grass help / clay soil

oligeo

When we moved into our house 5 years ago the garden had big cracks in it. We had the grass dug up, and some top soil put down with new grass put down. It is starting to crack again, and some areas have got really mossy - the area that gets little sun by the garage wall, and under a neighbours tree is especially bad.
The soil is really clay like, and takes forever to dry- for the kids to be able to run around on it.

Is there anything we can do to improve it? Someone mentioned pricking the lawn all over with a fork, and sprinkling sand over, would this help??

Any advice greatly appreciated, thanks
Sarah

Leif

I have soil with a high clay content, and I was chatting about the soil with the woman at the local garden centre yesterday. She recommended digging in lots of soil conditioner, which is basically organic matter. Although one book I have recommends creating a 4" layer of crushed rock 1 foot below the surface as a drain, she reckoned it would be useless if the soil was high in clay. She also reckoned that digging in grit would be ineffective if the clay content is high, as the clay wuld just stick to it. I can see her point. She did sell gravel and grit as well as compost, so there was no incentive to push compost. If you have compost, dig it in. I assume you could roll back the turf, dig in loads of organic matter, then roll it back. My guess is that raw farmyard manure would be too strong, but I might be mistaken. I have a huge compost heap, just created, and the resulting compost will be dug in to my soil.

bobthedambuilder

Forking it would improve drainage a little. Using a hollow tined aerator would be better, followed up by sprinkling sand in the holes. Regular (annual) top dressing with a mixture of sand, peat and loam would improve both the health of the grass and fill up any incipient cracks.

SailorSam

I had clay soil at my last house, the back garden sloped away from the house and after heavy rain almost became a swimming pool.
I made a garden pond at the bottom of the garden hoping the water would drain into it, but all that happened was it overflowed. I dug small channels in a sort of herringbone pattern and filled with small stones, trying to make drains; i tried digging in any compost type stuff i could get, it was a never ending problem. You need to improve the soil but how deep can you go. The people next-door raised the garden and flagged it over.
Clay Soil Gardening
Clay soil problems - Tips & Techniques Forum - GardenWeb

Clay Busters - Plants for Growing in Gardens with Clay Soil

tim_n

good luck having a good lawn with clay. It'll always crack especially in the SE as the water tables are dropping. You can't keep it easily flat either.

The only way is to dig in soil improvers, lots of organic matter and loosen it all up. Then keep it well watered.

Of course you can't have pesky kids running over it all the time or they'll compress it back to clay.

I feel your pain, but it's an expensive and long project to make it right.

Alternatively get the JCBs in, dig down a couple of feet and replace the soil completely with decent top soil. Very expensive!

Scarifying the lawn or walking around with pointy nail shoes just isn't going to make that much impact. Sorry!

tim_n

SailorSam wrote: »

The people next-door raised the garden and flagged it over.

Making your problem worse! Nicely done...

wellused

I have very heavy clay soil and my garden used to get very waterlogged in the wetter months and crack in the dryer months. When it was wet and I walked down the garden on the paving stones I could hear the water squelching underneath and when it cracked you could push a stick into the cracks to four or five inches depth. As the garden slopes away from the house I tried digging a trench down either side and filling it with pea shingle and covering it over again with the hope that the access water would run down the trenches and to the bottom of the garden but even this made very little noticeable difference.
As it isn't an enormous garden I decided to slab and gravel it over with raised beds built from concrete stone effect blocks, this made it much more user friendly and it could be enjoyed all year around.
However when my Grandchildren came along I decided that it would be more child friendly if we had some grass for them to play on so I took the gravel and blocks up and raised the patio areas at the top and bottom of the garden, built a raised fishpond in one corner and a raised planter area behind the garage and bought in around eight tons of topsoil which after rotavating the garden I spread to a depth of four to six inches over it, lightly compacted it down with the aid of wooden planks and making sure to get it a level and as stone free as was possible and turfed it.
As my garden faces North I too have problems with moss in some areas and I have tried scarifying the moss out, using moss killer and feeding the grass, and reseeding with hardy grass, the moss always seems to win so I have just bought a roll of turf and skimmed the soil from the offending areas fed the soil and cut the turf in to fill the gaps. I will see how we get on with that but I expect that these problem areas will be an annual chore.

SailorSam

tim_n wrote: »

Making your problem worse! Nicely done...

It didn't make it worse for them, they were able to sit having BBQs and drinking wine while i got all their rain soaking onto my side. If my garden hed sloped towards the house i could have got rid of the water into the drains.
On the plus side, the experts all say clay soils contain more nutrients than say a sandy/chalky soil, so plants grow better.

tim_n

it's true, but the plants need oxygen around the roots as well, which of course clay lacks as it fills more easily with water!

On the plus side you can make lovely pizza ovens -> http://www.waark.com/tag/earth-oven/

poppysarah

You need some well rotted manure.

Find a local stables. Get as much as you can. Pile it on. You might not have a very usable garden - so maybe do a section at a time.

If the drainage is very poor you might need to investigate and put some sort of land drain in.

Leif

poppysarah wrote: »

You need some well rotted manure.

Find a local stables. Get as much as you can. Pile it on. You might not have a very usable garden - so maybe do a section at a time.

I take it you also mean dig it in, or are you saying pile it on top and it will sink in with time?