“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” – Benjamin Franklin

Ok, maybe he wasn’t talking about lawn care when he said it, but it makes sense to always prepare before you take on a task.

This can be said for preparing the soil for your new lawn as well. Now the importance of preparing the soil for a new lawn cannot be stressed strongly enough. This process creates the foundation for your new lawn and it will directly affect its ability to take up the nutrients and water you will provide to it.

By putting in the necessary work in right now you will not only save time and effort later on, you will not have to correct the flaws that will be visible later on in the process.

Regardless if you are sowing a new lawn or planning to lay turf, preparing your soil is the first step for both procedures. When preparing a new lawn there are some things to take note of and they are, the size of the lawn, the previous use of the lawn and the soil type.

Here are the steps needed to prepare your soil:

Step One: Working With a Clean Area

The first step in preparing the soil will be just to remove any large objects that are on the soil surface and this will include rocks, stones, shrubs, garbage or any other unwanted objects in the lawn.

Step Two: Inspecting For Weeds

After you’ve completed step one, you should inspect your lawn site for any perennial weeds. The common weeds that are found in most lawns are nettles, thistles, dandelions in any other unwanted nuisances. Depending on what you find you will have two options to take care of the weeds. The easiest one is just to dig them up by their tap roots, however if there is a large number of them you may want to resort to using a chemical weed killer with a formula of 2-4-D killer. If you decide to use a chemical weed killer, then make sure to check the manufacturer’s instructions regarding the amount to use per square feet of application.

If you decide not to use a chemical weed killer, then do not just cut the weeds. Getting them out by their roots will ensure that they are permanently removed and will not regrow within a couple of months. Once you have removed all of the unwanted nuisances collect them all and you can use them either for compost or you can just throw them away. Although, I like to have little fun with them, so I catch them on fire and burned them.

Step Three: Providing a Fair Advantage

Now that you have a clean lawn area and you have gotten rid of all unwanted debris and other vegetation’s, it may be necessary to get rid of
any large trees and any major large stumps that still remain in the ground. If you have a relatively young tree that you wish to keep, you can dig up the tree while keeping the roots immersed in the soil and then relocated to a non-lawn area for safekeeping.

The roots from any large trees or shrubs will seriously damage the quality of your lawn because they will be competing for the lawns resources. Large trees will always win this battle because they get better sunlight and absorbed more water and the soil nutrients then the grass does. Over time the grass will become weakened and start to turn yellow and will have patches areas if the trees and shrubs are not removed.

Step Four: Feeding The Ground

Now you are ready to start digging in the dirt YaY!

This is the fun part, in the step we add any necessary soil conditioning materials, such as coarse sand, organic matter and even bone-meal. By adding the soil conditioning material it will help improve the texture of the soil and improve soils drainage and moisture retention.

Ideally you want to do this 2 to 3 months before you start sowing or laying turf down. This is because the soil needs time to settle after being loosened. By hasting the situation and not letting the soil settle you will find that the soil will settle after the lawn has developed and the dips, bumps and depressions will appear in the lawn.

Rake the soil level with a soil rake. If you are going to do this manually in firm soil, it will take a lot of time energy and effort if you have a large lawn. You may want to consider a garden roller. Just make sure that when you do this these the soil surface is dry, by raking the soil when it is wet you then greatly destroy the soil structure and it will result in a weaker and unhealthier looking lawn.

That’s basically it for preparing the soil, for a visual representation from an Australian guy. Check out this YouTube video: