Attached is an image of my lawn at my rental. Yes, I know, why should I bother improving the lawn of a house that ultimately isn't mine – but it's my choice and I'd like to. Hence, however, I'm not willing to spend more than $150.
I've tried planting seeds and watering well, and definitely got more growth than was there previously, however, I'm beginning to theorise that the soil of the lawn might need a fair amount of gypsum. Reason being is that there are certain areas, particularly the bottom right and the entire top of the lawn where growth simply does not occur – yet these areas typically hold large puddles that take a long time to drain. The soil is also particularly hard and firm.
My current plan is to aerate those areas using a garden fork, throw and wet down quite a bit of gypsum, and plant some drought proof grass seed (just the cheap stuff)
Do you think this would help in maintaining a more vibrant lawn? Ideally would like to spend a bit of time sunbaking on this bad boy in the future…
Edit: For context, the lawn is about 50m2
by wowthisusername
2 Comments
Raise up the deck of the mower and trim the hedges WAY BACK. You need sunlight to hit the yard in order to grow grass.
Gypsum only helps in one very specific circumstance: clay soils that are high in sodium. It is one of those things that is poorly understood by laymen so gets WAY over-recommended.
Gypsum genuinely does nothing else (beneficial) to the physical properties of soil in any other situations. It can rarely HURT, but rare doesn’t mean never.
Sounds like you just need to manually CORE aerate and then spread organic matter OR loosen the soil with a shovel or tiller and MIX in organic matter. The sponginess of the organic matter holds open pore spaces in the soil, which improves drainage and aeration in both the long term and short term.