The cheapest and most successful solution for a Real Grass Lawn in Spain all year round.

Lawn Soil

The soil in Spain is not good, in fact it's useless for growing a lawn. It's not good for a lot of plants and has to be improved if anything is to grow properly. This is especially true for growing lawns. Lawn soil is the most important part of creating a new lawn. Allocate extra care and time to this aspect of your new or renovated lawn, as this will ensure the success and health of your lawn.

In Spain without soil testing and/or soil preparation, the chances of growing a successful lawn from seed, turf or plugs is slim.

Tip: Unprepared soil will severely reduce the chances of a successful lawn to almost zero. Ask yourself "Have I tried to grow any other plants in that soil?" or "If I was to attempt to grow other plants in this soil, do I think they would grow?"

The right soil is crucial, but you will almost certainly need to fertilise, more importantly unprepared soil will greatly restrict the types of lawn grasses that can be grown.

Soil Colour

The best colour for growing Lawns in Spain is dark brown to black.

Soil Texture/Composition

Soil texture and composition is at the heart of how much watering your lawn will need. As a starting point, I always like to take a handful of soil, wet it and squeeze hard to squeeze out the water and produce a firm ball of soil. Then prod the remaining ball of soil. If it begins to fall apart with a little coaxing, then this is the right consistency. If the soil is too clayey ...

then not only will mud be appearing from between your fingers, but the ball of soil will not break apart when prodded.
If the soil is too sandy, no amount of squeezing will produce a firm ball of soil.
So add more sand and organic matter to clayey soil and more organic matter and other soil to sandy soil.

Speak to us about a soil test - we can tell you how to create the perfect soil for growing a lawn.

Remember topsoil in Spain is the soil that is scraped from the top of a field. Often worse than your soil and invariably full of stones and weed seeds. Ask for a bucket load to test. Water it for a couple of weeks and see what grows.   
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Soil Depth

The deeper the topsoil the better is the lawn. 

On moist soil, dig a spade into the soil. 3 - 4 inches is good and 8 inches is great.

This is a good indication of the depth of your topsoil.

Our warm season grasses have root systems that can go down over 2 meters, so a good topsoil with a clayey sub soil is a great insurance policy for long hot summers. 

Soil Testing

Most of the soil in Spain is alkaline - i.e. no good for growing most plants. Some areas contain a lot of salt - again no good for growing a lawn. For definitive results it is always advisable to perform a soil test. We can do this for you by post.

Soil Types

There are different types of soil and different lawns that will flourish with them; these are the soil types that are most common in the mediterranean:

* Clayey
* Sandy
* Chalky
* Loamy

Not all of these soils are suitable for lawns so it is best to check early on to find out which soil your garden contains.
To help with descriptions...

Clay Soils
This type of soil is normally very sticky and pliable and often lumpy in wet conditions, but when they dry out they form hard clots. Clay soil is made up of fine particles, which contain little in the way of air spaces, making them hard to work with and at best difficult to drain.
Sandy Soils

Sandy soils are gritty and have formed from weathered rocks: like limestone, shale and quartz. Should the soil contain enough in
the way of organic matter then it is easy to cultivate most things within it but sometimes it is prone to over-draining and drying out in the summer months. Likewise, in the autumn and winter months it can have some difficulty holding on to moisture and nutrients making it a good soil to work with but a difficult one to keep topped up with everything your lawn would need to survive. A lot of additional work is involved.
Chalky Soils
Normally light brown in colour, Chalky soils are of an alkaline nature and will usually contain stones of varying sizes. Drying out quickly in the summer and blocking out trace elements such as iron and manganese, it is definitely not a soil to try and establish plants or grass in.
The quality of Chalky soil - it has to be said - is quite poor and needs a lot of regular work including the introduction of fertilizers and other soil improvers over a sustained period of time.
Loamy Soils
Loamy soil is the one soil that most gardeners say is the perfect soil to grow in. Loamy soils have varying degrees of texture. These are normally full of organic matter and drain well but generally still retain a lot of moisture and are rich in nutrients.

 
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