Laying turf - any extra tips?

paintguy

paintguy

paintguy

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Joined
13 Feb 2003
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Sheffield
Hi all,

This weekend I'll be laying some turf over a small section of mums garden that the previous owners had let turn into a jungle. It's around 20M².

The area has been ready for several weeks, with the top few inches of soil and matted weeds scraped off leaving nice rich looking soil underneath that we've dug over to about 6" depth, levelled, and lightly trodden down. Over the last few weeks mum has been removing any stones and the odd few weeds that have grown back. I plan to rake it level again and tread down just before laying.

I know turf ought to be put down ASAP but I refused to pay £54 extra just for a Saturday morning delivery so it's coming on Friday, ready for laying first thing on Saturday. Will that be okay?

Apart from trying to stagger the joints and watering the life out of it afterwards, are there any other tips you can give me? Anything I've missed?

Thanks :)
 
Water the ground before you put the turf down and then water the turf after its all laid.. Make sure it's watered every other day from then on and you will be good to go!
 
Should be fine to be laid down the day after unless we get a heatwave.

I was laying some turf last year, or it might have been the year before, when we were in the depths of this massive heatwave. A lot of problems with the turf because we left it on the pallet in the sun.
 
We got ourselves some turf a couple of months ago (or longer... I can't remember) for 50p a roll because it was old and just about dead, all yellow and yucky.

We laid it on an area we had filled in with rubbish soil from a couple of planters as we had removed a concrete path and needed something and figured that good top soil we purchased would be better off in the planters, and gave it very little extra care and it's recovered perfectly and looks wonderful. It's pretty tough stuff is grass!!!
 
Water is your friend, then once it's down buy some feed put it in some water & use it for a few days to get the growth going. Sorted a patch out myself tuther week when I put my shed up, with the watering after with the feed it only took about 3 days before you could see it had taken properly.
 
Thanks all. Weather looks like it'll be cool, possibly with some showers so that ought to help.

I've got some feed for my own grass, so may give it some of that.
 
Get a couple of nice big boards as well... No use levelling it if you are going to have to step on the soil or the newly laid turf to put the next row down.

Level off, row down, place board, step on board for next row. Flip the board over when you need to move up a section. This keeps things nice and flat. Laying is the easy bit, the prep work takes more time.
 
All went well yesterday :D

There was a minimum order of 25M² so we had loads left over, but a friend managed to find a use for it.

I soaked the soil first, laid the turf, then soaked it all afterwards. It isn't perfectly flat and level, but then it has to follow the lie of the land so was never going to be.

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Now we need to decided what to do with the bottom of the garden. There is a massive concrete slab and mum doesn't want to go to the expense of having it dug up. She wants to keep the very bottom section where the shed sits, but would like to hide / disguise the first half somehow, where the angled bench and wheelbarrow are in this picture:

2013-09-21151321Large_zpse93520c8.jpg


I've suggested decking, but she isn't keen, then yesterday I thought about some artificial grass and she's up for that. I'm pretty sure this can be put straight down over the top of concrete. Any known issues with that idea?
 
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