Clay soil is a great problem for any lawn. The soil is dense, has little organic matter and is the pH is almost always terrible for your lawn. Due to its denseness, it easily gets waterlogged making it harder for roots to absorb nutrients and air.
Improving your lawn’s drainage will not only get rid of those nasty water puddles after rain or irrigation but also make your grass thrive without forcing you to apply lime more often.
Build an Underground Drain
The fastest way to stop water from sitting in your yard is by building underground drainage. You can start with a French drain, one of the simplest underground drains. This is as simple as digging a couple of ditches, filling them with gravel and covering them over with regular soil.
Check this too: Liquid vs granular fertilizer: Which is better?
Till the Soil and Add Organic Compost
Adding organic compost is a great way to improve both drainage and your soil’s nutrient levels. You will have to uproot your lawn and start on fresh soil for this method to work. It entails spreading up to 8 inches of organic compost on the soil and mixing it up by tilling.
We did a post on how to use this method to grow a healthy lawn on clay soil for more details on how to enrich and improve the drainage of your clay soil yard.
Top Dress Your Lawn With Compost
If you are not willing to pull up your existing lawn, you can top dress with organic mulch. Spread the appropriate top dressing mulch over your lawn and let it lay. You can also leave any grass clippings on instead of sweeping them off. Needless to say, your lawn will look shabby during the renovation and this process will take longer to improve your clay lawn.
Growing a good lawn on clay soil is hard. If you have an heavy clay soil yard, consider using the underground drains and adding tons of organic compost to improve the soil before you attempt growing grass on it.
You can also go for grasses that thrive well in clay soils. We discussed them in our growing a healthy tuff on clay post. You can check it out for further insight.