With our new roll on turf job completed after much planning and work, it’s now time to take care of our new roll-on turf so as to guarantee its greatest possible chance of successful establishment. After all, we wouldn’t want all that time planning our new garden, choosing our new lawn variety so carefully, and all the hard work in preparing the site and laying the new lawn to be in vain, not to mention the often enormous costs involved in new lawn installations these days.
Thankfully, there isn’t a great deal of work or effort needed once the new lawn has gone down, the hardest work of all should have been in site preparation to ensure the best underlying soil for the new sod, followed by the heavy lifting and laying of the turf, and now we can altogether slow right down in our labours, though we can’t yet stop.
What is needed most now is our attention, and predominantly water.
Applying Water To New Roll On Turf
This is our only concern during the establishment phase for new lawns, to ensure adequate water is applied so that the turf rolls never dry out. With this in mind we will need to ensure that the new lawn is appropriately watered according to the season and weather of the time.
For hot weather in the midst of Summer we may need to water 4 - 5 times each day for the first week, then lessening the water during the following week, and so on reducing watering as the sod becomes more and more established with its roots borrowing into the soil.
Similarly if in Winter, we may not need to water at all for rainy days and days following rain too. The rainfall may often be more than adequate to keep our new turf rolls wet at all times. Though if we’re going through dry spells in Winter then some watering may be necessary. how often we would water a new lawn in Winter would be entirely dependent on temperature.
No matter the season or the temperature the principle is always the same.
Never let the turf rolls dry out during establishment.
Then as the lawn becomes more established as the weeks pass by, we begin to reduce watering.
We should always be monitoring the new lawn for signs of stress, such as discoloured leaves or wilting leaves or areas that are browning off. These can indicate that the new lawn is not receiving enough water for the season as it requires, or may mean that the turf does not have full contact with the soil, that there may be an air pocket which will need to be removed.
Wetting Agents For New Lawns
If we wanted to improve hydrophobic soils we should have paid attention to this problem prior to new lawn going down and during the soil preparation stage, whereby we could have applied a richer garden soil to the existing soil before the new lawn went down.
Likewise if we wanted to apply wetting agents to our soils anyway, we could have done this prior to the new lawn being laid, on top of the already prepared soil, or even while we may have been mixing old and new soils together.
Nevertheless if we want to apply wetting agents to our brand new turf after laying, to give the lawn just an extra hand along with our watering efficiency, there is no harm to this at all, and we can proceed without concern.
Fertilisers For New Lawns
One thing I’ve noticed in recent years whenever I come across or lay a new roll on lawn, is the incredible growth rates of the new turf, one client even asked me what kind of “jungle juice” I put onto her new lawn, the answer was “none”. It seems all new roll on turf is heavily fertilised at the turf farm before being sold to the homeowner. This of course allows the new sod to very quickly establish itself and to set down new roots in the shortest amount of time possible. Which is good news for us, as well as something we need to be aware of for a number of reasons.
With this in mind, there is no need for us to fertilise our new lawns at all.
And no need to fertilise new lawns in the soil either, prior to laying the new turf, though natural organic soil improvers can be used without concern in the soil if we so wish, just not chemical fertilisers.
And we could also leave our new lawn for many months without fertilising either.
The “jungle juice” added at the turf farm will take some time to dissipate from our lawn and soil.
Lawn Mowing For New Lawns
So many people get this part of things so wrong when they put down new roll on turf.
Lawn mowing for new sod must be very frequent during the establishment phase, weekly, not fortnightly, not three weekly and not monthly. Weekly.
And the reason for this comes back to that powerful fertiliser added to the sod at the turf farm. It really does make the grass grow so fast that it’s then our job to keep up mowing to match the growth rates of the new lawn. If we don’t keep up with appropriate lawn mowing then we risk our new lawn growing so high that we’ll need to keep it mowed very high for months after laying, to then slowly reduce the lawn mowing height to a correct level over time as the fertiliser too slowly wears off and dissipates from sod and soil.
Weekly lawn mowing for all new lawns is essential, it’s important not to skimp on this !!
When To Begin Mowing New Lawns
We only begin to mow new roll on lawns once the turf has set down roots.
This too is very important.
We can check on the root development of the new lawn by going to a corner section of a lawn roll, then grabbing a bunch of grass in our hand and pulling upwards. If the turf roll easily lifts away, then we don’t mow. If the turf roll stays where it is, attached to the soil by its new roots, then we can proceed with mowing for the first time.
The first mowings should be gentle, just a light trim off the soft tips of the lawn.
Once again this is why it is so important to mow regularly, weekly, for all new lawns, gentleness, and only removing the tips of the leaves of the lawn. Whereas if we leave mowing too long between intervals then we would be getting quite aggressive with the new lawn by cutting right back along the length of the leaf so as to get the lawn to a workable height for our lawn mower, and even then the lawn would often still be too long. And being so aggressive on a new lawn and then forcing it to cope with the damage we cause, and to repair itself, really isn’t giving our new turf the best possibility at a start of new life at our homes.
Once the fertilise begins to wear off and the growth begins to slow, we can then likewise begin to reduce the lawn mowing frequency accordingly. Matching our lawn mowing regularity in direct proportion to the growth rates of the turf. For Summer this will likely mean fortnightly mowing, or in Winter this may mean monthly mowing, though even in Winter in most warmer regions of Australia we still want to maintain mowing in this season, as lawns, especially our new lawns, can be very deceiving in that they may not seem to be growing much leaf, but they are indeed still growing their thatch layer, which we need to maintain and keep under control if we don’t want issues when the warmer weather arrives again.
The aim for all new lawns should not be to initially cut at the height that we want to keep the lawn at permanently. Instead we will always cut at a higher height on new lawns for the first few months until it becomes established. After these few months we can then slowly begin to step down the lawn mowing heights gradually until we reach our desired permanent lawn mowing height.
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