Turf renovation, rejuvenation

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EA01
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Turf renovation, rejuvenation

#1 Post by EA01 » Tue Aug 31, 2021 8:21 am

Spent the day (the ENTIRE day) HARD WORKING in the garden (on a mid week day off), scalping the lawn to near bare earth, going over it with a hired water filled 'Drum Aerator' extremely heavy, physically dragging / pulling pushing it, you should probably really use a tractor), and then applying a 1/4 M3 of premium organic mix & 1/4 M3 of fine washed sand.

A 1/2 M3 of soil / sand doesn't sound like much until you move it with a shovel and a bucket (no wheel barrow, it's about 1.6T). Rake that all out to evenly (ish) spread over front, rear & side lawns.

Rear lawn is the good (Just laid last year) premium 'Queensland Blue Couch' (Digitaria Didactyla) so just the sand / organic mix raked in there with a double shot of high intensity fertiliser and a heavy watering.

Front and side the same but for the addition of packets of seed mix, (couch, Perrenial & Annual Rye grass, Red Fescue, & Kentucky Blue), lets see how that strikes....

Needless to say many well deserved ice cold beers were enjoyed after the physical activity, whilst hand watering in all the goodness!... :)

A few weeks from now I hope to have the 'best lawn in the street'... :)

(I'm well knackered though!).....and it wasn't until 12:30 did I realise I had been out in the Sun since dawn without a hat.....it was technically the last day of 'winter', but I am very sunburnt...:/

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Re: Turf renovation, rejuvenation

#2 Post by Pontius Navigator » Tue Aug 31, 2021 8:33 am

A metre bag is 'only' 900kg.

Last month we laid 16x900 on the drive. Well 3 of us and raked off a trailer 😁

I hope your aerator didn't act like a compactor. Did it extract small cores of earth into which your brush the sand mix?

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Re: Turf renovation, rejuvenation

#3 Post by EA01 » Tue Aug 31, 2021 8:56 am

Oh, I looked up an online converter to come up with my answer as I've no idea what sand weighs....it is just 'eyeballed' from the backhoe loader at the landscape supply shop.

The 'coring' machine which extracts 'plugs' of Earth is an expensive hire, the aerator I used is a water filled drum fitted with many 4 inch spikes that pierce the ground, periodic inspection revealed that at times there was 'air' between the drum and the ground, at others the drum was touching the ground (compacting?).

16x900? = 14400.....you laid 14.4T of sand on a driveway?

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Re: Turf renovation, rejuvenation

#4 Post by Pontius Navigator » Tue Aug 31, 2021 11:39 am

Correct, a private drive for 4 houses. Personally I would not have laid them as deep but the builder, who lives at the end in an old bungalow, and owns the drive, went about 3 inches deep.

It was 20mm stone chip.

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Re: Turf renovation, rejuvenation

#5 Post by unifoxos » Tue Aug 31, 2021 12:41 pm

If it was for cars I would always do 4" concrete on 4" hardcore unless re-inforcing the concrete. 3 inches is for foot traffic.
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Re: Turf renovation, rejuvenation

#6 Post by Ex-Ascot » Tue Aug 31, 2021 3:52 pm

You want sand? Got a bit of it here.

Was at a bar just out of town once. Tourist said to the owner, 'how far away in the Kalahari Desert?' 'Under your feet mate' was the reply.
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