Creating a lawn: Sowing the lawn or laying turf

If you want to create a new lawn, you can choose between comfortable rolled turf or sowing a lawn. When is which method the right decision?

Creating a lawn: The planning

The creation of a lawn should be planned well and as far in advance as possible. Ideally, the ground in front of the plant is either milled with a motor tiller or dug up with a digging fork in autumn. In addition, when laying out the lawn, all work in the garden that would put a strain on a young lawn should be completed. Once the fruit trees have been planted, beds, paths or garden ponds laid out and new buildings have already been plastered and painted, you can get started.

Depending on the type of soil and the levelness of your property, further ground preparations must then be made. In the case of heavy soil, for example, it is necessary to lay drainage, while in the case of heavily compacted soil, it is advisable to plant green manure in the year before the lawn is planted. And in the case of severe unevenness, the garden floor is best leveled (professionally) before the lawn is laid. All of this work, some of which is quite strenuous, has to be carried out both before sowing Lawn Seed as well as before the laying of rolled turf.

When to plant a lawn?

The best growing conditions for most lawn grasses are between 10 and 25 °C. Sufficient moisture should also be ensured. Early autumn or, as an alternative, spring is the best time for both sowing and laying the finished lawn. Germinating seeds and young seedlings are more sensitive to the weather, which is why sowing should be planned well in terms of the weather. Sown lawns must not dry out until germination, which can take up to four weeks, and tolerate dry periods far less well than rolled turf. In summary, it can be said that the time for laying out rolled turf can be selected more flexibly than the sowing date of lawn seeds.

When deciding on rolled turf, one must not forget that the rolled-up lawn carpets are living plants that do not want to be stored for long. Ideally, the turf should come into contact with your garden soil 36 hours after being peeled off by the turf producer. Therefore, only buy or order your turf once you have completed all ground preparations.

Creating a lawn: Duration until the lawn area can be used

When sowing lawn seeds, it can take up to four weeks for the seeds to germinate. Juvenile development is more or less rapid depending on the temperature and humidity. It can take several months before the sown lawn has a closed turf and can withstand greater loads. Laying rolled turf, on the other hand, transforms a brown area of ​​earth into a soft green carpet of lawn with a beautiful, dense turf within a day. After only two to three weeks, the lawn is firmly rooted in the ground and can then already be used in moderation. In the end, the time that you save until the full load compared to the lawn seed is about three months.

Sowing lawns: costs, advantages and disadvantages

The self-sowing of lawn can be done either by hand or with the help of a lawn seed drill or a (fertilizer) spreader.

Sowing the lawn: costs and other advantages

The most compelling reason for sowing lawn seeds is cost. Even for large areas you can find very high-quality seeds for less than 50 euros. Spreaders can often be borrowed from horticultural associations or purchased for around 20 euros. Another advantage of independent sowing is the free choice (or the possible individual composition) of the seed. Depending on the desired type of use, very hard-wearing, beautiful ornamental grasses or seed mixtures adapted to shade can be selected very specifically. The latter includes ours, for example Plantura shade lawn.

Sowing the lawn: disadvantages

An even distribution of the lawn seeds can hardly be achieved by laymen by hand. However, if the optimal amount of seed is not sown, this can lead to an uneven lawn in the long term. Both too low and too high a seed density can have negative consequences for lawn growth. However, this problem can be solved with a well-adjusted spreader. Another, often decisive, disadvantage of sowing a lawn is the long time between planting and using the lawn. Especially when building new houses, a quickly resilient lawn is often required, for example as a playground for children. However, if you sow at the ideal sowing time (early autumn), the lawn can only withstand moderate loads after regeneration in late spring. The lawn needs a bit more time until it can be used safely.

Sowing the lawn: Choosing the right lawn seed

Choosing the right lawn seed is very important. Because neither with the soil preparation nor with the subsequent years of care can you have as much influence on your lawn as with the choice of grass - i.e. the seed. For this reason, the selection and purchase of the right seed is well thought out and maybe worth a few euros more. The composition of the grass in a lawn varies depending on how the lawn is used. After all, grasses that are intended for a play and utility lawn have to withstand more stress than ornamental lawn grasses. There are also types of grass that do better in the shade than others. It is important that you have one regular seed buy mix. This seal has been tested and thus promises quality in terms of germination and the right composition of different types of grass. All of ours Plantura lawn seeds bear this seal. an overview of which lawn type makes sense when, get it here.

Sowing the lawn: brief instructions

The use of a spreader simplifies the precise distribution of the lawn seed.

1. Prepare your soil in good time (preferably the previous fall) for sowing the lawn.
2. Prepare a foil or cloth that you can drive the spreader over to test it. Fill the spreader and, depending on the width of your device, drive so far that the piece of film covered corresponds to one square meter.
3. Now pour the seed from the foil into a container and weigh it. Depending on how far your result deviates from the recommended amount per square meter of your seed mixture, adjust the seed rate of the spreader.
4. After sowing, the lawn seeds are very lightly raked into the ground with a rake (no deeper than one cm). The seeds are then properly brought into contact with the ground and additionally protected from birds by walking on the lawn with footboards. In contrast to rollers, larger running boards (approx. 25 x 35 cm) there is no risk of soil compaction.
5. After sowing, a continuous supply of moisture ensures that the germination process begins and continues continuously. However, the soil must not be submerged in water either, as this would endanger the oxygen supply to the seeds. In dry weather, it is recommended to water two to three times a day for about 10 to 15 minutes. Use the finest irrigation setting (e.g. a sprinkler) so that evenly distributed seeds are not washed away with a hard jet of water.

