Decorative garden: Rolling the lawn: the right way

 If you are laying a new lawn, you should roll the soil. 

But you can also use lawn rollers for other work in the garden. 

We give tips on when and how to roll your lawn properly.

MSG/Frank Schuberth

Rolling is important so that freshly laid turf can grow well

lawn rollers or garden rollers are absolute specialists as flatteners, 

but also pure casual workers who can also be used only for this purpose. 

Their field of activity is manageable and actually always has to do with lawns. 

Nevertheless, lawn rollers, especially for lawn care, cannot be meaningfully replaced by other equipment. 

For most hobby gardeners this is a little too specialized. 

Who would like to roll his lawn, borrows the garden roller therefore usually in the hardware store.

Rolling the lawn: The most important facts in brief

The rolling process presses lawn seeds into the soil and ensures good soil contact. 

Freshly laid turf is also rolled so that it can grow well. 

Unevenness in the lawn can also be evened out by rolling. 

Make sure that the soil or lawn is slightly moist. 

A lawn roller is better pushed on loose, bare ground. 

For rolled lawn or for compacting lawns, the roller can be pushed or pulled.

How should one roll a lawn?

As massive as a lawn roller may seem: 

it is hollow and gets its weight from a water filling or - if it is to be really heavy - from sand. 

A large lawn roller can weigh up to 120 kilograms. 

A garden roller in the garden is actually always a hand roller that you can push or pull. 

Pulling is easier, but is not possible, especially when laying a new lawn. 

If the soil is loose and bare, you push the lawn roller, 

only then you walk on compacted soil and do not sink in. 

Otherwise, the lawn will be bumpy from the beginning due to 

the footprints and footprints cannot be removed by rolling again.

MSG/Folkert Siemens

Both before and after sowing grass, the soil should be rolled

Slide a roller slowly and lane by lane over the lawn 

and then again in a crosswise direction - do not mix it up wildly, 

then the roller compacts the soil to varying degrees. 

Do not drive the roller in tight curves, because the edges of the roller will be pressed into the ground. 

The punctual soil compaction is extreme when you turn your lawn roller on the spot.

For rolled lawns or to compact an existing lawn in spring, you can push or pull the lawn roller. 

Remember that the soil should always be slightly moist when working with a lawn roller. 

Clay is otherwise as hard as concrete and even a heavy roller would not do any good. 

Loose sand would simply avoid the lawn roller to the right and left, 

so that only a small part would be compacted at all.

When should the lawn be rolled?

The time for rolling the lawn naturally coincides with the time of lawn care in the garden. 

You should never roll the lawn in frosty weather. 

For rolling, the lawn or the ground should be slightly moist, 

dry sand will largely avoid the roller and dry clay is hard as a rock. 

If you want to roll the lawn on clay soil every year, 

you should use organic fertilizer and mulch mowers to increase or at least not decrease the humus content. 

To increase the humus content, you can spread thin potting soil or sieved compost on the lawn in spring.

Use lawn rollers correctly

Whether for sowing or for the care of a lawn: With these tips, you will be able to use lawn rollers correctly in the garden. Read more

Rolling turf correctly

The roller presses freshly laid turf evenly in the garden and ensures that the turf blends well with the loose soil, 

which has previously been prepared with humus and fertilizer, and can grow well. 

After laying and rolling, the turf should not dry out for two to three weeks. 

It should be soaked through, but not soaking wet.

Rolling when sowing the lawn

The classic task of a lawn roller: 

When a new lawn is sown, nothing works without it. 

After digging, the soil is so loose that you immediately sink to your ankle when you walk on it. 

Completely unacceptable for lawns. 

By rolling the soil, you make it firm to walk on, but it is not pressed tightly together, but remains permeable. 

Even after sowing the lawn, you should continue rolling and press the seeds into the soil, 

so that they can close the soil and absorb the water well.

Lawn care with the garden roller

A lawn roller can also be used for general care, 

for example if the lawn has become uneven after winter. 

This is because the frost can cause the turf to rise and then hardly touch the ground. 

When it gets warmer, the lawn grows much worse.

Voles are not only annoying as plant rodents, 

but also pass through the lawn with their densely under 

the surface of running courses, which one sees as visible bulges. 

You can easily flatten the corridors or bumps - an easy exercise for lawn rollers. 

Mole mounds cannot be removed simply by rolling them away, which is a number too big for lawn rollers.

Fill depressions and dents in the grass with a mixture of sand, garden soil, potting soil and grass seed. 

Due to the humus content of the potting soil, 

there is no risk of compacting the soil by the weight of the lawn roller when rolling. 

Otherwise, this can happen especially in loamy soils and too frequent use.

Tip: With light lawn rollers you can create striped patterns in the lawn like in a soccer stadium. 

The roller always lays the blades of grass in one direction so that you can 

alternately see the darker top and the lighter underside of the grass.