Looking after your lawn in autumn can include lots of different things, from cutting the grass to aerating the turf. One thing your lawn might benefit from is top dressing - to improve soil quality and level out your grass. If you’ve never done it before, it might sound complicated, but it can have great results for your lawn come the springtime.
Want to learn more about top dressing a lawn? Keep reading.
Can you top dress a lawn in autumn?
Top dressing is similar to mulching in that it involves adding a growing medium to the surface of the lawn and spreading it all over. The idea is to work the growing medium down to the base of the grass in order to promote the growth of new roots. While it’s a good thing to do on any lawn, it’s particularly impactful if your soil is of poor quality.
Many people top dress their lawns as part of an autumn garden maintenance routine, as this gives the lawn plenty of time to adjust to the new growing medium before springtime comes. If you’re planning on scarifying and aerating your lawn as well, it’s best to do those tasks beforehand. This is because aerating allows the new growing medium to get deeper into the soil and reach the roots of the grass.
How to treat your lawn in autumn
Once you’ve performed your other lawn maintenance tasks and your grass is scarified, aerated and ready to be top dressed, you’ll need to wait for a dry day. Top dressing your lawn in the rain is very inefficient and potentially counterproductive, as the rain will turn your growing medium into mud, which can then cover your grass and prevent it from getting any oxygen.
While you wait for a dry day, it’s a good idea to get your growing medium ready, so you don’t end up in a big rush when the time comes. The term ‘growing medium’ refers to the substance your grass is growing in, i.e. the soil. However, not all soil is made the same. In order to increase the draining properties of your lawn, you’ll need to add a well-draining type of soil, such as a mixture of sand and topsoil.
Top Tip! You can buy pre-made soil mixes designed to be well-draining from garden centres and elsewhere.
This growing medium you’ll put on your lawn doesn’t contain very much organic material, so it won’t add lots of nutrients to your soil. This is a good thing, as it helps to protect your turf from autumnal problems such as fungal disease. However, you may need to add nutrients in the form of fertiliser in the spring to encourage good growth.
You’ll need approximately two litres of top dressing soil per square metre of lawn. That means if you buy a 25 litre bag of top dressing soil, you’ll be able to cover a lawn of 12 square metres with a little bit left over. Bear in mind that it’s better to buy too much soil, as you can then store it until the next time you need to top dress your lawn.
Once you’ve got the right growing medium and enough of it, you’ve prepared your lawn, and it’s a fine, dry day, you’re ready to start top dressing. Use a shovel or spade to spread your growing medium evenly over the lawn, and then use a rake to work it into the soil. If you’ve aerated the soil, try to push the growing medium down into the holes where you can. Once you’ve done that, you’ve top dressed your lawn!
How to overseed a lawn in autumn
Overseeding your turf is a technique that lawn-lovers use to fill in bare or damaged patches of grass. It helps your lawn to recover from the summer and grow back thicker, fuller and greener in the springtime. As the name suggests, it involves scattering grass seed over your lawn to help it grow.
This is something that can be done in the autumn right after top dressing, or you can wait until the spring. If you do wait until spring, it’s best to hold off until daytime temperatures are over 13°C to allow the seeds to germinate. Grass seeds can take between seven and 21 days to germinate, so take that into consideration if you want to use your lawn early in the spring.
When it comes to the type of seeds you use, it’s up to you. Some varieties are more durable and hard-wearing, while others have more aesthetic value. You can mix and match seeds for different areas of your lawn, or choose just one to cover it all. Once you’ve made your decision, you can then start sowing the seeds according to the instructions on the packet, making sure to get good coverage.
Top Tip! If you’re top dressing and overseeding, you can do it at the same time! Simply scatter the seeds over the loose top dressing before you rake it in to ensure you don’t miss a spot.
You can also sow seeds just into specific parts of your lawn that need attention rather than the whole lawn if you prefer. Your seeds may have instructions that apply to this kind of overseeding, so make sure you read the packet thoroughly before getting started.
Looking after your lawn in the aftermath of overseeding is important, as it can determine how good the results are in the months to come. Firstly, if you have a problem with birds coming down to eat the seeds, you might want to cover the overseeded areas of your lawn (or the whole thing) with garden fleece or netting in order to protect it. Remember to keep checking for seedlings, as you’ll need to remove the cover once shoots start coming up through the soil. This will mean they get all the sunlight and rainfall they require.
Additionally, a freshly seeded lawn requires water to help the seeds germinate. If you’re lucky, it will rain within two or three days of overseeding, but if not, you’ll have to water the lawn yourself. Where possible, try to use a hose or sprinkler, so you aren’t walking on your overseeded lawn. Keeping traffic to a minimum can help to prevent the soil from compacting quickly, which may help roots to find their way to water and nutrients for growth.
Finally, try to keep the cutting height of your lawn mower to at least 50mm for the first few weeks after seeding the lawn. If it’s winter, you might not need to mow the lawn at all, in which case you can leave it until the spring, when you can mow as normal.
