soil amendments - Sydney siders

HI everyone

there are some products referred to in Fu's lawn laying guide which are not available in Sydney
i.e Bactivate or piggy post.

So aside from Zeolite, organic turf underlay (we cant even get certified stuff here.. the closest is Aus Standards 4419)..

What else can be added in to the soil before laying new turf?

I know to avoid mushroom compost.. but looking for some guidance / help on other things to add.

Thanks

you can order bactivate direct, they will courier it to you. Pearlite is available everywhere. Its used as a hydropnic growing medium and used by nurseries in their soil mixes Australia wide. Best prices are on ebay or direct from hydro stores. Spongolite if you can find it, but if not just use more zeolite. Seamungus is available at bunnings in huge buckets.

What kind of soil do you currently have that you are trying to ammend?

i have roughly 60sqm to cover and it would be economical to use a substitute product bought in Syd instead of shipping across XXX kgs of bactivate from the other side of the country..

i have no problem sourcing seamungus, zealoite or pearlite... but i had the strong impression to add some other?? (what??) compost to the turf underlay..

initially i had planned dynamic lifter .. but later read around here that it got a bad rap ...

getting mixed opinions about seamungus due to the cost... eg theres a product called katek organic super growth which is looking pretty good!

Iam based in in sydney its mostly clay soil.. and this is the project iam going to work on
viewtopic.php?f=19&t=79740

If clay you will need sand and compost as well as the others. Seamungus is expensive but for the size your doing were talking 80 bucks. You could put 2 huge buckets in for that price. By far your biggest costs will be the turf, the soil and the rotary hoe to till it all through, in that order. Cost of seamungus in all of that would be negligible. Don't skimp 80 bucks after spending hundreds on trying to get it right.

As to compost, if you can't get certified organic, just get the best available. The idea is to introduce rich organic matter into the clay. Whether it's certified or not is only a minor detail in the scheme of things. Also before you discount the direct shipping of bactivate, give them a quick email and see how much it will cost, then make a decision.

Don't forget the season/power feed and molasses.

Remember it's not just an underlay your putting in. Your AMENDING the existing soil. If you just lay the amendments and compost on top, your turf roots will likely become water logged and rot.

Hi Mustard,
Aust standards turf underlay is pretty darn good compared to normal garden joints soil. I would go with that.
Fu's guide is excellent for free draining sand soils. If you have basically sand, like a kids sand pit, then Fu's guide is unquestionably the way to go. If you have clay, sandy clay loam, loam etc. then his guide is way over the top. Not to say this is a bad thing, but its like over engineering for the sake of it. It won't make for better grass but it won't hurt either.. if you get what i mean..
What your aiming for is 200mm of cultivated top soil, with 20% of that 200mm being organic compost/manure. Turf underlay is usually 80% sandy loam and 20% compost/manure, which is bang on. This gives you a great soil profile so when you water/fertilise (organic/seasol etc.) it actually gets down to the roots of the soil. That's all you need in clay/loam soils, you don't need zeolite/perlite as these soils already hold water and don't need extra additives. Seasol/seamungus/molasses etc can all be watered into the soil later on if needed.

Those amendments don't just hold water btw. They hold the nutrients that are watered in. It like having little pellets of fertiliser that keep getting replenished every time you feed your soil.

thanks heaps for all the input !!

my plans are still to mix in some organic compost or fertilizer (once im able to decide which one) with the turf underlay ... then go with zeolite, sea mungus... ive ear marked a product which looks the good (i have to get the link from my other pc)

ill eventually start a new thread to share my learning experiences with homeone.

Hi Ponzo,
Some data shows this is the case in professional turf (sports field) applications, whether it's relevant to a home lawn on a clay based soil is another thing altogether. I have no doubt in sandy soils zeo works as described, but in heavy soils the last thing you want is the soil to hold on to water even longer, especially in winter.. Like i said, at the quanities suggested in the turf thread zeolite is going to have buggerall effect on heavy soils.
I have personally used zeolite on heavy soil and there is zero difference to the turf whether it has been ammended or not. But like anything in horticulure, if it makes people feel better adding heaps of stuff to their soil then they can knock themselves out..

i may give the zeolite a miss.. i dunno..

right now the roundup is working its magic and killing off everything.. from somewhere here i read that after 14 days the chemicals in this deteriorate and wont affect anything new

having said that i wouldnt be in this problem in the first place if the soil was in good condition.. so im keen on pumping some quality stuff in there to help kickstart everything when laying out new turf.

as mentioned before.. and in addition to a turf underlay (certified by ausstandards).. i intend on getting sea mungus & either of these two products when turning the soil over:

https://www.masters.com.au/product/9000 ... ivator-25l

OR

http://katekfertilizers.com.au/products ... egardener/

both look pretty good ..

thoughts?

last product option iam considering:

http://www.searle.com.au/pdf/5IN1FSQR.pdf

I tend to disagree with this. Heavy soils like clay (which I also have, and have amended) require amending for a number of reasons. Firstly roots need to be able to penetrate the soil. At full clay, this is next to impossible for many grasses and plants. In soil, roots require access to oxygen and nutrients. There is a significantly reduced oxygen availability in clay, if any (in really heavy pure clay). Nutrients are are also poorly held by such soils. The amendments such as zeolite if used exclusively would do bugger all and likely would not provide any positive benefit. However, one amends clay soil. By amending it, you are adding organic material which will improve the structure of the clay and as a result the availability of oxygen. The zeolite in addition to this, as mentioned before holds the necessary nutrients you introduce periodically to continue to improve the structure of the heavy soil.

