How to make a lawn: types, preparation, planting, care

A beautiful, well-groomed lawn near the house - this picture pleases not only the look. Emerald grass emphasizes architectural solutions, highlights flower beds, rabatki, alpine hills. It does not take much time to make a lawn with your own hands, but it is necessary to know how to do it correctly.

Almost all lawns are based on grass. It is of different types, with different characteristics, in different colors. Not all of them do well in the climate of central Russia. Therefore, if you are going to buy a ready-made mixture, pay attention to zoning: in the very first winter you risk losing the entire lawn.

DIY green lawn can be done in five to seven weeks

You need to be especially careful with ryegrass. It rises quickly, creates a thick beautiful carpet, but it does not tolerate frost well and freezes in our climate. When buying a ready-made herbal mixture, see its composition: there should be little ryegrass. If it does freeze, it won't do much harm.

When to sow the grass

You can sow grass from May 1 to August 15. During spring sowing, slightly increase the seed consumption per square of area (by 10-15%). So you will get a beautiful lawn faster and the lawn will leave stronger in winter. Due to the high density, the plants will begin to compete with each other and the weak will be crowded out. Only the strong will survive until the fall.

When sowing in summer, adhere to the application rate. Due to lack of time, weak plants will not have time to displace, but everyone will be weakened by this struggle. Therefore, good maintenance is important for summer lawns.

What is the best lawn grass

The most beautiful color and dense herbage in fescue and bluegrass. Their greens are delicate and emerald. When creating a parthene lawn, they are used. But for other types of lawns on which they will walk, they cannot be used: they will quickly trample. On such lawns, bent grass of different varieties is often sown. Not so gentle, it tolerates some degree of stress well.

The choice of lawn grass is wide, but five main ones are most often used:

Fescue is also more suitable for shady lawns. But even she will not grow in deep and permanent shadow. Sunlight is the basis of photosynthesis. And at least for some time the lawn should be lit.

Types of lawns

We are used to the fact that a lawn is necessarily a grass covering the soil. It can be arranged flower beds, discounts, alpine slides and other decorative elements. This is not entirely true. There are at least three more varieties of flowering lawns. They are undoubtedly more decorative, but you will hardly be able to walk on them.

Blooming lawns

They are based on cereals, but significantly "diluted" by perennial or annual flowering plants. They are selected so that flowering lasts the entire growing season - from mid-spring to late autumn. Depending on what kind of plants are included in the composition, there are three types of flowering lawns.

Lugovoi

Already by the name it is clear that the composition of the plants that can be seen in a real meadow. Only rarely in full composition and in a strictly metered proportion. Added to the cereals are traditional grassland dwellers such as clover, chamomile, daisy, monotonous loosestrife, yarrow and other flowering or ornamental foliage plants. Despite the abundance of flowers, the main ones are herbs.

The meadow lawn is highly decorative.Different plants bloom at different times and the species is constantly changing, the palette changes

It is clear that you will not often mow such beauty, but once or twice a season you have to cut it to renew and rejuvenate. Plants are perennial, therefore, with proper watering, they quickly restore decorativeness. Sowing the entire territory with such a mixture is not always appropriate, but some zones are very pleasing to the eye.

Mauritanian

It differs in that the flowers are used for annuals. Therefore, such a lawn is not cut at all. Cereals are picked up undersized, there are fewer of them than flowers. Flowers dominate the Moorish lawn. Both in height and in quantity (look at the photo).

It looks like a Moorish lawn - a riot of colors all season

They are selected so that the flowering is as long as possible. Usually in the composition of poppy seed, cornflower, calendula, matiola, large-flowered flax, escholzia and other bright annuals.

Non-grass

This is a completely unusual lawn in composition, consisting of ground cover plants. Sowing them in open ground is a futile business, growing seedlings is a long time, and buying ready-made is expensive. Therefore, a non-grass lawn has been grown for more than one year or two: plants are planted in small quantities, waiting for them to grow. It is most difficult to grow such a lawn with your own hands: the results of labor are visible only after a few years, but the effort is worth it.

Unconventional lawn - non-grassy made from ground cover arsthenia

Grass lawns

In the opinion of a layman, different types of grass lawns are almost the same: the color may be slightly different. But besides a different shade of greens, they have different characteristics: one can be walked on, on the other it is contraindicated, the sowing rate is different, different care is required. Naturally, different herbs with different characteristics are used.

Ordinary

The most resistant to trampling, you can walk on it. Grasses are selected from tough, rough-looking. But it is easier to care for it, less often to weed, some mistakes, which are often made when self-sowing, are not visible. An ordinary lawn is an excellent choice for a summer residence.

Parterre

This is one of the most decorative and ceremonial lawns. Differs in high decorativeness, herbs are selected in delicate, beautiful colors. The grass is low and dense, and with proper care it looks simply gorgeous. Such lawns are arranged in open places, but where no one will walk: too soft grains will not withstand such a load. Therefore, the parterre lawn (see photo) is sown where they only walk along the paths.

