Preparing and laying new turf

khw1

Hello, the last posts on this subject were several years ago, so I thought I'd start over.

In my back garden, we have a small rectangle of grass (2.4m x 3.1m). The grass is covered in weeds, well worn, beyond saving really. So, we'd like to replace it with fresh turf.

Most of the process seems pretty straightforward. I'll hire a turf cutter to strip the current grass and there are local places selling good quality turf. What I'm less sure about, and also from watching videos online, is how long the whole process should take?

After stripping the turf, do I need to need some time before the next steps? I'll need to finish levelling off the underlying soil, I imagine, then add some good quality top soil, before I can lay the new turf. 

Is this a job I can do in a day or weekend, say? Cut the turf on one day, do the rest of the prep, and lay the same/next day? Or do you have to stagger the steps?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

bolwin1

Depending on your fitness level, that's a half day job for the whole thing as the area is quite small. The laying of the turf is the easiest part of the job. 

TELLIT01

There's no need to leave time between removing the old turf and returfing.  All that is necessary is to ensure that the ground level is correct for the new turf, and properly prepare the surface which needs to be firm but not solid.

Rosa_Damascena

TELLIT01 said:

There's no need to leave time between removing the old turf and returfing.  All that is necessary is to ensure that the ground level is correct for the new turf, and properly prepare the surface which needs to be firm but not solid.

Does the soil not need to be rotavated before it is levelled?

OP - please let us know how you get on? I may find myself in a similar position once I've had a patio laid.

twopenny

Watch some Alan Tichmarch. I've seen it done so many times.
There's lots of tips on actually laying the turf in this video too.
Remove turf, dig over to remove the roots of weeds and rake  level, shuffle up and down to lightly firm tnen lay new turf.
Can you do it in a weekend? If you're going to do it successfully and are fit I'd say 3 days
It's really important to do it right at this time of year when it's getting (hopefully) hot and dry. You'll need to water every week too.
Just realise thet if you take the old up and stick the new down its less likely to root into the compacted soil and the roots from the old weeds will come through quickly.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J2Tv-ML36r0

khw1

Hi all, thanks for your help so far. I did the work on Friday. 

I hired the turf cutter from Brandon Hire Station - a Camon TC07. Not too bulky and quite easy to manoeuvre - you can get it through your front door and out to the back garden if you leave a clear passage. Has a few steps involved in working, so it's safe from that perspective (especially if you have young kids around!) There are plenty of videos on Youtube that will help, but once you get the hang of it, it's pretty easy. We have a small lawn so it took less than an hour. Only around £70 to hire for a day, but add extras, including delivery and it's double that in reality. Because we got it on a Friday, they didn't actually collect on Saturday. They're doing it today, which has been less than convenient as we've had to store it in the house. So, if you do a one day rental, do it midweek so it definitely goes the next day. 

We bought premium turf from Turf Express as they did a 24h turnaround. Quality is very good and very reasonably priced (we needed 10 rolls at less than a fiver each - turns out we only needed 8 anyway). You can pay for delivery, which is as expensive as the turf and that adds a couple of days. However, loading it into my boot has made it extremely grubby and even an initial hoover has only partially cleaned it. So, you may want to get it delivered anyway, if you want to keep your car clean! Laying turf was quite easy. It's really like laying carpet. We were lucky, I suppose, that two rolls pretty much exactly covered the length of the lawn - only a small amount of cutting with a Stanley knife needed. A bit of soil was added to make sure no real gaps developed, so I'll wait for the grass to grow to cover over that. We've watered every day since and will continue to do so, seeing as there is no rain on the horizon. I'll add some grass food to help its development soon too.

So, in short, this was surprisingly straightforward given that I'm a total novice. It's a lot of hard work, but only over a few hours, and you can enjoy the fruits of your labours across the Summer. Not too expensive either. £200 all in. Even with a bigger garden, the turf only increases in price - the turf cutter won't. And turf is reasonably priced, so even if our garden was twice the size, I reckon another £50 would've been all it would've cost extra.

So, if you're thinking about doing this yourself, go for it.

Mutton_Geoff

khw1 said:

I'll add some grass food to help its development soon too.

If you watch more of Alan Titchmarsh programmes, you'll see he recommends blood fish bone meal for grass feed. I followed his advice and my lawn was very green and impressive after a few months. Large sacks of it cheap enough on Ebay as is the little handheld spreader you can buy. Just don't stand downwind and inhale any of it.