How To Fix Poor Lawn Soil

Weeds love bare patches, so if you don't act quickly, they will. Spring's cool, wet weather is conducive to growing many types of turfgrass. Start by digging up the damaged section, plus 6 inches of surrounding, healthy lawn, cutting about 2 inches deep. Then level the soil and add a small amount of soil amendment, such as a plant-based compost, and starter fertilizer. If you're using seed, cover it lightly with straw and keep the ground moist until germination.

For sod, which is about 10 times more expensive than seed but tends to work better, cut a section to fit, press it into place, and water frequently until it takes root. At the opposite end of the scale from sandy soil are clay soils. These hold water and nutrients very well but don't drain as well as sandy soils, especially if compacted, a common situation for lawns with a clay soil base. This nutrient-rich material serves to moderate the hardness of the mineral component. When the soil is predominantly clay or sand, the addition of organic matter makes clay soil looser, and easier to work.

In clay soils, organic matter additions improve drainage, and allow air to move into the soil more readily. In sandy soil, it helps to hold moisture and nutrients in the root zone of the lawn. Organic matter has the magical quality of being able to help both soil problems. If you want to know what it looks like, buy a bag of compost at a garden center. High-quality composts are predominantly organic matter.

Gypsum is easily applied to the soil surface with a regular lawn spreader. It's an ideal amendment for improving soil structure and relieving compaction in existing lawns and gardens. Before seeding or sodding, it's important to thoroughly work the soil.

Amend poor soils, such as heavy clay, by adding organic matter. Sources include compost, rotted manure, peat, and quality topsoil. Sand is not suggested as a material to improve clay soils for home lawns. When planting trees and shrubs, always dig generous planting holes shallow and wide. The hole should be at least twice the width of the root ball or the container in which the plant is growing and no deeper than the root ball of the tree or shrub to be planted. Soil loosened below the root ball will settle over time, creating a planting depression that will accumulate excess water.

In heavy clay soils, planting trees and shrubs a few inches above the grade of the surrounding soil is preferrable. In extreme cases, mound planting is preferable, as it can help with root development above existing compacted soil. Anyone who has dealt with compacted garden soil knows just how frustrating it can be. Not only can it be tricky to get a shovel or trowel into the dirt, but it can also be tricky for plants to grow in it. Compacted soil can be a common issue for soils that contain a high amount of clay and also receive a high amount of foot traffic.

This type of soil can get waterlogged, or alternatively, have trouble drinking up water at all. One method of improving the quality of soils that have been compacted is to cultivate the compacted soil and mix compost through it. This process should help to add more nutrients to the soil, give it aeration, and allow plants to have an easier job of growing within it. Clay, silty and sandy are three other common soil types and the right combination of them makes up loamy soil.

Sandy soil particles are large which causes water and nutrients to drain too quickly out of the soil. When doing your soil jar test, sandy soil will be the first layer to settle at the bottom and should make up 40% of the jar's soil. Since sandy particles are heavier, you'll begin to see that layer a few minutes after you set the jar down to settle. It's easiest to see all the layers if you mark each layer as they settle. Silt will settle on top of the clay particles and usually looks darker in color.

Your silt layer will settle in about 4-5 hours and should make up around 40% of your soil. Clay soil has tiny particles which creates poor drainage in the soil if you have too much of it. Since clay particles are the smallest of the three soil types in your jar test you'll see the layer on top. You should also have some trace amounts of organic matter floating just over the clay layer or at the top of your jar. Clay's potential as one of the best soil types for plant growth lies in its unique properties.

Managed well, clay soil typically requires less irrigation and less fertilizer, and leads to healthier plants all around. A high clay soil holds on to nutrients, stays wet longer, and is slow to warm up and dry off in spring. These soils are slimey and can be formed in your hand when wet. Avoid working high clay soils when wet – this leads to compaction.

Clay soils are made of extremely small particles that are packed close together. When lawns growing on clay soils receive even moderate foot traffic, the particles mash together in what is known as compaction. There is little room for water and air, because the voids are reduced. The limited space tends to fill up with water after a rainfall, leaving little or no oxygen for the root system.

Water does not pass quickly through clay soils, and often will move downward only after the soil voids are completely saturated. Amending the soil used to backfill planting holes provides questionable benefits. If any soil amendment is done in the planting hole, provide for a gradual transition of soil types . If the backfill soil is drastically different from the existing soil, roots will not readily penetrate the soil around the planting hole. Significant textural differences in soil can also affect soil water movement.

