QuestionI live in zone18 Riverside, Southern California. I am installing new marathon sod in my backyard along with 3 planter beds. I would like to use the same medium across my entire yard if possible. I have heard that topsoil is good to use as a base for your lawn and then I hear to stay away from topsoil. Some say it is useless in terms of 'not enough nutrients' to make a difference. Then at the same time I have people saying to use straight compost and not to mess with topsoil, but I hear that it can be too much for some situations and end up burning stuff. I will tell you that I have very fertile soil that needs really nothing to grow just about anything I've put in it. However, it's probably not on the rich side. My local garden center has a landscape mix that is topsoil and compost mixed. At first they said it is relatively low on nitrogen and to use the landscape mix across the whole yard. Planters and all. Then till it in. But on my second trip there, another employee told me to use straight compost if I'm planning to till it in with my native soil.
My question is: What the heck should I use? Thanks.
Jeremy
Answer{oor Jeremy;
I don't mean that in a snide way, it is genuine. It sounds like me about 50 years ago.
I was a newbie to lawn care, and couldn't get the same advice twice.
Back then, I thought if they owned or worked in, a nursery, they knew what they were talking about. WRONG !!!
Now that I know everything, I am blessed with Calloway's nursery.
That is a nursert chain that is all over Texas now, and they bought the Wolfe nursery chain. They have a degreed nurseryman on site at all times, and boy !!! Do they know what they are talking about.
Knowing everything there is to know about gardenung, and having Calloways to run to for information, I am going to be one smart lil gardener after a few more years.LOL
If an employee knows for sure the answer, they will tell you, but if it is a wee on the expert side, they call the nurseryman forward to answer you. I never get steered wrong anymore, and they guarantee their shrubs for 2 years instead of one, and the annuals you buy, they guarantee to grow that year, or they replace them, even if it was a dumb thing on your part yhat caused it not to grow.
I tell you all this, in case they are spreading to other states. If you see one of them, RUN there.
After all the years of digging out roots on my hands and knees, putting down things that did more harm than good, and ruining a perfectly good back, I go into organics. Now, I use NO chemicals, and have a thick, dark green, weed free lawn. No more Dallis grass, dandelions, crabgrass, johnson grass, dollar weed, and a bunch of others I used to have.
The biggest problem with grass weeds is, everything you do to kill grass weeds, also harms or kills your grass you are trying to get to grow.
I used crabgrass killer, and it also killed my St. Augustine and Burmuda. It took 2 years for the bare spots it created to start growing again.
I read in an organic article that weeds love poor soil and will not grow and thrive in rich soil. I had heard that before.
Dallis grass, crabgrass and johnson grass I could only thin out ny digging them out by the roots. now, they don't even come up in my yard.
Fertilizers and weed killers etc, kill beneficial microbes that enrich the soil. You can counter the fertilizer by putting down dry molasses, or sugar, and watering it in with the fertilizer. The weed killer, I don't think it even helps counter the weed killer's ill effects.
I had a yard full of all those weeds, and I put down sugar, and watered it in well. I didn't get my spring feeding down then,just the sugar.
In a couple of weeks, there were about half as many weeds, and nobody had pulled a weed. In a few more mowings, there were no weeds. The next spring, anout half as many came up, and in a few mowings they were gone. I had put down sugar in the fall (still no fertilizer) The 3rd or 4th year, now weeds even came up. I have been weed free ever since, and I still haven't put down fertilizer. That was 7 years ago, and my grass greens up faster in the spring and stays green longer in the fall. I still have green in the fall, when my non-organic neighbors have a brown lawn, and still they won't come aboard.LOL
They are Scott's robotons, and use that Scott's program religiously, and battle weeds, and spend many hours working on their lawns, while the rest of us, throw some sugar down, water it in, and we mow and edge, water, and enjoy our lawns. We be sippin tea while they be sweatin and gulping Gator aid.
Fertilizers don't enrich the soil, they add nutrients to nourish the vegetation growing in the soil, and they wash through the soil and are gone. Beneficial micrones, beneficial nemetodes, earthworms etc, work all day, every day of the year, enrihing the soil.
Organics is more about what you DON'T do, rather than what you DO.
You say your soil is fertile, but not enriched. If it is fertile, that is being enriched.
If the texture of your soil is such that it drains well, but holds water long enough to do the roots some good, and be enough for the plants, then you have a well balanced soil. don't need to put nuttin with it. Sounds great to me.
One thing I have learned over the years. You can kill a lawn or plant with too much care as fast as you can with too little.
I put sugar on my lawn and garden every spring and again in the fall. I use 1 pound per 250 to 300 aq.ft.
Always water to a depth of at least 6 inches, and rewater when the top 2 inches are dry. Deep watering encourages roots to go down deep. this helps protect them from heat, cold and drought damage. Shallow watering makes them come to the surface to get water. when they get too close to the surface, too much air, too much heat, and/or too litle water kills the roots. the dead roots trap more dry grass and debris, and that makes a layer of thatch form, Thatch is a waterproof thick pad that won't let water, nutrients or anything elsy get to the plants, and it dies. Them you have to dethatch.
