Growing Grass in Clay Soil

9 years ago

My back yard is less of a yard than it is a mud pit.

I first looked into growing grass and blocked off a small test area and tilled the soil. Added a few bags of top soil, some compost, organic material (leaves) and tilled it for a week or two.

Then I tried to grow grass from seed. Added a few more bags of soil on top and planted the seed. Watered religiously.

The grass grew but not very well. They were always wispy thin fragile blades that you could not walk on or they would be ripped out. I started to till a larger area of the yard and feel defeated. This clay soil goes down over a foot and is EXTREMELY compact. I cant get solar garden lights into it without watering it first.

(BTW Tested the composition of the soil. Its Clay...)

I dont know what I can do. When I till an area and it rains it looks horrible. If i dont do anything, will just have a mudpit.

I dont mind hard work but dont want to break the bank (because i rent and owner wont pay half either...)

Any help would be much appreciated!!!

Here are some picutres of my attempt at growing grass and the last one is a few minutes old of a closeup of the soil.

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Comments (3)

dchall_san_antonio
9 years ago
You can start by stopping the tilling. Grasses that do well in the south will grow on top of your soil without the addition of any more topsoil, compost, leaves, or whatever you read in the newspaper. If you read Neil Sperry in the paper, just do the opposite of what he says. I don't know where that guy lives, but it's not on my planet.

What kind of grass seed did you plant?
When did you plant it?

When you tested the soil composition, did you do a jar test where you shake up some soil in a jar of water and measure the sediment at different times after the shaking? I don't doubt that you have very hard soil, but I am skeptical that you have much clay at all. We live on limestone deposits over 1,000 feet deep; however, every now and then there is a pocket of clay, so the chances are you have limestone that is acting like clay due to the amount of magnesium in it. In any case softening the soil is much easier done than by rototilling. Rototillers are for veggie gardens, not for lawns - and I would argue that they are more damaging than helpful for veggie gardens, too. But for a lawn, they really, REALLY cost you in the long run.

There are only two kinds of grass that grow easily in Austin. Those are St Augustine (no seed for St Augustine) and bermuda (tons of seed available). If you tried planting a northern grass like fescue or Kentucky bluegrass, and you did it in the past few weeks, it should have sprouted and looked good. If you tried to plant bermuda in the past few weeks, it should look sparse and awful.

What was your watering regimen for the new seed? It should have been about 5 minutes, 3x per day, for the first 3 weeks. The idea at first is to keep the surface of the soil moist all the time. Then you should have had about 80% germination unless you planted bermuda. If you planted bermuda recently I would expect maybe 10 to 20% germination. Bermuda needs to be seeded in June and July here in Central Texas. Cooler temps prevent it from germinating.

Answer the questions and maybe we can recover from this.
User
9 years ago
>> If you read Neil Sperry in the paper, just do the opposite of what he says. I don't know where that guy lives, but it's not on my planet.

I love this. Ignore most--if not quite all--of the lawn advice columns you read. I'm not sure where they're getting their information, but it contradicts even books written in the 1930's.
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The soil should actually be fine (plenty of us grow grasses in clay soils). But you can certainly remove the top six inches of soil in that area and replace with a good quality top soil if you wish. Don't remove too much less than that if you replace the soil as the roots dislike moving from one soil type to another. They'll tend to do what they would in a clay pot--stop at the interface, which will lead to short-rooted grass that never looks great. Other than that, seed, and you can gently rake the surface to loosen it up if you want. It's already been heavily disturbed, so the normal rules about not tilling don't apply, although I'd still avoid it. On a slant, I'd be inclined to put burlap down to reduce erosion while the grass grows. Tack it down at least at the edges well enough that flowing water won't easily go under the burlap and lift it. Water gently two to three times a day until it sprouts fully (about a month if the mix contains bluegrass, two weeks if it's fescue and/or ryegrass), then back off slowly on the watering to allow the grass to adjust.
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krnuttle
9 years ago
"We live on limestone deposits over 1,000 feet deep; however, every now and then there is a pocket of clay, so the chances are you have limestone that is acting like clay due to the amount of magnesium in it. "

Limestone is a rock. http://geology.com/rocks/limestone.shtml

Limestone, in itself, will not grow any thing, nor will you be able to do much with it with a rototiller.

If you have questions about your soil I would suggest that you go down to the county agricultural office and ask them your questions.

It is difficult to asses what kind of soil you have. Soils can be significantly different a mile away from your house. In my area I have a dense clay soil, that is full of quartz rock. About a mile away, the soil is nearly pure sand.

Also your lot can be different than the lot next door. Did they remove the topsoil in grading the lot to make it suitable for building? Did they do a lot of fill to build the lot up to build? We lived in a new addition and watch them fill a hole with about 15 feet of dirt and build on it. I am sure that lot's soil was different than mine.

Growing Grass in Clay Soil

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dchall_san_antonio

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