One of the biggest problems with soil, is when it is missing a vital ingredient. If there is too much sand then it won’t hold water and the needed nutrients well. You will end up with yellow grass and later weeds. If there is too much clay, the roots of the grass that can reach 15 to 20 centimeters in depth, will smother. The water will not be able to run off and the roots will rot from the continuous moisture and lack of oxygen. Again the result will be the thinning of the grass, disease and weeds.

Before seeding new grass, it is vitally important to prepare the soil. Remember, this is a seeding technology. Hydro seeding will have good results on just about anything, but to insure the long life and high quality of your lawn, the soil is something you can not overlook. This is sometimes more expensive than the seeding itself. Don’t buy cheap topsoil. It will cost you much more when you decide to remove the soil and replace it with good topsoil.

The minimum amount of good topsoil needed is 10 centimeters. The best is closer to 20 centimeters. How can you calculate how much topsoil you will need? Multiply the length of the area to be seeded with the width and the depth. This gives you the cubic meters of topsoil needed. For example, 10 meters by 10 meters multiplied by 0.2 meters (20 centimeters) equals 20 cubic meters of topsoil.

Beware of who you buy topsoil from. Some suppliers of topsoil will simply mix soil with a high clay content with sand and tell you that it is topsoil. It is extremely hard to find good topsoil in Hungary. It is becoming a guarded treasure and it is very expensive. If you can not find good topsoil, then the best thing to do is make your soil into quality top soil by adding the needed ingredients, such as sand, fertilizer and biologically active soil adjuvants (products that contain mycorrhizal fungi which form symbiotic associations with plant roots). This may be cheaper and even better than buying inappropriate topsoil.

After the topsoil is spread and stamped, it should be raked clean of any divots of soil. You want to be able to see your footprint, but not sink into the soil. If you sink into the soil, then when the grass grows, you will sink into your lawn. However, it has to be soft enough to be able to run a rake through the top two centimeters easily. If a wheelbarrow went over a certain area a number of times, make sure that area is raked. If not, it won’t grow as densely in that area.

Try to slope the lawn away from the house, to lead the water away from your house. Make sure that the water that seeps underground has an escape route and will not build up under the topsoil. If water can’t “escape”, the roots of your grass will constantly be drowned in water and will not get the needed oxygen, and will thereby rot, get diseased and die. Weeds are always ready to jump up whenever the grass becomes thin. (See weeds section.)

Irrigation systems are also essential to the long life of a quality lawn. Nobody can water a lawn the way it is needed to be watered by hand. We will seed your lawn whether or not you have a sprinkler system, and we will be happy to come back after a year or two to reseed after a hot summer!

Beware of hot summer nights!!!

Most people think that you should water your lawn at night when the sun doesn’t scorch the grass. However in Hungary, many types of fungi spore at night when the soil is wet or the temperature is above 23 degrees Celsius. Small yellow circles of grass will appear, and sometimes you can even see what looks like white cobwebs in the dawn dew. If your grass turns yellow, that area can not be saved. If you catch it early enough, then you can spray it and the whole lawn with a fungicide and you may not have to reseed. So, do NOT water your lawn at night, if the temperature stays above 23 degrees Celsius. If it rains, keep your eye out for the symptoms mentioned above.

When should you water when the weather is hot and you are afraid of fungi sporing?

Depending on your soil and water flow, freshly seeded lawns (first week) should be watered 4 to 5 times a day for 4 to 6 minutes. The top 2 to 3 centimeters of the soil should be dampened. Later when the roots begin to grow, watering should be increased to 6-10 minutes (depending on soil and water flow). The top 5 to 8 centimeters of the soil should be dampened. When the weather is hot, then start watering your lawn early in the morning, once at 5 AM, once at 7:30 AM and again at 10 AM.  If it is not too hot then water it again at 4 PM and definitely once again at 6:30 PM. Then let it dry! By the time the sun sets the soil should no longer be damp.