If the container growing mix is high in peat and the surrounding soil is clay, water will tend to move out of the root ball. Excessively wet root zones may result when the tree's or shrub's root ball is high in clay content and the backfill soil contains a high level of organic matter. Compaction is most likely to occur with heavier soils like clay and loam, but when heavy equipment is used, sandy soils can become compacted. These are soil particles that are packed closely together.

The problem may be compounded by events that have happened to the soil over the course of years. The pore spaces are reduced to the point that air and water cannot move freely and plant roots cannot grow easily into the surrounding soil. The soil could remain overly wet longer than is healthy for the plants growing there. Breaks apart clay bonds to create microscopic air space deep into the clay. It also adds liquid organic matter to help generate and feed beneficial soil microbes of all types at the same time. It helps improve drainage in your lawn clay, encourages deeper rooting, frees up nutrients and water in the root zone and helps move organic matter deeper into the soil.

By improving clay conditions you can create a much healthier lawn in a more bioactive soil. Many patchy lawns suffer from compacted soil, which deprives grass roots of needed oxygen. Removing plugs of soil with a core aerator allows air and water to penetrate the ground and leaves space for surrounding soil to expand and loosen.

Plan ahead and reserve the core aerator for at least half a day for an average-size lawn. You'll need a truck or trailer to haul the core aerator home. The machine weighs 150 to 200 lbs., so it takes some muscle to move around.

If you're not up to the task, consider hiring a lawn service for this part of the job . Allow a day between aerating and seeding to let the soil plugs dry. Dry plugs will break up easier when you blend them in along with the dressing of topsoil. In addition to incorporation into the soil, applying organic matter as mulch is beneficial for many flowers, vegetables, trees and shrubs.

Top-dressing of lawns may be done with good topsoil or topsoil–organic material combinations to smooth out irregular areas in the lawn or help decay thatch. Adding a few inches of topsoil does not generally improve the texture or performance of heavy clay and poorly drained soils unless it is done in combination with core aerification. Next, gently squeeze the ball to lengthen it into a strip or 'ribbon' and see how long you can make it before it starts to break up. The more clay it contains, the longer the ribbon will get and the more plastic it will feel to the touch.

Soil ribbons can range in length from about 5mm – 75mm, with sandy soils being shortest, loamy soils in the middle and clay soils the longest. While soils that contain a lot of clay or sand may need work to improve them, loamy soils are generally ideal. These contain a mixture of sand, silt, organic matter and clay, providing the right balance of nutrients, oxygen, water and drainage which are just what your lawn needs.

Ideal soils for lawns have a loose structure to allow water, air, and nutrients to penetrate through them. Soil that contains too much clay will pack down, making it difficult for the plants to spread their roots and access much-needed moisture. Soil that contains too much sand becomes very loose and allows too much water to flow through, without allowing the plants time to absorb the moisture. Unlike manufactured fertilizers, organic matter releases nutrients slowly into the soil, keep it nourished for long periods of time. A good lawn soil also includes an element that aids with moisture retention and keeps the plants well hydrated. Soils with a high composition of sand barely hold together and feel gritty.

The larger particles create pores for water and nutirents to move through quickly. They tend to be nutirent deficient, fast draining and dry. High sand soils will need watering and fertilizing more often. Sandy soils are very well drained, and sometimes excessively so.

The angular shape of the particles creates lots of air space so that water passes through the soil quickly. In general, roots thrive in sandy soils, because they get the oxygen they need to grow well. Another advantage is that sandy soils hold their shape well, and resist compaction. Golf course greens and professional sports fields are heavily sand based. They require compaction resistance and rapid drainage to maintain a firm, safe playing surface.

For centuries people have been adding things to poor soils to improve their ability to support healthy plant growth. Some of these materials, such as compost, clay and peat, are still used extensively today. Many soil amendments also add nutrients such as carbon and nitrogen, as well as beneficial bacteria. Additional nutrients, such as calcium, magnesium and phosphorus, may be augmented by amendments as well.

This enriches the soil, allowing plants to grow bigger and stronger. The most common use of soil amendments is to improve soil structure. Soil compaction impedes root growth, decreasing the ability of plants to take up nutrients and water. Soil amendments can add more loft and texture to keep the soil loose.

A common problem in gardens with clay soils are drainage issues, with lawns often becoming waterlogged and quickly turning to mud in winter. If drainage is very poor it may be worth addressing this before sowing. Introducing land drains can be a time consuming and costly job but can be worth it as the benefits will last for a very long time. Most clay soils aren't too severe and better drainage can usually be achieved by using a less expensive method. Applying lime or gypsum can do wonders for soil drainage whilst aeration and fertiliser management can further improve soil structure.