Sure people have gotten away with less, but some have not. What we cant tell from any photos or the OP is how bad the clay is. Is it clay loam or is it heavy red clay that turns to slippery mud when wet and powdery when dry etc and what sort of turf is going to be layed and the conditions it is likely to encounter...

Fu's guide is not just usefull for WA soils, despite being developed for that area. The guide talks about improving the structure, which in clay means introducing organic material and sand and increasing the bioavailability of both oxygen and nutrients for plant roots. Fu's guide is a gold standard. and as mentioned before you may not need the gold standard, but by skimping on amending the soil properly to account for all its failings, you run the risk of ending up with a poor result. the difference in cost from the gold standard and the alternative for such a small area is probably 250 bucks. This is significantly less than redoing the work in a few years time when the roots reach the clay and can no longer draw the required action from the soil.

Also moisture being held in clay is not what will happen when the soil is amended. The moisture (and nutrients) will be held largely in the amendments THEN the clay. This should allow for the appropriate microbial action to occur around where the moisture is primarily held and continue to improve the soil structure ongoing.

People think that the amendments operate exclusively to any other actions in the soil, and its this school of thought that leads to the "oh you don't need to do all that" thinking. In all of Fu's work, his focus is on improving the structure first, which in turn results in healthier plant growth.

as to the quantities, there is no harm in going over the stated amount as these are all neutral amendments and it is what they do with the moisture and nutrients that are introduced that is important. For example, you can grow plants in pearlite exclusively as a medium. Its how many hydropinic system are set up. This is to ensure that the nutrient content can be controlled to the Nth degree. Given that its not economical to do so for a lawn, the amendments themselves are there to improve structure and bioavailability of everything else to the plant roots.

Parroting the master - feed the soil, not the plant.

there are a couple of errors in my above post, but extrapolate the intention of what I mean and youll get my point. Just at work so cant go back and amend each item.

Long story short - just follow Fus guide. If you read the threads in full there is references on how to adjust for clay instead of sand

cheers ponzu..

whats your thoughts about the three products i mentioned as an additive to the turf underlay?

They all sound like theyre great and do much of the same thing as bactivate and seamungus on face value, but I dont know anything about those products so I cant say whether they do what they claim to do. The naked farmer stuff looks interesting, but again, hard to tell without any research. Are these significantly cheaper than just following Fu's guides?

well in Fu's guide:

Seamungus is only mentioned as an after care product... not part of the turf install

instead of biactivate i will add some organics in there

youre correct, but there is no harm in tilling it through. either or should be fine. Re the bactivate/organics. Bactivate gives you a guarantee of introducing specific microbes into your soil that you have no guarantee from other products. They list them out on the website. You may want to compare them to whats in the other products you are considering to see if they will do the same thing. That said, the more organic matter and stinky stuff you add in teh better the microbe ecology will be. You just have to maintain that ecology for healthy lawn

http://www.bactigroaustralia.com/products/bactivate/

To make things clear "good soil" needs two things;

Structure and fertility.

The soil structure (as you pointed out ponzu) is basically the combination of soil particles and the air gaps between them. These gaps are where plant roots grow and air/water and nutrients travel. Gravel has the largest particle size and clay/silt the smallest.. To create good structure in loam soils (or any soil with clay content) one must add humus (compost/composted manure, powerfeed). This acts like a glue to the tiny clay particles which makes them clump together creating the crumbly spongy soil that is full of air gaps when cultivated. Gypsum also has this effect but works slightly differently (only if the soil is gypsum reactive). This is all that is needed to ammend the existing soils structure in loam/clay soils (along with correct cultivation). Each soil type is treated slightly differently- too much to go into now.
Maintaining good humus levels (or organic levels) = good soil structure. Adding sand to clay soils only effects structure once it exceeds 50% of the soil volume. Which is heaps and creates huge problems with levels etc. This has been scientifically tested and peer reviewed..

Fertility is created by adding Nutrients (fertilisers) to the soil profile which come in many forms both organic and synthetic. What is confusing is most organic products do both; add humus as well fertility. Hence the 'should i shouldn't i' use seamungus seasol etc is raised in heaps of threads. Basically it doesn't matter, they all do basically the same thing. Except if the soil PH is off which will not allow all of the trace nutrients to be avaliable to the plant roots. So PH needs to be checked and addressed appropriately so the soil microbes can process the organic fertilisers for the plants.

So thats the basics of heavy soils, where zeolite, perlite, benonite clay, biactivate fit into this mix is very questionable.

Zeolite - great in sand soils which have excellent structure but can't hold any nutrients/water due to the naturally large particle size (air gaps). Loam/clay does not have this issue.
Perlite - as above
Benonite clay - adds clay basically to sandy soils to allow them to hold water better - not relevant to loam/clay soils which already have clay in them.
Biactivate- basically adds bacteria/microbes to the soil. All soils in Australia have their own native populations of bacteria/microbes that will flourish when humus, organic fertiliser and moisture is added to the soil.

As you can see the trend above, what Fu has provided is basically a recipe to turn Perth sand into a super charged loam soil. Which is perfect for WA but not necessary for the rest of Australia.

For what its worth, the info i provide was given to me by a well known soil scientist.

Good info.

Stewie

that is really good info for people like me.. thanks for taking the time to explain that...'

did some googling on perth soils and now i can understand what sandy soil is lol... and now better understand the context of FU's guide..

to save a bit of coin iam going to skip the zeolite ..

have decided to go with searles 5n1 from masters ($8 for 30 litres) and will get a few bags of that to add into my 60sqm turf laying exercise... still gotta do a quick check on how much of this ill need

that plus my seamungus, powerfeed, seasol and molasses and i think ill be good to go..