I'm in a new house in a scraped earth new development. The soil is heavy clay/rock mixture and the builders just plunked sod over perhaps an inch or two of topsoil. Needless to say, the grass is ugly and thin and in the wet winter/spring weather, water just lies on top. I've looked around at methods of amending this soil by topdressing, but getting the impression results would be iffy or at least would take many years to build up a usable base of better soil. Some suggest digging up the turf and tilling down to break up the clay and then amending and reseeding. I don't want to do all of that. If the situation looks iffy for being able to top dress my way to a better lawn, I'm thinking of just cutting losses and putting pavers down and making a patio. Thoughts? Opinions? Any chance of saving this lawn? I'm on the Sunshine Coast.
Alot of turfs end up looking thin in the winter. Have you considered aerating, raking up the plugs, then top dressing (1/2 inch deep) with a sandy loam and overseeding with a Canada Grade 1 seed ?
Yes, that's what I figured would be the next step after the winter. However, when I did a bit of googling around, it began to look as if all of that effort might not be enough to overcome the clay, or at least a constant struggle over a long time to build up enough for the roots to do their work properly. Which is why I thought maybe better to just give up on the lawn since it wasn't given the proper base in the first place and the clay underneath is so seriously dense. (I was going to plant a climbing rose for my arbour, dug a hole and next morning it was brim full of water as if it was just a bucket in the ground. No drainage whatsover.)