The parterre lawn is one of the most decorative and "smart"

Special

It is planted on slopes. It contains herbs that have an extensive root system that can keep the soil from washing out. The decorativeness of such a coating is average, but it performs its main purpose well. A special lawn can be planted on a slope leading to a river or lake, if there is one on your site.

Sports

The mixture is more complex - in addition to traditional varieties of cereals, there are special ones that are more resistant to abrasion. The decorativeness of a sports lawn is not its main characteristic, therefore even a very well-groomed lawn looks much worse than an ordinary one, and even more so a parterre lawn. But it has a very high abrasion resistance.

Due to the use of special herbs, its cost is higher, more difficult to care for. Therefore, it is worth sowing with such a mixture those zones that will be actively exploited: a playground, an area where they will actively walk - near a gazebo, a sports ground, swing... The rest of the area is usually reserved for an ordinary lawn.

On children's or playground better to sow a sports turf

Natural

For this type of coating, mixtures are not bought, no work is carried out. They simply cut the grasses that are. Most often, a natural lawn is left in the garden: it protects the soil well from drying out, and the requirements for decorativeness are not very high here.Plants that are too large and do not fit the desired picture are removed manually. The rest in the process of haircuts become smaller and smaller, forming sod of different colors.

How to make a beautiful lawn

Growing a lawn consists of several stages:

• Soil preparation - removing weeds, if necessary - adjusting acidity and increasing fertility.
• Sowing grass, regular watering.
• First haircut. It is carried out after the stand reaches a certain size.
• Regular grooming and occasional haircut.

In the process, you will have to monitor soil moisture and promptly remove weeds, from time to time to feed, sow bald spots that may appear after an overly dry summer or too harsh winter. This, in short, is the whole technology of growing a lawn, and then in detail point by point.

Soil preparation

The first thing to do is to assess the fertility of the soil. If the soil is clay or loam, the grass will not grow normally on it. You will have to do some serious soil preparation. There are two options: fill the area with fertile soil from above, or remove the soil and fill the soil with the resulting pit.

It's easier, of course, to just fall asleep, but this is not always possible to implement: the layer of earth in this case should be about 20 cm. Raising the lawn to such a height is not the most reasonable solution: there will be problems with water drainage, high well-fortified curbs are required, and the outer it looks strange. Therefore, clay soils are more often removed to a depth of 15-20 cm, and then earth is brought into the formed pit.

If you chose the second option, you can lay on the bottom of the pit geotextile... It will prevent weeds from germinating through it, and you will not have problems with weeding.

The soil is removed to a depth of 20-25 cm, and then covered with earth

If the soil is normal, preparing the soil for lawn grass is not so difficult. All weeds are removed first. This can be done mechanically - with a hoe and / or by hand, you can use herbicides. They are bred according to the instructions, watered the place of the future lawn. After a few days, the vegetation turns yellow and dries up, it is removed. Simultaneously with the release from weeds, stones, roots, and other fragments that can interfere with the growth of the horse system are removed.

The next step is to check the acidity of the soil. Nearly all grasses in turf mixtures thrive on neutral soils. If you want to have a beautiful lawn, you will have to correct its acidity. Therefore, in a store for gardeners and gardeners, find a kit for determining the acidity of the soil and check what kind of soil is on your site. This is just a litmus test that you need to lay on the soil, wait until it is colored and, using the color chart on the package, determine the acidity of your soil. If the soil is acidic, add lime, if the reaction is alkaline, sprinkle crushed peat. Next comes the digging. Simultaneously with loosening, remove those stones and roots that come across.

On swampy soils, in order to grow a beautiful lawn, it is necessary to create normal conditions for water drainage

The next step is to add a fertile layer. Fertile loose and light soil is brought in and distributed over the entire plot in an even layer 6-10 cm thick. The layer is leveled first with shovels, then with a rake. In this case, it is desirable to form a slight slope towards the fence: so you will not have problems with waterlogging the lawn in showers: the water will drain from the site. The slope is made minimal - 1 cm per meter or one and a half. This is quite enough to ensure the outflow of water, but outwardly it will not be noticeable.

Preparing the soil for the lawn - leveling with a rake

One piece of advice: imported land contains roots, stones, branches, etc. To remove them, it is sieved through a coarse mesh (as is done during construction, when sand is sieved). And the sifted one is already being transported around the site.

The next step in arranging a lawn with your own hands is tamping or rolling. It allows you to compact the soil, and when a person does not step on the lawn, the soil under the foot does not crumble, but remains flat. Also, this process allows you to identify irregularities that will surely appear as a result of all earthwork.

If there is no special roller, it can be made from a piece of asbestos or iron pipe. You pass a rod inside the pipe, you hook the handles to it (even though you just tie a rope). You made all the lawn roller with your own hands. Now he is dragged around the site, tamping the soil until it can stand on it without falling through.

