We are happy to present the following guest post by Ann Katelyn of SumoGardener.com:

Topdressing is an effective way to keep the soil healthy. You can use sand, silt, and clay for covering the soil surface.  However, did you know that compost can also be used for topdressing? If you want a sustainable way of improving your soil, it’s best that you learn how to topdress your lawn with compost.

Do It Lightly and Frequently

Instead of heavily topdressing your lawn once every several months, you should do it monthly but only with a light application. This frequency works best to help combat soil compaction. Likewise, compost topdressing will ideally reduce the amount of fertilizer and pesticide you’d need for your lawn.

Also, be reminded that topdressing is different from fertilizing. While both of these are beneficial for your lawn, they serve different main functions. Topdressing is for improving the soil structure while fertilizing is for releasing nutrients your plants need for robust growth.

Aerate Your Soil

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image source: https://pixabay.com/en/garden-fork-lawn-lawn-maintenance-1208987/

Aeration needs to be conducted at least once every two or three years. If the soil is heavily compacted, you should perform core aeration. Basically, this will take out plugs of soil from your lawn to allow water and air to move down the soil better. Likewise, core aeration will allow the compost to penetrate the soil surface easily.

Prepare the Topdressing Mixture

Apart from compost, other ingredients can be added to the top-dressing mixture. Specifically, you can use loam or sharp sand. Regardless of which ones you use, there should be no clump that’s bigger than 0.25 inches. Also, the top-dressing mixture needs to be dry to work properly.

If you have a typical loamy soil, the proportions of these ingredients should be equal. If you have clay soil, the top-dressing mixture can have less or no loam at all. Soil that is not well-draining can be improved with top-dressing containing sharp sand.

Begin to Topdress Your Lawn

Once you’ve aerated the soil and acquired the right topdressing mixture, it’s time to get a shovel and put the mixture on the soil surface. First, get three shovels worth of compost topdressing. This is enough for covering several square feet of your lawn if you flatten it well. To do this, you can get a rake and use its backside.

As you flatten the topdressing mixture all around the surface, it will penetrate the holes made through core aeration. If you want an easier way to topdress, you should use a spreader. A walk-behind compost spreader removes the need to dig up the mixture using a shovel. Also, the coverage is even and thin enough to forgo the use of rake. Ideally, the topdressing should not be thicker than one inch over the lawn grass.

If you have uneven surfaces, you must first remove any existing grass. Otherwise, the grass would succumb to the thick layer of compost topdressing and harm newly planted grass as they start to decay below. Once you have removed the existing grass, you can fill it with enough topdressing to create a leveled soil surface. Afterward, you can fill it again with grass seeds.

Water and Let the Topdressing Settle

The compost topdressing needs a couple of days to settle, but you can accelerate this by irrigating your lawn. Also, foot traffic is discouraged during this period. While it won’t significantly affect the soil surface, stepping on fresh topdressing can be bad for your house.

Children and pets that walk on the compost can carry some of them back and make your floors and carpets dirty with dark-colored markings. Once the topdressing has settled well, you can check for any bare patches and plant grass seedlings there.

Here is a video about topdressing with compost:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qtn0rUf9yl8

Overall, topdressing your lawn with a compost-based mixture isn’t difficult as long as you follow the aforementioned steps. Once you’ve done this several times, the soil structure will be better suited to support your lawn grass.

We hope that you learned a lot from our lawn care guide. If you have any queries, do send us a comment.