How To Fix Bad Soil Lawn Unfortunately, there is no quick fix to change clay into perfect soil. What we focus on is changing the soil structure, rather than try to change the type of soil. You improve the soil structure by breaking up the compacted clay and adding organic material. This gives the clay something useful to bind to, and it is a material that combats every problem that clay causes. The organic material will improve drainage, resist compaction, and both holds and releases nutrients and water.

This relates to how the different soil particles are arranged, the aggregates they form and the spaces between them. Well-structured soil will also have plenty of air spaces to provide oxygen, allow water to penetrate and facilitate drainage. Poorly structured soils are often hard and compacted, don't accept water easily, have few air spaces and are subject to erosion.

In simple terms they're bad news for you and your lawn and need to be improved. Last but certainly not least is the all-important fertiliser application. Doing so in Spring and Autumn can provide year-round coverage.

The main benefit in clay soils is the additional boost to drainage and root growth as this helps in especially wet and dry situations. Good news is there's an easy and inexpensive solution – compost! Compost is decomposed organic material that's used as a plant fertilizer and soil.

With the vegetation killed off, it's time to till the soil. Turn over the soil to a depth of five or six inches, incorporating all of the dead organic material. Now is the time to add organic material like humus, manure, or organic compost.

This Is Us Season 5

This Is Us is down to its final batch of episodes — or to put that in terms that fans can understand, the final few tissues in the box. The sixth and final season of the NBC series that revitalized the family drama will begin to dole out its last 18 episodes on Jan. 4 at 9 p.m. The season 5 finale dropped a few shockers in two different time periods — Madison walked away from Kevin on their wedding day! Kate and Toby will get divorced and she'll marry Phillip ! Randall (Sterling K. Brown) will become a rising star in some fashion! — and these news flashes will get full stories in the coming months.

A certain deathbed scene with the family's matriarch, Rebecca , in the distant future. After building to a season finale centered around Kevin's wedding to Madison, the current timeline ends with Madison calling off the wedding after forcing Kevin to confront the fact that he is in love with the family they've created, but not with her. In the previous episode, Kevin overcame his doubts about Madison by heeding stepfather Miguel's advice that not every love story is an epic Hollywood tale. "Some love stories are written in the stars and other love stories are written together," he told the groom-to-be, comparing his marriage to Rebecca after the death of Jack to Kevin and Madison being brought together by her unexpected pregnancy. But Madison tells Kevin that she deserves to be marrying a man who is in love with her, and not just as the mother to his children.

Two or maybe even three of the specifics you asked are in the second episode. But a lot of the other stuff people are going to have to be patient for. The good news is, it's not going to take more than one season of television to get all the answers. My hope is that by the end of the series, there is no stone left unturned. You would have nothing left to ask me about spoilers. But by the end of it, I don't think there will be any of these timeline mysteries left.

Hopefully it will set us up for a very beautiful and simple ending to the entire venture. We're definitely all going to take a long nap after this last season. But I think definitely those two periods are periods we're going to spend more time in.

Obviously one was just established, but the other one has been used more for answers to questions, but we haven't lived there a lot. We'll be doing more of that in this upcoming season, which is always the plan, as opposed to having maybe three or four past story lines in one episode, we could wind up with episodes that have two or three or four future and present story lines. The final scene of Tuesday's season finale jumped four years ahead to show Kate — gasp! Ever since the shocking time-jump finale of season three, a seed had been planted that Kate and Toby might split up in the future. That sad outcome for one of the couples at the heart of the show was confirmed in the final, time-jumping scene, as Kate is shown readying to marry a man that viewers barely know, her new boss Phillip . We're coming off an ending of the previous season that had a bunch of big moves for our characters.

You saw Kevin essentially get left at the altar. You saw that five years in the future, Kate is marrying somebody who's not Toby and who is a co-worker of hers. We've seen that Kate and Toby are going to be trying a version of a longer-distance marriage for a moment in time. We have seen Rebecca worrying about where her health is going next.

That first episode is really about marking where these characters are now, versus where they were five years ago. It's hard to believe that we're so close to the end of the smash-hit NBC drama starring Mandy Moore, Milo Ventimiglia, Sterling K. Brown, Chrissy Metz and Justin Hartley. In just 18 episodes, we'll all learn what's really going on in that famous flash-forward scene and what the future holds for the Big Three. In the season 5 finale, we got a better idea of what's in store next when we saw Kevin involved in a construction company called "Big Three Construction," Randall being featured in a magazine as a "rising star," and Kate getting married to another man. "My hope is that by the end of the series, there is no stone left unturned," he told EW. In her bones, Madison always knew Kevin wasn't in love with her.

