First aid for lawn renovation

Now that the spring greens are giving way to beautiful sunny weather and everything is once again buzzing with life, the garden is once again becoming a magnet for those who want to enjoy nature. As the venue for this garden experience, the lawn naturally plays a leading role. Reason enough to evaluate the state of your lawn, renovate it and then go into the summer with a beautiful green lawn.

Once the soil has warmed up sufficiently again, seeding season is upon us. So all options are open to give the lawn a good once-over. In gardens older than fifteen years you very often find a "zombie lawn". Such a lawn is easy to recognize: moss is often prominently present, weeds and street grasses are so strongly intertwined that combating them is a hopeless task; if you take a small spade and look at the profile of the top layer, you will notice that the top three centimeters form a spongy thick layer of piled up thatch, overgrown with weathered and dead grass roots. The grass plants you still find there are often the remaining tough rascals of what was once an ornamental lawn. 

This type of lawn often can no longer be patched up with overseeding. Here you can only advise the lawn owner to completely rebuild the lawn. Of course, relative to overseeding, such a total makeover is an intervention with a larger cost tag. Although you can also put that into perspective somewhat: after all, a completely new lawn requires little additional care in the first few years, which in itself is a savings that can mitigate the cost of reseeding in the long run.   

Preparation

Consider such a reconstruction immediately as a new start. Seize the opportunity to make the lawn future-proof in the context of the changing climate. Take care to prepare the lawn soil: loosen it up, introduce organic material so that soil life is activated, which contributes to good water permeability. Anticipate dry periods and introduce water-retaining polymers into the soil. 

If you are aiming for a lawn on good foundations, then simply infilling the old turf is out of the question. In addition to the risk of subsidence, after old sod is digested, an arsenal of weed seeds still latent in the old sod are finely sown and you saddle the new lawn with a legacy of problems. 

The best approach is to remove and dispose of the entire sod integrally. Then you can start from a clean base to rebuild the new turf.

Turfaway600

To remove the sod in both small and larger gardens quickly and with limited effort, you must have a high-performance sod cutter. The Turfaway 600 Cross Country from ELIET is a maverick in the market because it is the world's first turf cutter on tracks. This offers garden professionals many important advantages. 

Caterpillar

The Turfaway's tracks have a large contact surface with the lawn, allowing as many as 40 claws to bite into the turf at the same time. Needless to say, the grip on this ELIET machine is much higher than on a classic machine on wheels. You should preferably cut turf after rain, when the soil is softer as a result. The superior grip of the ELIET Turfaway ensures minimal slip on such a damp lawn. But also in periods of drought, when the ground is much harder, the resistance on the cutting blade is much higher, which requires more tractive force from the turf cutter. Here, too, the extra gripping power of the tracks comes in handy to still achieve good efficiency. 

Easy cleanup

Thanks to the special traction power of the tracked undercarriage, the Turfaway600 is equipped for a working width of no less than 60 cm. This wide blade makes quick work of any garden. Very nice ... but as a garden contractor, you spontaneously feel your back ache at the thought of carrying away 60 cm sod. ELIET have thought of that. The 60 cm wide blade is divided into two parts. This way, you actually cut two small pieces of 30 cm in one pass. These are much lighter and easier to handle. This way you combine the best of both worlds, maximum efficiency and better clearing comfort. 

Ease of use and precision

Depth adjustment is nowhere as easy as with the Turfaway600. You simply move a lever to the desired depth and can get right to work. The scale with steps of 7.5 mm allows you to remove with precision only the strictly necessary layer of the lawn. By cutting as little soil as possible from the lawn, the garden retains the nutritious top layer of soil. Bringing the blade to working depth is done with the strength of your leg muscles. As you push the blade down with your foot, you can simultaneously operate the wheel drive with your hand to seamlessly start the work. 

Agile 

The drive of the Turfaway600 is hydrostatic. This means that the driving speed can be very easily controlled with a stepless system. This allows the speed to be adjusted very precisely to the terrain conditions. The drive to each track can be controlled separately with a convenient joystick stick. This gives this ELIET sod cutter zero-turn maneuverability. From 180° turns at the end of work strip to taking smooth turns: no problem for the Turfaway600. 

Seeder

After you have removed the old sod, you can get to work on making the necessary soil improvements. That way, you'll have laid the perfect foundation for seeding the new lawn or creating an instant lawn by rolling out new sod. Most customers prefer the budget-friendly option of sowing. ELIET also offers lawn professionals the perfect tool for this, in the form of its range of GZC seeders. This seeding combination combines all operations for levelling, laying the seedbed, seeding and finishing in one machine. 

Once the ELIET machines leave the field, you just have to be patient until the young grass emerges. Ensure that the grass seed receives sufficient water so that it can germinate quickly and develop fully into a new, radiantly green and healthy lawn.

Made in Belgium

All ELIET gardening machines are developed and built in Belgium. On its home market, ELIET serves its customers first hand, striving for the shortest possible delivery time. If you have a lawn renovation project, consult the ELIET representatives or authorized dealer in your area immediately.