Rolling the lawn is an important step in detecting irregularities. To do this, use a lawn roller (or make it from a pipe, barrel)

When rolling the lawn, humps and pits will certainly appear. We remove the surplus from the humps, fill the holes. Having leveled the surface in this way, we take the lawn roller and once again go through the site. To get a perfectly flat surface, you can take a long board and stretch it together along the site, cutting off the unevenness with an edge. Or make a device from two boards - as in the photo below. They can work alone.

Preparing a lawn area includes careful leveling of the soil

Fertilization

Fertilizers can be applied at several stages (one of them). In principle, if you pour 6-10 cm of imported fertilizer on top of normal soil, fertilizers can be omitted. But for more active growth, you can add:

• after the imported soil has been scattered over the site and before leveling with a rake;
• if dry fertilizers are used, they can be mixed with the seeds;
• dilute and water the soil.

The most optimal way is watering. It guarantees a more even distribution of nutrients. But with this method, rarely does anyone want to bother himself, unless there is automatic irrigation system... The other two are equivalent. It is more convenient to apply together with the seeds: it takes less time.

We plant grass

First, it is necessary to loosen the rammed earth with a rake. Just walk with a light rake, loosening the top layer slightly. Now you can sow the grass.

It is hardly reasonable to buy a seeder, which costs about $ 200-300 for a single use, therefore, pour the seeds for the lawn into a bucket, and sprinkle it over the surface using the old old-fashioned method: take a handful and pass it little by little through your fingers, sprinkle it more or less evenly. For those who want at least some kind of mechanization, you can offer two options for the simplest seeders for lawn grass, which are easy to make by hand. This is a tin or plastic bottle, in which holes have been made (see photo).

Homemade lawn seeders

So that it does not turn out that in one corner it is dense, and in the other it is empty, it is advisable to divide the plot and seeds into parts. Seed consumption is indicated for each mixture. What is the area of ​​the sown area, you can estimate on the spot and measure the amount to be scattered. For those who make a lawn in the country with their own hands for the first time, it is better to divide the measured amount into two equal parts and go through the section first along and then across. This will distribute the seeds more evenly.

After sowing, the seeds must be covered with earth. There are two ways to do this:

• Walk around the site with a rake, trying to sprinkle the seeds with earth. This method is less reliable - many remain outside, they are pecked by birds, and germination is deteriorating.
• Sprinkle on top with the remnants of the imported earth. Layer - 3-5 mm. All seeds are covered with soil, are in better conditions, seedlings are better.

On this we can assume that you made the lawn with your own hands. It remains to water and wait for shoots.

Lawn irrigation devices that you can buy in the store

Watering and waiting

Watering the lawn is necessary depending on the conditions: the soil should not dry out, but it should not be very wet either. Water should not gush out in a large stream, there should be no streams or puddles.Break the stream into small streams: install a sprinkler or sprinkler, if you water manually, put a nozzle on the hose. In the photo above, you will see several options that will help solve the watering problem. They are sold in stores.

There are also several homemade lawn sprinklers available. Most have a perforated plastic bottle connected to a garden hose. She can lie and irrigate the adjacent area. If there is enough pressure in the system, you can tie it to a column. In this case, the watering area will be larger. It is very easy to make sprinklers for watering the lawn with your own hands. Look at the photo.

Do-it-yourself sprinklers for watering the lawn from bottles are easy to make: take a bottle, heat the nail, make holes (the diameter is selected empirically, but start with small ones)

Another way to get small splashes is to make holes in a piece of plastic pipe or make a thin cut. Either thin jets or a fan are obtained (in the photo at the bottom right).

Why does water need to be sprayed? Because for the normal development of the root system, the soil must be moist (but not wet) to a depth of about 6-10 cm.If it is simply flooded from above, it will only get worse: water displaces oxygen and the roots have nothing to breathe. So splashing or drip irrigation Is the best way to water your lawn.

After seven to ten days, the first shoots appear. They are still rare, but don't be upset. Only the seeds of some varieties have hatched, in which shoots appear quickly. The rest germinate later. With proper care, after 20-30 days, the height of the grass stand reaches 10-15 cm. At this time, the first mowing should be carried out. Leave about 5 cm in height the first time. At this height, the grass will grow actively. After another 10-12 days, it will again be about 12 cm high.Now you can cut the grass shorter - leaving 3-3.5 cm.

How to care for lawn grass

The main care is timely watering, weed removal and periodic trimming. If you water by sprinkling, the soil will contain a sufficient amount of oxygen and the plants should develop normally.

How to check how much water your herb is getting \

Problems with a lack of oxygen can arise after prolonged heavy rainfall, when the water stands in puddles on the site or with improper watering with the same result. Then aeration of the lawn is necessary. To do this, use a roller similar to the one used to tamp the soil, but this one has points that pierce the sod. Through these punctures, oxygen enters the soil, the plants begin to grow better.