How to Lay a New Lawn - 3 Ways to Prepare a New Lawn In my experience as a grower, the number one thing people want to know about turf is how to lay a new lawn? Let's face it, It's a big job and you'd hate to get it wrong and have to do it all over again so I decided to put together a short list of 3 ways you can go about it. Let's say you've got an existing lawn and you'd like to replace it. Here are the 3 ways of preparing your area for a new lawn.  1. The first way I'd like to share with you is poisoning off the old grass with glyphosate / Round Up. This is a broad-spectrum systemic herbicide used to kill weeds. Spray the glyphosate all over the existing lawn and then allow 10 to 14 days for it to kill the old lawn off. After this time has passed you remove the old grass, level off and aerate the soil. Next you apply fertilizer and water crystals. Now you lay your new turf right on top of the area you prepared.

2. The second way I'd like to show you is if you don't want to poison off your old lawn and you really want to stay away from using chemicals. What you do is strip the area of all the old grass. You can scrape it off using a turf cutter or a bobcat. Remove all of the grass particles, rotary hoe the existing soil, fertilize it and then level it off.  Once you have leveled it off, prepare all your turf area. Make sure your soil is 25mm lower than all your garden edges and footpaths then lay your turf on top of that.  The reason we say to stay 25mm below your footpath and edges is because the root matter of the turf will be about that thick and once it is installed your lawn will become flush with your edges and your leaf foliage will stick up just past your edges which will give you a nice clean cut. 3. The third way I'll talk about today is to clean up all of your edges, then poison off your old grass with glyphosate / Round Up just like we talked about in the first way where spray the glyphosate all over the existing lawn and then allow 10 to 14 days for it to kill the old lawn off but instead of removing all of the old grass you leave it there.

Your next step is to put your new soil right on top of this, leaving your old grass there. Doing it this way will minimize compaction. Just like before, make sure your edges are 25mm below your footpath and walkways and garden edges and lay your new turf on top of that. Clean up all the edges, scraping back about half a meter off your edges.  So, just to re-cap on the 3 ways to lay a new lawn: 1. Poisoning off the old grass with glyphosate, remove the old grass, Prepare the soil, lay your new turf. 2. NO Chemicals. Scrape off and remove your old turf using a turf cutter or a bobcat. Rotary hoe the existing soil, level it, lay your new turf. 3. Poisoning off the old grass with glyphosate, leave the old grass there, put your new soil right on top of the old grass, lay your new turf.