Poor growth in newly down lawn

richardNI

Hi guys, 

I am hoping someone can help. I have my lawn sown a couple of months ago and recently cut it for the first time. A large percentage of the lawn has grown quite week however there are various areas in the garden where the growth is very poor, the grass isn’t growing well at all and is a very light colour. I dug up a small area to investigate and it turns out that in these problem areas there is a layer of stones less than an inch below the surface. It’s a new build home and it looks like the developers dumped stones and didn’t put enough top soil on top of it. I don’t think the grass is ever going to grow well in these areas. It was growing ok at the start and then just seams to have stopped after the first few weeks. 

I was just wondering if there’s any way to resolve this without digging it all up to get the stones out and sowing grass seed again. I’ve included some pics and the larger back garden has grown much better than the front however in the pic on the right hand side there’s a large enough section with the stones problem. 

Thanks guys 

JennyJ

 You could try carefully lifting the turf in the bad areas, taking out the stones and adding some topsoil to level it up before putting back the turf. Those areas would need plenty of watering to re-establish, but so would new turf. Maybe try a small area first and see how it goes

richardNI

JennyJ said:

 You could try carefully lifting the turf in the bad areas, taking out the stones and adding some topsoil to level it up before putting back the turf. Those areas would need plenty of watering to re-establish, but so would new turf. Maybe try a small area first and see how it goes

Thanks Jenny. I think I’ll try that. It would be a shame to have to sow seed in the problem areas and start again. The grass has come up quite well overall. Just some problem areas are a bit frustrating. This is a pic where the problem areas aren’t really showing and it doesn’t look too bad