There are times when plants require topdressing to grow better and thrive. If you’re growing plants in any of these conditions, you might need to topdress them sooner or later.
Read also:
Topdressing replenishes soil nutrients. It should be used whenever plants are faced with a fixed, limited soil supply. It’s an alternative to repotting, fertilizing, and soil replacement. Knowing if you should topdress or do something else depends on the situation.
When a pot is too large and heavy, it’s impossible to repot.
Stone basins, marble pots, or pots that are simply huge can’t be easily tipped and emptied.
A layer of fresh, rich soil mix is added on top of existing soil.
Some plants grow to towering heights like the Monstera vine or the Dracaena marginata or Dracaena massangeana.
In this case, topdressing large plants helps avoid accidents. Plants aren’t at risk of breaking, falling over, or bending leaves.
Other plants might not grow so big, but are extremely brittle and fragile like the jade tree.
Also for succulents, a precious characteristic is the delicate farina they acquire as they grow. This layer of whitish dust, similar to flour, is lost with a single touch of the finger. Repotting removes it almost entirely! It’s called epicuticular wax in botanical terms.
Typically, a lawn grows, is mown, and trimmings are thrown out. This is the worst possible cycle for any living environment, since organic material is removed and never replaced. Here are a few reasons why topdressing is relevant and important for lawns.
Read our complete article about lawn topdressing to learn more.
In a raised garden, soil is stacked above ground level. Rain and watering tend to wash nutrients out. After minerals and elements have been flushed out through the bottom, any remaining soil is poor.
A raised garden bed will benefit from top-dressing every three to four years.
There are two major reasons to topdress a growing bed in a city:
In an urban garden or small masonry growing spot, topdressing will remove these heavy particles and replace them with light, fresh, clean soil mix and amendments.
It’s also helpful in tiny road-side courtyards and front gardens.
Some trees can take difficult living conditions such as shallow soil or constantly wet soil. However, to thrive, they have the same problems a houseplant does: lack of nutrients. Indeed, after years of growing, the tree has nibbled away at the available soil and extracted most of its nutrients.
Some trees that can cope with these conditions nonetheless require rich soil. They rapidly exhaust whatever nutrients are initially contained in the swath of soil that’s available. Topdressing compensates this by replenishing these nutrients!
In forestry, heavy machinery or constant passage of trucks compacts soil.
This should be practiced on temporary, one-time pathways that are set up to harvest and collect the wood.
In every forest, there should be a set of dedicated, permanent passageways used for monitoring and access. These should be maintained as well as possible to ensure all traffic only stays on them!
It’s easy to make mistakes with chemical products. Too much herbicide, pesticide or weedkiller might contaminate the soil.
If that happens and you’re trying to save your tree from poisoning, topdressing is a good option. In that case, it’s mandatory to remove the soil instead of simply adding fresh soil on top.
