Fixing a Muddy Lawn

Is your lawn a muddy mess from the recent, seemingly unending rain in South East Queensland? While a muddy lawn is annoying with the family tracking mud through the house, it can also open up your lawn to potential problems with insects and / or flooding.

Mud will be obviously created when it rains, but if your lawn ends up looking more like a swimming pool than a grassy space, then it’s time to take some action to protect the long term health of your lawn.

The team at Daleys Turf have put together a few tricks to help you eliminate the mud bath in your backyard:

Assess the angles of your lawn that allow water to drain. If the lawn is completely flat or if there is a dip in the lawn, the water will collect instead of draining correctly. Collected water will quickly turn the soil into mud and inhibit the growth of healthy grass plants.
Determine the type of soil you have under your lawn. If you have a clay-based soil then you may have issues with drainage, since clay doesn’t allow water to leak through; water will pool on the surface of the soil and turn normal healthy soil into mud.
Add soil to the lawn to change the angle of the drainage. You can purchase soil from your local nursery or lawn care store. Shovel soil onto the lawn in order to increase the angle of drainage and therefore the run-off of water. Make sure you fill any dips or holes and give the entire lawn a slight slope away from the house.
Aerate the soil to reduce soil compaction and to allow for better drainage. Just use a garden fork or an aerator to create holes in the soil, which let the water penetrate into the soil rather than sitting on the top turning into mud.
The adding of organic matter to your lawn can aid in better drainage. Using a soil cultivator to mix in mulch, organic aids, peat moss and sand into the soil. Because these materials are loose they will allow for better drainage than with hard-packed clay or soil.

Once any drainage and soil compaction issues in your backyard are sorted and the mud has dried out an application of fertiliser will give the lawn a boost and encourage the grass plants to repair, recover and spread to fill in areas of the lawn that are bare.

If the mud problem is particularly bad at your place, you may need to consider relaying turf once the drainage issue is fixed. If this is the case, contact Daleys Turf for help with turf to repair your lawn.