topdressing Your Lawn

Topdressing your lawn can be a DIY project, but truthfully it is a very labor-intensive endeavor. Some home improvement centers have motorized spreader machines available for rent which will reduce the labor but increase the cost.

• Routine topdressing improves thatch breakdown and improves the soil. However, it does raise the grade of your yard. To ensure you dont raise it too much, its best not to topdress your entire lawn routinely. Treat bare spots as needed and the entire lawn every few years.
• Topdress the lawn more often: A very light topdressing application can be completed more often if the amount added is shallow enough to be brushed into aeration holes.
• Time according to your grass type. Topdress lawns in thespring for warm-season grasses and in the fall for cool-season grasses. This allows three or four mows before severe heat or cold sets in.
• Combine with other cultural practices like overseeding to grow new grass.

If topdressing your lawn yourself sounds like too big of a project to tackle yourself, some lawn care companies offer topdressing services to clients. Its becoming a more popular service available because of demand but is still not widely available it requires a lot of work with a small profit margin for companies.

Determine How Much Compost You Need

When topdressing a lawn with compost, you want to use enough compost to be effective but not so much that the compost smothers the grass. Aim to use between a quarter inch and a half inch layer of compost. For the maximum depth, that is one cubic foot of compost for every 25 square feet of lawn.

One cubic foot is a popular size for bagged compost, but bags can be smaller or larger. But no matter the bag size, when you find you need more than 10 bags of compost for a project, it generally makes more sense to buy bulk compost. Bulk compost is sold by the cubic yard, and there are 27 cubic feet in a cubic yard.

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Can You Use Sand To Fix Holes In A Lawn

Yes, you can use a similar process to repair large holes or ruts in your lawn. Just fill the damaged area until it is flush with the surrounding ground.

Complete this step before topdressing the rest of the lawn. Or, if only a few spots need attention, use extra topdressing sand to blend the patched area into the rest of the soil.

While topdressing can be done with or without reseeding as well, this isnt true for filling sizable holes. Youll need to reseed the patched areas for a consistent final product.

Even when fixing small holes, you should still use a mixture of sand and potting soil instead of pure sand. Using sand alone will make it hard for the new grass seed to put down strong roots and keep up with the existing turf around it.

What Is Top Dressing A Lawn

Top dressing is the act of spreading a thin layer over the surface of something. In this case, were spreading a thin layer of compost over the surface of the lawn, and it doesnt take much to do the job. You want to add enough compost to introduce a good balance of nutrients and plenty of beneficial microbes, but not so much that you risk smothering your lawn. When top dressing lawn, you only need to spread ¼ to ½ of an inch of compost over the grass. Rain, wind, soil organisms, and human actions quickly move the compost down through the grass and into the soil where it can work its magic.

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Wakefield Biochar Soil Conditioner

Although most of us use shampoo and conditioner on our hair every other day, many have never heard of soil conditioner. The principles are the same though.

Soil Conditioner is a product that is added to the soil to improve its characteristics, from fertility to mechanics.

If you have poor soil and want to make it more usable, a soil conditioner is a great idea. The Wakefield Biochar is certified by USDA and very safe to use, lasting a long time on the soil.

The Wakefield helps with water retention, increasing the soils absorption powers. It also increases microbial activity. That is good because the microorganisms we find in the soil are responsible to mineralize organic nutrients, making them available to the plants.

Without them, it would be very hard for the grass to grow and develop. Another great benefit of this conditioner is that it puts carbon back into the soil.

The carbon cycle is a fundamental part of all life and the organic carbon that soil needs releases nutrients and keeps the structure for good soil. It is a protection against harmful substances and it is the best way to assess the fertility of the soil in question.

Another great thing about this product is that it is organic. It is made from renewable tree sources, so if that is something you look for when gardening this is a fantastic choice.

Pros

• It is an organic product made from renewable sources
• It increases water and carbon in the soil
• It increases microbial activity in the soil

Cons