Whether you’re a gardening novice or are more experienced in lawn care techniques, you’ve probably heard the term ‘top dressing’ in passing – but what exactly is top dressing? What purpose does it serve, and why should you do it?
Read on to find out what top dressing is, how top dressing works, and what benefits top dressing has for your garden.
What Is Top Dressing?
To put it simply, top dressing is the process of adding a layer of fertiliser over your lawn.
There are several reasons people might top dress their lawn, and there are a range of benefits top dressing can provide for your garden.
Why Top Dress Your Lawn?
So, what exactly does top dressing do? One of the primary purposes of top dressing is levelling out your lawn – if you have any lumps, bumps, or uneven surfaces, you can create a level surface by top dressing your lawn. To find out more about how this process works, head down to ‘How to Top Dress a Lawn’. Creating a level surface on your lawn via top dressing helps achieve and maintain an improved aesthetic to your lawn.
Top dressing is also a great way to feed your lawn, since the material you’re using to level your lawn surface is also a fertiliser. Top dressing is a great way to supply your lawn with the essential nutrients it needs to grow strong and healthy.
When to Top Dress Your Lawn?
The best time of year to top dress your lawn is in the spring, right at the start of the growing season. It is possible to top dress your lawn later into the season, but we’d advise against top dressing your lawn any later than early summer.
If you attempt to top dress your lawn at the wrong time of year, for example in the winter when the lawn is dormant and not growing, you run the risk of damaging your lawn.
We would also advise against top dressing your lawn if rain forecast. Trying to evenly distribute top dressing in wet weather can be very difficult as the moisture causes the top dressing to clump together, making it too large to filter down between the blades of grass and fill holes in the soil.
How to Top Dress a Lawn
Although you can get top dressing comprised of different compositions and ingredients, it will typically be made from a combination of soil, sand, and manure. This means the top-dressing mixture is suitable for both filling holes/levelling out uneven surfaces on your lawn, and providing essential nutrition. Top dressing mixture is usually finely screened, meaning it is very thin with no lumps or small stones.
Preparing the Lawn
Before top dressing your lawn, it’s recommended that you mow your grass. You don’t want your lawn to be bald, but trimming that grass down to a nice shorter length makes it easier for your soil to absorb as much goodness from the top dressing as it can.
Top dressing is also commonly applied after aeration to stimulate grass roots, with the added benefit of leaving channels for air, water, and top dressing to mix in.
Apply the Top Dressing
Once your lawn is prepared, take your top-dressing soil. Rather than dumping the soil all in one place, we’d recommend distributing it in piles around your lawn. This will make it easier to spread the top dressing evenly later.
Once you’ve evenly distributed your top dressing around your lawn, it’s time to start spreading.
Spread the Top Dressing
Your general aim with this step is to create as even a surface as you can. To spread your top dressing, you don’t need to use any fancy equipment – a simple rake will suffice! We’d recommend using the back end of the rake to push and pull the top dressing around until you have achieved an even surface. By using the back end of the rake, you can avoid accidentally ripping into the surface of your lawn with the rake teeth.
Once your lawn is evenly covered, you can use a lawn leveller, also known as a lawn levelling rake, to complete the spreading process. Levelling rakes help the soil to fall between the blades of grass, filling any holes in the lawn soil and allowing the grass to breathe.
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Top dressing is a fantastic way to keep your lawn looking even and healthy, but it can also be a time-consuming and physically demanding process. If you’re looking for a reliable top dressing service provider, Lawn and Weed Expert offer excellent top-dressing services, along with a wide range of other lawn care solutions.
If you’d like to find out a bit more information about their top-dressing services, head on over to the informational page on our website to find out more.
Top Dressing Services
While top dressing is a great way to level out a lawn and provide it with much needed nutrients, top dressing isn’t the solution for every lawn.
If you’re having issues with your lawn and aren’t certain what treatments are best, why not take advantage of the FREE lawn survey offered by Lawn and Weed Expert? One of our professional team members will survey your lawn, then provide a bespoke report detailing which of our lawn treatments will best benefit your lawn.
Free Lawn Survey
Read More: When to Top Dress Your Lawn
