We recently moved and of course one of our priorities was green space or at least a large terrace for the pups. Lucky for us we found the right unit, didn't have everything we were looking for but it definitely had the large terrace. When we were apartment shopping we had our list of must-haves and moving to a big city your options are very limited, especially when you have big furbabies to accommodate. Our new large terrace just needed a grass bed! We had tried the grass turf in the past and it definitely served its purpose, you just have to make sure you clean it with a hose a couple times a week and highly recommend changing it every season. Unfortunately we don't have a hose in our new terrace so we decided to try something different so we did our research and looked at different options. We decided to build an 8x8 grass bed using a garden bed we purchased at Home Depot. We also purchased soil and grass seeds and sod. We called this the 'made from scratch grass bed'. Everything looked great after it was put together. Only a couple of downsides, the soil and turf were ridiculously heavy and time consuming. Unfortunately, the grass bed didn't live as long as we had hoped for, weather conditions in the northeast are a little different than what we were used to in sunny Florida. The grass ended up dying and the 'grass bed' turned into a 'mud bed' :( we had an inkling the grass wasn't going to grow when we started getting hammered with rainstorms and no sun to help our grass bed grow. We then decided to try and rebuild our grass bed. Our original grass bed was 8x8 and the pups only went in a small part of the bed, it was too big. Our new grass bed is 4x4 and we used very little supplies, compared to our first go around.
We went with fresh patch because of the reviews and a friends recommendation.
With the frame being significantly smaller, we didn't need as much soil.
Our fresh patch came within four business days (ordered it on Sunday afternoon, arrived Thursday evening via FedEx). The grass used in Fresh Patch is grown hydroponically (without the use of soil). Their absorbent pads of living grass are lighter, cleaner, and last much longer than normal sod.
Fresh patch utilizes several different kinds of grass including rye, blue, fescue, zoysia and bermuda. (Info via FreshPatch.com FAQ's)
There really isn't any need for the potting soil but we wanted to see if the grass would root and maybe give us an extra month or 2 before ordering a replacement.
These are the steps we did to construct our grass bed:
>> 4x4 garden frame
>> Polypropylene Non Woven Filter Fabric: place the fabric down before sprinkling the potting soil.
>> Earthgro potting soil: once he soil is spread out inside the garden bed, use a steel stamper to level out the soil.
>> Fresh Patch- 2 shipments of the XL size.
