Preparing for turf the Fu Manchu way

As many HomeOne forum readers know - Fu Manch is our guru for all things green. He has a great topic on preparing your soil for turf. The philosophy is based on nourishing the soil, not the plant - encouraging microbes and organic matter. Healthy soil = healthy plants!

The Fu methodology is as follows:

You start with crappy clay soil (like most of greater Sydney)

Break up the heavy clay soil - if it's a small area - Fu recommends a rotary hoe. If it's 400m2 like our back yard - a bobcat with a ripper bar was a life saver.

Once your soil is ripped up - add the following:

• some gypsum (I used 5 x 25kg bags over the area)
• zeolite (6 x 20kg bags - though application is usually 1x20kg bag over 100m2 - I added a bit extra)
• spongolite (11 x 4kg shakers)

On top of all of that - add sand (11 tonnes worth) and work in

Then add some good organic garden mix (12 cubic metres)- we found certified organic soil from Australian Native Landscapes.

Once you work the organic mix in - it looks like this - the soil even looks more rich and full of organic matter:

Then it's a matter of using a spreader bar to smooth it all out - I couldn't have imagined doing this part by hand!


Turf goes down tomorrow morning and we'll be using Empire Zoysia - an extremely drought tolerant and slow growing grass (this means less mowing!). We won't be rolling out turf - it only costs $1/m2 more to get them to lay it - and a job our size takes 4 hours so well worth it!

Once you have turf - it needs to be watered in with Seasol & Powerfeed and also molasses (you dilute a 25kg bucket in 20,000L - so you only need a little).

We did all of the preparation in 1 day with the help of our fantastic bobcat driver Garry from Bilbie's Bobcat Hire - I found him via the web - the big difference is the ripper bar - make working the soil over so easy.

It probably would have been cheaper to hire a rotary hoe and DIY - but with such a large area - well worth the investment to get it done in a day. I reckon all of this work would have taken hubby and I at least a long weekend - if not more.

Now to relax a little before I get to watch someone else work tomorrow!