A more detailed guide to Sowing Lawn you'll find here.

Laying turf: costs, advantages & disadvantages

Rolled turf, also known as ready-made turf, is spread on special, often sandy to slightly loamy cultivation areas and ideally cared for for a year. The in most cases high-quality seed mixtures that are sown in optimal density, as well as the proper supply of water and nutrients leads to a dense, weed-free turf of the grass. After about a year, the lawn is peeled off about one and a half to two centimeters below the surface of the soil with a special device, so that a large part of the root thatch remains. Usually, thin strips about 50 cm wide and one and a half to two and a half meters long are rolled up like carpets.

Laying turf: advantages

Laying turf is enticing in many ways. The biggest advantage of the rolled turf is probably its quick usability. The lawn can be walked on about two to three weeks after laying. The mostly high quality is another reason that speaks for the rolled turf. High-quality rolled turf is free of weeds, the density of the grass is ideal and there are no damaged areas. In addition, rolled turf is less sensitive to drought than lawn seed and can therefore be laid more flexibly at the right time. If unexpected dry or cooler weather conditions occur after the turf has been laid, the turf that has been rolled out copes with this more easily than young grass seedlings.

Laying turf: disadvantages

Laying turf is often associated with the hassle-free purchase and unrolling it directly on an open ground. Roll out, pour and you're done. This is a big misunderstanding, because a lawn that is beautiful, weed- and moss-free and resilient in the long term always needs good, at best slightly sandy, slightly acidic soil that allows water and air to circulate well leaves. In order to create these conditions before planting the lawn, some ground preparation is required when laying the turf as well as when sowing the lawn seed. Unfortunately, these often rather tedious tasks such as digging or milling, leveling and draining the soil are not eliminated when deciding on rolled turf. So there is the frequently mentioned argument that laying turf is easier and more convenient than sowing partly a myth and applies at most to the less intensive irrigation to be operated after the installation of the grass.

The biggest disadvantage of choosing turf is probably the cost. These are many times higher than the costs of seeding the lawn yourself. As the number of square meters increases, the costs fall, but still amount to around 10 euros per square meter for house gardens of average size. In order to reduce costs, many turf producers offer to collect the rolled up turf themselves. For small areas, this is also possible with a spacious vehicle. For larger areas, however, do not forget that the rolls take up quite a bit of space and, due to the soil, which is embedded in a root felt that is up to two centimeters thick, also bring a considerable weight with them. With up to 20 kg for 1m² When it comes to turf, picking it up yourself is no longer necessarily relaxed from a certain amount.

Laying turf: brief instructions

To after Laying the turf We have summarized a few tips for you here to get a level lawn with the most invisible possible connection points between the rows of rollers.

1. First, just like when seeding a lawn, the soil must be well prepared. Depending on the type of soil and the pH value of the soil, various measures need to be taken.
2. Before buying the rolled turf, measure your future lawn area as precisely as possible.
3. Compare offers from the Internet and from your region. Local manufacturers usually have more favorable delivery conditions and the shorter transport route means that the sods are often fresher. Since the composition of the seed is particularly important for a lawn that is beautiful and resilient in the long term, it is worth asking about the exact combination of grasses. High stakes in perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne) and the meadow grass (Poa pratensis) speak for a good combination and a hard-wearing lawn for play and use.
4. Unless you bought the turf with a laying service, you have to unroll it yourself. You start laying the first row at an edge that is as long and straight as possible. The lawn is rolled out forwards, which means that you don't step on the prepared ground area but on the lawn that has already been rolled out.
   Tip: It is best to work with running boards (approx. 25 x 35 cm in size). This means that you do not burden individual pieces of lawn and at the same time improve the ground contact of the lawn sods that have already been laid.
   The adjacent rows are tightly connected to the existing ones so that there are no gaps or overlaps. The pieces of rolled turf can be easily trimmed for corners, curves and other uneven surfaces. Finally, the turf is crossed over again with the running boards, perpendicular to the laying direction, in order to bring the turf roots into contact with the ground.
5. Freshly laid turf must not dry out until the roots have firmly anchored themselves in the ground and can absorb water from the soil. If you water regularly in the first 14 days after laying, the lawn usually grows very quickly. After about 14 days the lawn can already be walked on and from a length of about 8 cm it can be mowed down to about 4 cm for the first time.

TurfQuick lawn mat as an alternative

Another alternative to sowing the lawn and laying out turf is the "Turfquick" lawn mat. In contrast to rolled turf, the grasses in the lawn mat are not yet alive. You can imagine them like the seed tapes that are often used in vegetable growing. The lawn mat is comparable in terms of time to a seeded lawn, since the seeds in the mat first have to germinate and then grow slowly. An advantage to sowing is the ideal seed density of the seed in the mat. The mat to be laid out protects the lawn seeds from wind and bird damage. Weeds can grow less quickly and vigorously through the mat. In terms of price, the lawn mat is significantly more expensive than seed for sowing: you pay around 170 euros for 50 square meters.