Primarily, he said the final season will "live heavily" in the time period of Kate's second wedding, when the Big Three are 45, and in the period 10 to 15 years down the line, when the family has gathered by Rebecca's bedside. Season 5 of this series is a total waste of time. The cliff-hanger in the last minutes of the final episode is lame beyond description.

I should have gone with my gut and quit after season 4. The first 3 seasons were solid, but from 4 onwards the quality of the writing just decreased. They traded believable characters and well thought out story lines for cringe worthy artificial drama. I remember Chris Geere came in to meet Chrissy and do a little reading with her very, very early in our season.

We had to go through intensive testing protocols, and it was a whole deal. But I want it to feel them together, even though I've been such a fan of his for such a long time; that's how we do it on this show. He was just reading a version of an early scene with his character , and I remember telling him where this was going to give him the context. And I remember him just nodding and trying to process it, probably keep on a bit of a cool face, being somebody who watched the show, which he does. He was like, "Oh, s---! I'm walking into it right now." And you know, Sully and Chrissy Metz have always been like the rest of the cast.

They never complain or try to force me out of a story point. Even though it's hard when you're always reading stuff on the internet. And you know you just want to give people sugar all the time — just give everybody what they want all the time. Our fourth episode up is one of those specialized, very different episodes. And it's as good as Milo Ventimiglia has ever been in the show.

It's a Jack episode, and it's really, really good. By the end of the season, this show, before getting really simple, it gets really ambitious. To me, it may be [Ventimiglia's] best episode of the entire series.

It was a bit of a love letter by the writer of the episode — and the writers — to give Jack one here in the final season, and Milo really delivered. As a reminder, he's a pretty public city councilman in Philadelphia as we left him last season, and we know that five years from now he's getting a bit of national press that's anointed him as somebody with potential. The journey to get from here to there is a long one. It can't just happen in the first episodes of the season; it's going to require some things to be built and some events to happen that propel him.

But it's a fun journey to watch him go on with his family in the midst of the crisis of his mother's failing health. And other things that may be happening to the family. This man who's constantly in an existential crisis, trying to live up to the model of the man that his father was and always feeling like he's failing. We find Kevin fresh off the heels of this wedding fiasco with Madison, trying to figure out how you co-parent and have what he considers a normal family while not being with the mother of your children. That is demanding a lot of his focus and a lot of his existential crisis.

On a career level, he's at a place right now as we left him last season, he's not the hottest he's ever been. He's developing a reputation for walking off sets. So that works in concert with him also trying to figure out how he's going to provide some normalcy for his family.

We're spanning a lot of time by the time we get to the end of this. My hope for the show has always been that the end of the show, for those who have stuck with it and those who the show has been important to, will feel like a complete meal. You don't always love all the decisions a character might make, but we're hoping that because we tried to plan this out so far in advance that you will have felt like you've closed the final page on one of those sprawling family novels that we all enjoy.

In covering that much time —we've used the reference in the past, people come and go from the painting — not all of that is baked in severe trauma and tragedy. Sometimes it just comes with the passing of time. Sometimes stuff happens that takes people before their time.

It's one we've been planning for quite a while to start our sixth season. When people see it, they'll feel that it was baked into the fabric of the show a little bit. It's a pretty simple parenting story, which is where we often lived at our best and most simplest with Jack and Rebecca — just two parents navigating new experiences with young children. It's something that hopefully will be relatable, particularly to people who grew up in that era, or parents who were parenting back at that time. Thematically, they're going to start dealing with kids exploring heavy subject matter for the first time in their lives.

As mentioned, Rebecca started to repair her relationship with Randall in the season 5 finale. The Pearson matriarch also told the Big Three she wasn't sure how much time she had left. But before she dies, she hopes to spend her life with the ones she loves.

The final season will have a total of 18 episodes. During the premiere, the cast teased there would be another trilogy of episodes that focuses on the Big Three as well as a Jack-centric episode about his mother's death. Over the past few seasons, we've slowly been fed clues to the Pearson family's future, but there are still several questions that need answering in the remaining episodes. Why was Nicky, not Miguel, at Rebecca's bedside?

Why haven't we seen Kate in the big flash-forward yet? We just know that there is so much more drama left to come. With fewer than 20 episodes of the show remaining before it ends for good after This Is Us Season 6, fans are desperate to learn the fates of their favorite characters. Team woman&home has answered all your burning questions about the recent finale, so buckle up as we recap the end of Season 5. Fogelman expressed in multiple interviews that all timelines of the characters would come to completion, and fans wouldn't be left with questions by the end of the series finale.

