Extremely hard, dry compacted lawn - what to do??

 Hi all

I live in Beenleigh Qld. I have what was once a lawn in the front of my
house - now it is a completely dead, very hard, dry, compacted soil
surface. I have noticed that when we have gotten some rain over the past
couple of years, what grass was still alive greened up a little but
never actually grew. It seems to me that a complete renovation of the
soil is needed to take advantage of any rain that may eventually come
our way.

I read somewhere that you should be able to hand force a screwdriver 3
inches into a lawn . Well, I can't penetrate my ground even one inch
with a screwdriver. It is not rocky - just very hard clay. I have been
considering renting a machine lawn corer - but I suspect that the
machine would not actually be able to core this ground.

Short of using dynamite - does anybody have any suggestions as to what I
could do with this ground to make it even a little bit desirable for
grass seed to grow when/if the rains come? Would a rotary hoe turn it?
If so, what should I do with the broken ground then? Dolomite, fertilizer??

I have an area of around 300 square meters that needs help.

Thanks for any advice from any who have faced a similar situation.

Barry

 g'day barry,

not into resource wastefull lawns as such but i hear your plight,
apart from suggest turn a lot more of it into efficient gardens??!!

a coring machine would likely do the job might take a bit, as they
generally are used on sandier mediums ie.,. lawn bowls greens.

anyhow back to your um lawn, i would spread a very good layer of
gypsum over the whole area and get a good sandy loam type top soil and
top dress with that, would also suggest throwing some el-cheepo lawn
seed around so you get some growth to hold it all together until the
grass that is there springs back a not too heavy cover of that fine
sugar cane mulch will help hold a bit of moisture.

before laying the gypsum maybe give the area a good water with your
grey water a bit of detergent could help the clay hold water better.

about all i can suggest if you need hands on?? me i'd just wait for
the wet season to come and whatever green grows back let it be, reckon
in our drier conditions you could do worse than let the lotinomus,
wynn-cassia and clovers grow as ground cover/lawn at least they are
all soil improvers and very hardy.

wrote:
snipped
With peace and brightest of blessings,

len & bev

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.lensgarden.com.au/

 
i think you need to get LOTS of water in there before you can do anything
about it! machinery won't work on rock-hard ground, and nothing else is
going to be effective if the soil is so hard & dry either. after that, you
can begin aerating (which sounds very necessary) & adding organic matter &
anything needed to balance the soil and encourage what it is you want
growing there.

use water on it gradually to soften it up. only water to pooling/run off
each time, then start again the next day. this might take weeks, but that is
all right, because you can use that time to think about if you want another
grass lawn or if something else is a better idea (one suspects the latter
;-) something like dichondra, or even a very tough grass or perhaps a herb
lawn (e.g. thyme), might be a better idea than traditional "lawn".
(expanding the beds around the lawn is also a good idea, but that's not
exactly what you asked ;-)

like len said, use grey water. we use our washing machine water on the
garden, & this way we have a lot available & it gets used twice (sometimes 3
times if we had a shower in it first <g>)

but do think about it. i haven't got a problem with lawn (particularly since
they're so happy with grey water) because some of them can be really good
(even if falling out of favour lately), BUT, there really isn't a point to
it at all if it's just going to die. choose something that can still live
and look good in the conditions that you have.
kylie

 

Paint it green

 SG1 wrote:

Concrete it first! Italians do it better!