MS
How to use frost cloth when seeding tall fescue (ETF) and how much topsoil do I need?
Hi team,
Two questions:
– Firstly, I am sowing ETF this week, and have noted that people reckon I should use a frost cloth. How does this work? Do I take off in the morning each day?
– Secondly, I have 80sqm of lawn, I am unsure how much top soil I need (5mm or 10mm etc), what is the best way to tell.
Frost cloth helps with moisture retention and keeps the soil surface slightly warmer. You don’t need to lift it each morning. Leave it down continuously until you’re seeing decent germination across the lawn. Water will still penetrate through it.
It’s definitely worth reading through this irrigation guide before you get started:
https://www.newzealandlawnaddicts.com/lawn-tips/sowing-seed-soil-temps-irrigation/
Hopefully you’re using Starter Fertilser, Etho and Meso at the time of seeding? If not I’d suggest having a read up on those products.
Once shoots are pushing up and you’ve got reasonable coverage, pull the cloth off. Leave it on too long it can cause issues. Humidity builds underneath and disease risk goes up. In Auckland conditions at this time of year, you’re probably looking at 10 to 14 days before you’re making that call. Tall fescue germinates a bit slower than rye and you’re on the tailish end of ideal soil temps (15c @ 10cm @ 6am).
On the topsoil question, it depends on what’s underneath. If the existing soil is reasonable, 50mm is usually enough to give the seed a good bed to establish into. If it’s poor, compacted, or you’re levelling out significant low spots, go deeper in those areas. A quick way to check: push a screwdriver into the soil. If it goes in easily to around 100mm, your base is workable. If it hits resistance early, you’ve got compaction to sort before topsoil goes down. To be fair from that photo it looks like you’re not going to have an issue.
There’s a top-dressing calculator in the tools section of the app if you need help with quantities.
Ive got 79m2 and used 2m3 of Daltons lawn mix. Needed another 12x30L bags of Daltons Premium lawn soil to cover the seed. I sifted it on to get rid of any sticks and ended up with a full bag of chips from the 13 bags. Really good soil mix apart from that.
Dalton‘s yard do free trailers but will only let you put two cubes on the trailer at a time.
The only other comment I would make is getting down some Grub+ when you sow the seed because I ended up with dead patches from grub that I didn’t know I had.