Many summer residents, tired of bending their backs over the beds of potatoes, make a radical decision - to abandon the garden and plant the plot with grass. However, it quickly becomes clear that the lawn requires no less thorough care than fruits and vegetables, and without activities such as packing and tamping, the green carpet looks untidy and looks more like an abandoned wasteland than a place to rest. Landscape designers use special rollers to create a neat lawn, but at home, such expensive and large-sized devices can be found an alternative replacement, and how to do this will be discussed below.

What is it needed for

A lawn is not just a land left without cultivation, on which fresh emerald grass grows by itself. Even if you purchase a special mixture of meadow grass seeds in a specialty store and randomly sow them on the site, the result will not even approximately resemble a neat golf course, which almost all homeowners dream of.

Important! A real lawn can be grown only on a perfectly leveled area, completely cleaned not only of all foreign objects and debris, but even of the grass that originally grew on it.

In order to ensure that the territory is not just smooth, but really impeccable, Before planting grass or laying a rolled lawn on a site, the following work is carried out sequentially:

• cleaning;
• removal of plant residues (treatment with herbicides or removal of the topsoil with a sod layer);
• leveling (leveling with a mandatory slope of about 5 ° for water flow);
• softening (digging to a depth of 5-10 cm);
• primary rolling;
• laying a fertile soil layer;
• introduction of starting fertilizers;
• one more careful alignment;
• re-rolling;
• sowing grass or laying a lawn;
• the third rolling for pressing seeds into the soil (in the case of using the roll option - for perfect contact of the natural grass cover with soil).

Thus, with the correct arrangement of the green area, you need to roll out the site during the laying of the lawn at least three times. This procedure ensures uniform germination of the grass, avoids bald spots, holds moisture and fertilizers in the soil, prevents the blowing of seeds by the wind and, thus, will achieve exactly the result that any person associates with the concept of “English lawn”.

Did you know? A flat ground with a short trimmed grass as an element of landscape design first appeared in England, and the first mention of this dates back to the 14th – 16th centuries. Even then, lawns for their purpose were divided into decorative and sports - the first were used for walking, the second held tournaments and competitions.

An even and correctly tamped lawn at the stage of laying is subsequently very convenient to treat with a lawn mower, and this is also an important reason for using the ice rink. Moreover, while using a trimmer, the presence of tubercles, potholes, or small pebbles in the work area can still be regarded as minor interference, then for an expensive car with wheels, this factor not only significantly worsens the result (the grass is cut unevenly), but can also lead to breakage of knives and other parts of the device, which then will need to be repaired or completely replaced.

To maintain the initially achieved result, it must be constantly maintained. For this reason, it is recommended to roll the lawn again after each mowing so that the grass remains beautiful, soft, smooth and silky. Thus, the lawn owner will need a special roller not only when planting the lawn, but also throughout the entire period of caring for it.

In addition to its intended purpose, the lawn roller at the cottage can also be used to solve some auxiliary tasks, for example, leveling tracks made of sand or gravel, neat and safe for plants to remove infusion (ice) from the earth's surface in order to ensure oxygen access to the soil, etc.

Did you know? Around Canberra, the capital of Australia, is one of the most expensive lawns in the world. The state spends hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on its maintenance, including a complex irrigation system and the payment of dozens of specially hired employees specially for this purpose.

What should be the size and weight

On sale today you can find a huge selection of lawn rollers, differing in size, weight, functionality and, accordingly, price. The cost of the product starts at 3,500 rubles, but premium options can cost 16,500 rubles. and higher.

The factory-made hand-held roller is a large, heavy cylinder worn on an axis, ensuring its free rotation. The design is connected to the handle, holding on to which, the "paver" pushes the roller in front of him.

The width of the roller is calculated in such a way that, on the one hand, the work goes as quickly as possible, on the other, it’s comfortable to handle the device with a person with average physical training. On average, these indicators correspond to sizes from 50 to 100 cm.

Approximately the same requirements apply to weight. Ideally, the skating rink should be as heavy as possible to effectively level the area, but since the device is used in manual mode, this parameter has to be severely limited.

Important! Professional lawn rollers weigh from 50 to 120 kg; for this, the roller is heavier due to special fillers. Such devices cling to self-propelled vehicles and are used to process large areas, such as golf courses or football.

Hand rollers for weighting can also be filled with water, sand or cement. Without such manipulations, the average weight of the product in the factory assembly is 7–13 kg, further modification depends on the desire and physical capabilities of a particular consumer.

So, for example, in the technical specifications of the Al-KO GW 50 model (Austria) it is indicated that at 13 kg of the initial weight, the device can be weighted up to 75 kg when pouring water into it. Knowing that sand weighs on average 1.8 times heavier than water, it is easy to calculate that this parameter is increased to 135 kg by simple manipulations.

In addition to the usual rolling roller, some products are equipped with an additional nozzle - an aerator. It looks like a barbed mesh worn on a roller. With this function, the soil is loosened before sowing the grass.

