Renovating a Lawn Without Digging
September is the ideal month for lawn renovation. The soil still has a good temperature, the hot and dry phases are over, and the lawn has plenty of time to regenerate before the next summer.
Many lawn owners still hesitate to renew their lawn areas because they are afraid of the vast amount of effort involved in digging. When it comes to the renovation of lawns, the lawn renovation system from WOLF-Garten that requires no digging has been around for over two decades.
The crucial factors for the success of this system of lawn renovation are:
- following the work steps exactly
- using the best possible lawn seed
- the optimized care sequence for providing the young grass with a good supply of nutrients
WOLF-Garten can offer you a whole series of special products for lawn renovation that can make good the damage in record time in the autumn.
The five steps of lawn renovation
When it comes to lawn renovation, the old lawn should be weakened so much that the new grass has the best possible opportunities for starting and developing. To do this, the old lawn should first of all be mown as short as possible by setting the lawnmower to the lowest possible height setting. Removes everything that had been mown.
The short lawn is now thoroughly scarified, and many times both lengthways and across. The more thoroughly this is done, the better, because this is the only way that the new lawn seed has soil contact everywhere and has good conditions for germinating and developing.
In the third step the start fertilizer and the special lawn seed are distributed evenly one after another over the prepared surface. This works best if you use a spreader cart, because the more evenly the two are spread, the better the results. Avoid spreading errors by confusing which track you are in by applying the fertilizer lengthways and the seed crossways. Ensure that the spreader cart has been set correctly You can avoid gaps when spreading by overlapping the wheel tracks.
In order to cover the seeds well, now evenly spread peat or another non-fertilizing substrate with a layer that is no more than 0.5 cm thick over the sown area, using a lawn rake. This protects the seed in the best way possible against being eaten by the birds or from being washed way. Furthermore, if it is dry the peat shows through its pale colour that the lawn needs to be watered again.
TIP: Do not use bark humus or earth containing wood or bark (compost earth) to cover the seeds, because the tannic acids that they contain can hinder or even prevent the germination of the grass.
The germination of the various lawn grasses takes place over a period of from 1 to 3 weeks. Since the seedlings cannot yet cover their considerable need for water by a perfect system of roots, a suitable supply of water in this phase is crucial for success. The top layer of soil must always contain enough moisture in these first 3 to 4 weeks so that the delicate grass seedlings do not dry out. For that reason it is necessary to water for around 10 minutes for four to five times daily if the weather is dry. You will see the first results after 4 to 7 days in the form of delicate green shoots. Nonetheless, you still need to continue the watering constantly now.