I had to dethatch 39 years ago, when we bought this house. I have always watered to at least a depth of 6 inches, and I have not had to dethatch since.
Mow the grass short in the spring. This encourages the roots to spread, if you have a grass that spreads by runners, like St. Augustine, Burmuda etc. Fescues, Bluegrass etc grow on individual stems, and will only thicken by sowing more seeds.
When the temp gets in the upper 80s, set the mower settings to the highest setting, and kep the grass higher. NEVER SCALP A LAWN!!! One of the worst thibgs you can do!
The taller grass blades shade the ground and roots from the sun a little, and helps protect against heat damage, and helps the soil not dry out quite as fast.
I let the last growth of grass stay a little taller, in the fall. The longer blades, when it turns it brown, helps make an insulation pad against winter cold, ise etc.
Leaving the lawn clippings os good. Mow when no more than 1/3rd of the blades will be cut off. If you cut off more than that, the grass looks reedy.
I threw sugar in the alley, where poison ivy had started sprouting up, and now poison ivy is not coming up there.
Weeds will not thrive in rich soil, and those beneficial microbes make it rich enough.
I suggested my husband top dress with some of the compost we make, and I think, in the last 6 or 7 years, he MAY have done that once. He puts it on hus strawberry patch and veggies.
I haven't put a thing on my lawn for about 7 years, except sugar, and if you email me at my email address, i will send you a pictures of my weed free lawn, the 3rd year after I started using sugar. Also a picture of the same part of the lawn, 2 years before, with the #$%^% weeds.
BIG DIFFERENCE.
My email is
[email protected]
If I were you, I would put 1 pound sugar per 250 to 300 sq.ft, and water it in well. mow, edge, and watch the weeds appear fewer and fewer. As the weeks pass, there are just fewer weeds to see.
Your soil sounds like it is fine that way it is.
You need to till a lt of things in, when it is too tight or too loose, and you have too poor or too much drainage.
I let the earthworms and roaches do my areatinf, and the toads, lizards, and grass snakes eat the bad bugs. they eat roaches too, but those little buggers reproduce like rabbits.
Roaches naturally live in the soil, and they tunnel through and aerate as they go. To keep them out of the house. I put a sprig of fresh Rosemany on each cabinet and patry shelp, and under all the appliances, washer, dryer, fridge, etc, and in every place they cam come in or hide. I do this about once a month, and I never see one in my house. I use baking soda disolved in water for fungus and mold on plants etc, and that prevents it better than all the fungicides I used to use once a month did.I use the baking soda when there is new growth, not once a month. when the weather heats up, it is no longer necessary, so I only have to do it about once or twice each spring, in the rainy season, and in the fall rainy season.
I gorw my own herns for cooking and aroma therapy. Rosemany is a pretty shrub, if you keep it fairly well pruned, and in milder climates, it is evergreen.
The first thing people ask me about the sugar is. "Doesn't it attract ants?"
No, first, you water it in well. Second, your lawn critters will eat the ants. They will just make your little lizards fat and sassy.LOL
I call my critters, "My lawn livestock" I come from ranchers, and I was about the only "City Kid" in the family.
Other benefits of using the sugar.
I broadcast it by hand, like you sow seeds, or feed chickens, and if you don't get very even coverage, or dump too much in one spot, it doesn't matter a bit. Won't burn the grass, like a wee bit too much fertilizer will do.
My Asthma is about 90% better. I seldom have an Asthma attack, and I have used my Nebulizer about twice in the last 5 or 6 years, and i use about one Albuteral atomizer per year, instead of one per month. Feels great to breathe!!!
I use Landscaper's mix, and till it in with one part mix, and one part existing soil, whenever i am adding dirt, whether it is in a flower bed of garden plot.I have soil much as you desvribe your's. It is not totight or too loose. the mix is bark mulch and humus, and a little peat moss. Sometimes i make my own landscaper's ( sometimes called "Planter's mix")I use about 3 parts cedar bark mulch. 1 parts humus, and 1 part peat moss. Peat moss is acid, so you don't want to add much. NONE, if your soil tends to be a little acid.
A little more if you need more acid, like for azaleas and everygreen spreaders. Evergreens like Juniper, Pine etc, need a more acid soil.
The reason I make my own is. I like cedar bark mulch. ICedar repels termites, fleas and ticks, as well as a lot of other insects. I have dogs, and i live in north Texas. Fleas are a BIG problem. I put a trail of cedar bark mulch, about 3 or 4 inches wide and a couple of inches deep, all around the foundation of out house. We never have to use an exterminator. I do this in the spring when it is time for termites to swarm.
Hardwood bark mulch composts in one year, cedar bark mulch composts in two years, so it keeps the soil loose longer as it composts and feeds.
The grass clippings composting and the microbes working, will provuide all the enrichment and nutrients your grass will need.
Well, didn't mean to write a book. If you need more clarification, or have more questions, feel free to write me any time. I would love everyone to have as worry free and love,y lawn as I have now.
I have all kinds of natural critter and pest repellants. You just don't HAVE to spend all that money, and do all that work to have much better results than ever before.
Charlotte
