OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums General Discussion Forum Lawn Care & Maintenance New Stomping ground for my SB 45

Sorry if this is in the wrong place for this, I am just following BB's lead.

So a month or so ago I purchased my first SB 45 but apart from a horrid patch of Kikuyu, Rye, Couch and weeds of about 45m2 in my front yard, I didn't really have anywhere to use it. So I decided to bite the bullet and lay lawn in my backyard.

The mission: To turn this (picture below), into a place where my 45 can come into its own and shine!


first step was to rip down the tired pergola, pull up the pavers and get rid of the lemon tree.






Next step was to rotary hoe the backyard and roughly level it. As I had previously removed about 15 trees in my backyard (it was a jungle when I got it, the backyard was full of roots).



It certainly helps having tractors, a backhoe, a park next door and a double gate from the park

Next step was the irrigation



Then all that was left was to level it off with a straight edge, give it a fertilise and water, let it settle overnight and lay the turf.

Finally done!



All up I did it in 4 days.

After weeks of research and countless emails to seed companies in Australia and New Zeland about growing Bentgrass in Adelaide. I ended up laying Santa Anna that I got from SA Turf. They were by far the cheapest, $6.90 pick up or $7.90 delivered If it was Spring I may have opted for a seeded Tifgreen Couch instead (I also looked into La Prima Couch and Princess 77). The starter fertiliser was ordered online from Advanced Seed in Victoria, $12.50 plus postage.

Now all that's left is to wait for the lawn to take so I can get out there with my SB!

Cheers to all the advice and inspiration here on ODK!

Looks pretty sweet!

Well done.

Hi Cirillo,

Now that's cheating !!!!

I did mine with no machines at all and lots of shovel work, the worst part is I didn't lose any weight at all.

Damm that looks good now.

Make sure you give it plenty of water as we are at the end of the Santa Ana season and you really need that root system to take up quickly.

Well done.

Cheers,
BB

Cheers SimRice!

Haha BB there was plenty of shovwl work i promise. My block had about 14 palm trees and 6 15m+ weeping Fig trees (ficus) in the back yard alone that required a whole lot of root digging! But where I could I used the tractors. Gave the neighbours a fair bit of conversation material though. It's been a while since Fulham Gardens has seen agricultural machinery. For sure about the water! We finished laying it at about 3pm today and it got an hour and a half then and it'll get some more in about 10 minutes. That's another reason I picked SA Turf. Their turf is grown in a soil that has a slightly higher clay content than most (I picked it up from the turf farm this morning so I got to see him finish harvesting it and also have a good look at the soil). My soil is almost pure sand (slightly above 80% and a ph of 7.3) so the soil that's around the roots being a little higher in clay will allow it to retain a little more water. Also the turf and clay was almost 5cm thick. Much thicker than what I've seen than what I've seen at a couple of other places.

Hi Cirillo,

You are spot on regarding the thickness from most lawn suppliers. The sellers that use the Lawn Farms from down Langhorne Creek way have the lawn at about 25mm thick and this stresses the lawn very quickly. This is why I had issues with mine taking so long to establish itself. It spends the first month just in self survival mode before it even thinks about wanting to spread side ways. I recall the days (1980's) when Santa Ana was sold in 12 square inch blocks and designed for cutting into plugs. This way it had lots of root system attached and would start spreading side ways within two weeks. I recall in the original lawn I planted out at Parafield Gardens, I had full coverage within 5 weeks, now that's quick !

The reason why they cut it so short today is so that it takes up less room and weight on the trucks for transportation and secondly (the main reason) most of the root system is left in the ground and all they have to do is a light top dressing and 12 months later they can re-harvest the next lot of grass for sale from the same spot. This way they don't need masses of land to do the farming on.

I will keep SA Turf on top of my list for recommendation to others. Also the price seems far more competitive than all the other sellers.

Again a great outcome you've achieved.

Cheers,
BB

Here's an update of the lawn.



After a week all the lawn has made great contact and I can't pull any up, even on the edges. It's also starting to level itself out again. It has grown quite a bit and think my 45 will get its first chance to have a play in about a week if the progress continues.

So far so good

Looking good mate. You probably just need to nurse it through until spring, so make sure you're keeping to the 1/3 rule. I would start with the mower on its very highest setting and work down from there.

Come spring you can get aggressive with it and add in some sand to iron out any settling that may occur.

BTW, what side of the house is this on?

it's on the southern side but as my house isn't facing perfect north the lawn gets full sun for most of the day.

Both photos however wee taken on cloudy days

So here is the lawn now. Around 3 months after laying. I got lucky with a lot of unexpected late heat in Adelaide which really helped the early growing of the roll out turf. As you can see I haven't been able to mow it recently with all this rain we've had in Adelaide but I'm really happy with the early winter colour being so young. I will top dress in spring to flatten out a couple of really minor low spots.