Switching back to the present timeline in the episode, Madison called off her wedding with Kevin. There were hints in the two-minute flash-forward that Kevin and Madison could be writing their love story together. In the episodes leading up to the finale, Kevin came to the realization that he changes aspects about himself in order to please the woman he is dating. That continues to be true at his wedding, when the actor runs himself ragged trying to give Madison the perfect day and edits movie references out of his vows, per her request. The fifth-season finale of the NBC family drama ended with a surprising reveal that has been in the plans for "quite a while," says Dan Fogelman.

"There will be no looming questions when we get though the end of next season. Everything will be resolved." As for what fans can expect from the hit show's final season, we already know from the season five finale that Kate will be splitting from her husband Toby and is set to eventually marry music executive Phillip , with season six seeing their romance unfold. We've talked about it ad nauseam, but there's always been a big-picture plan for the show. We feel very comfortable that we don't have to rush. The show at the outset of the season is going to be very much the show that people are familiar with. We're not picking up with Toby and Kate in complete marital crisis on the cusp of divorce.

We have the plan for how we're going to do it, and then how we're going to do the rest and what happens later in her timeline. But we're going to live with Toby and Kate for quite a while. They're not just all one thing most of the time. We're going to try to show that in all its colors. After Toby lost his job, it became clear that he didn't want to become a stay-at-home dad. Kate also started working at a music school, and she fell in love with it.

Then in the finale, Toby received an opportunity to work for a startup in San Francisco three days a week, and Kate tried to resign from her position. But Kate's co-worker, Phillip , reminded her how good she was at her job. So Kate and Toby settled on a bicoastal relationship for half the week. List of episodesThe fifth season of the American television series This Is Us continues to follow the lives and connections of the Pearson family across several time periods.

Productions, Zaftig Films, and 20th Television, with Dan Fogelman, Isaac Aptaker, and Elizabeth Berger serving as showrunners. Breaking away from the show's usual fall release, the sixth and final season premieres on Jan. 4, 2022, on NBC. Additionally, the final season will air uninterrupted as there will be no midseason break. In the time jump, Randall is shown being profiled by a magazine as a "Rising Star," uncle Nicky references a "wife" and Beth is a bridesmaid for Kate, along with Madison. When speaking about the new seeds that have been planted heading into the final season — which will capture the 41st year of life for the Big Three — Fogelman called out Brown and Moore in particular as other big storylines ahead. This Is Us creator Dan Fogelman has long known how the Pearson family's story will end.

And, in wrapping season five (which is the penultimate season for the top-rated NBC drama), Fogelman and his creative team revealed a new timeline for the show to explore when it returns for its final run. NBC has promised that the family drama's final season will have "a largely uninterrupted run" following season five's pandemic-induced delayed start, multiple hiatuses and shortened episode count. If you have a valid cable login, you can watch tonight'sThis Is Us season premiere live on the NBC websiteorNBC app. You can also streamThis Is Us Season 6 live with a premium subscription service, includingYouTube TV,Hulu + Live TV,fuboTV,Sling TV, and DIRECTV STREAM.

Naturally, the whole Pearson family will be back for the final season, including Milo Ventimiglia , Mandy Moore , Sterling K Brown , Chrissy Metz and Justin Hartley . As we know, Jack died in a tragic house fire many years ago, but that won't stop him playing a pivotal part in these last remaining episodes, by way of flashbacks. I mean, I haven't really talked to anybody about it, honestly. It's been interesting seeing the news of , just because we've been so clear about it from the very beginning that it was going to be six seasons. The Pearson family story has an endpoint because of the age of the kids, and because we're telling the story in the future.

It's not to say there aren't more surprises in store, but I just honestly haven't even had the conversations. Elsewhere in the hour, Randall (Sterling K. Brown) and Rebecca experienced healing in their conversation about his perspective-shifting trip to New Orleans to learn about his birth mother. Rebecca asked Kate to build that modern house next to the family cabin as seen in the flash-forward. Malik revealed to Deja that he got into Harvard, setting up another long-distance situation. Oh, and five years from now, Randall is a rising star getting national magazine attention. But a four-years-from-now sequence — which viewers were fooled into thinking was present-day Kevin working on his vows — served as a double twist.

As it turns out, Kevin wasn't just not getting married to Madison, he wasn't getting married at all. He was prepping his speech at the wedding of his sister, Kate , who was marrying her music teacher boss, Phillip . Shocked viewers had been played like a fiddle, as the episode showcased rising tension between Kate and husband Toby after he secured a job in another city. But instead of giving into division, they pledged their love to each other and vowed to make this long-distance relationship work. So I do think it's going to feel like that, closing a final chapter. I do think after a lot of ambition in the season, I think it will feel really simple.