To turf or not to turf..

lindos90

Due to a number of reasons, plans to turf my garden at Easter just did not happen, and now i left with the dilemma. I know that traditionally turfing is done in spring or autumn as its not so hoy and the grass does not need as much watering to get established, and the sensible thing would be to wait till then I know.

However its our first summer in this house, and it would be lovely to have a fully functional garden for the kids over the summer holidays, so my questions are..

....is it a totally stupid idea, considering the hot weather at the moment?
....how long after turfing does it become established (ie safe to walk on, roots growing into soil beneath turf strip)

ukbill69

You will kill the grass before its established with all this hot heat. Best to do these things in spring time or end of summer before frosts.

ixwood

Grass seed is very cheap, so could be worth a gamble now with that instead of turf.

How big an area is it? As long as you can give it a good soak every other day or so and stay off it for maybe a month, it could work.

Hippychick

We have just turfed our front garden, we watered it every day and it has established fine and looks very lush and green.

It took about 2 weeks to establish. I think if it is well watered you'll be OK, I presume you're not in the NW and facing a hosepipe ban?

olly300

Hippychick wrote: »

It took about 2 weeks to establish. I think if it is well watered you'll be OK, I presume you're not in the NW and facing a hosepipe ban?

Even if you aren't in the North West having repaired my lawn over the years with turf and grass seed you are better of waiting now until Autumn.

Otherwise you will be watering twice a day with this heat. Which is annoying as you have to make sure you are up early in the morning if the day is going to be over 25 degrees otherwise the water evaporates before the grass can absorb it.

dacouch

We had a digging party (Involved free cider for our friends) and turfed our garden 4 weeks before the start of the World Cup during one of the prolonged hot spells. The garden is lovely and lush and we had the first of our many BBQs on it for the first England match.

We watered the turf reguarly (I find it quite therapeutic), we were on quite a limited budget as it's a rented house and bought some of B&Q's budget own brand lawn feed. We also did not buy quite enough turf so bought some of B&Q's budget own brand quick growing lawn seed which was a couple of quid and it's grown within a few weeks.

We're so pleased we laid the turf (Shame England let us down) but have a lovely which has cost us about £90 all in for 20sq metres.

lindos90

Thanks for all the replies, quite a difference of opinion!

Its a small area, about 9 meters by 4 meters, we are not in the north west, just heard about the hosepipe ban there today!...but if it stays really hot for long, im sure the ban will happen in other areas as well.

monicaj

We had our back lawn turfed about 4 weeks ago. Kept our daughter off it until the first cut (3 weeks later) it had it's second cut last weekend and is now lush and fully functional. However, we watered it every night (and sometimes early in the morning) for 3 weeks as we had no rain :eek:

Our front lawn is almost ready for seeding/turfing and we have decided to wait until September to turf, as much as I would like everything "finished", I don't want to be cursing the hot weather for the sake of a lawn