How to roll a lawn with a roller

Proper use of the lawn roller requires compliance with several fundamental rules:

1. By means of a skating rink a lawn is tamped, but not leveled. If bumps, pits or other defects are found in the area with already planted grass, they should be eliminated with the help of a traditional agricultural tool, for example, a shovel, pitchfork, sap or cultivator. The skating rink not only does not cope with such tasks, but also exacerbates the problems (the hillocks will become denser and the holes deeper).
2. Not intended for removing bumps, the roller, however, helps to identify them perfectly. It is after the first rolling that those areas that need additional processing become clearly visible. Sometimes, to achieve the ideal result, such procedures need to be performed 4-5 times.
3. In the spring, after the snow melts, you should definitely walk along the last year's lawn with an ice rink. This will prevent natural disturbance of the even surface of the soil (activity of insects living in the soil, earthworms, rodents, uneven distribution of moisture, repeated freezing and thawing of the soil). Before rolling, the lawn must be cleaned of debris that inevitably appears in the grass after winter.
4. It’s better to use the roller when the soil remains wet., but the grass itself should not be wet. On dry, uncultivated land, the ice rink is useless.

Did you know? The lawn is not only beautiful, but also useful. Scientists estimate that one hundred square meters of green grass holds up to 600 kg of dust, preventing its particles from spreading through the air and getting into the respiratory tract, causing their irritation and allergic reactions.

How can I replace the roller when planting a lawn

Despite the fact that you cannot get a beautiful lawn without rolling, to acquire such a device for a small household plots is still not very advisable. As an alternative, of course, you can buy the product together for several yards or rent it (ask your neighbor), but such options also have disadvantages and are not suitable for everyone.

It is much easier to make a hand-made roller for tamping grass with your own hands, especially since its device is understandable and very simple. There are many options for improvised materials that are suitable for the implementation of the task in any household.

a - smooth tamping roller, b - needle roller-cultivator, c - scheme of the roller: 1 - body, 2 - bracket, 3 - cross member, 4 - handle, 5 - washer.

The following are just a few general ideas as a guide to action:

1. Log. From time to time in the summer cottage you have to get rid of old trees. A fragment of the trunk of one of them can become a prototype of the future ice rink. For the same purpose, nothing prevents the use of a thick branch removed during the annual sanitary or anti-aging pruning. Truth, it is desirable that the wood was made of hard rocks, but no one set strict rules. If the log is too long, it needs to be shortened to about 100 cm, as for the diameter, then the larger it is, the better. If possible, remove the bark from the log and polish the wood to a smooth state, and then drive the studs with a sharp end and thread on the back side into the ends. The handle can be made from any material at hand, for example, from a plastic pipe. The considered option as a whole is not very successful, since the tree does not meet a number of requirements important for the skating rink: it is not perfectly smooth, does not have enough weight, and while not being hollow inside, it does not lend itself to artificial weighting.1 - cut roller; 2 - a wooden skating rink (a - an axis with a diameter of 12 mm; b - a pipe with a diameter of 150-200 mm; c - a concrete coating).
2. Trumpet. It can be made of any material, but it is better that it be heavy. Metal is an ideal option. To ensure the desired weight of the product, it is better to take two pipes of different diameters (as the larger one you can use the receiver from a truck, as a smaller one you can use a hollow metal rod inside), insert one into the other, and pour concrete between them. After that, it is enough to pass a steel rod through the roller as an axis, attach any convenient handle to its edges, and the roller is ready. An ice rink with a T-handle and an axis on the rings for rotation. Instead of concrete, you can use any bulk material (sand, screenings, gravel) as a weighting agent, but in this case the ends of the product will need to be hermetically sealed. This option has an advantage: if the side cover is removable, it becomes possible to change the composition or quantity of the filler and thus adjust the weight of the finished product.
3. A used empty gas bottle or an old metal can. The technology of using such an object as a skating rink is similar to the previous version, but in this case, you can use water, used engine oil or another liquid, because, unlike a pipe, such a tank already has a sealed protection from the ends - on the one hand the bottom and on the other hand, the ground cover. For additional sealing, it is advisable to provide the neck of the “roller” with a rubber gasket, otherwise the manufacturing technology is standard.
4. Round plastic containers. Rolling the lawn with a three-liter plastic bottle filled with sand, of course, is inconvenient, but larger bottles (20–25 l) are already quite suitable for this purpose. A device made of such material turns out to be short-lived and unreliable, but it can be made literally in a matter of minutes using adhesive tape, a stationery knife, and an ordinary rope that is threaded through a plastic cylinder as an axis.

Important! Before using the gas cylinder as the basis for the roller, completely free from gas residues, for which leave the tank in the open air for at least 3 days. Then the tank should be thoroughly washed and dried.

Small lawns can be rolled without a skating rink at all. It is enough to attach “skis” in the form of flat plywood or wooden sheets to the soles of the shoes and simply carefully trample the lawn. Another option is to cover the site with any dense flooring and walk along the resulting area with the whole family (you need to move, however, in small steps, trying not to miss a single centimeter of the area).

A lawn roller is a necessary thing, but it’s not necessary to buy it for a lot of money. In any case, there is no point in doing this for those who have a modest plot and want to highlight a small area on it with neatly trimmed grass. Understanding the basic principles of the device, it is possible to solve the task it performs with the help of improvised devices that will provide an acceptable result with minimal cost of funds, effort and time.