Renovating and Old Lawn
For the purposes of this instruction, I'm going to assume that your lawn is whipped. You've done all the over seeding you care to do. You've tried top dressing and fertilizing and you've made sure the pH is at least in the mid sixes. Hint: 6.6 is about right for grass to grow best. And, after all your hard work, the lawn still looks pretty beat and aint getting any better. Okay, here's what you do:
| Get out there and rake up all the rocks, dead grass and debris you can. If the area is very large, you might want to hire or rent a York Rake for the Job. Click on the picture to the right for a larger view.
If you're lawn has been invaded by vines, berry bushes, sumac or other invasive plants, you might want to make sure the rake you get has a scarifier on it. It has several thick steel points that will rip through the soil and tear up any roots and small stumps that need pulling out. It also loosens the topsoil on the surface in preparation for seeding later.
|
Click on this picture for detailed views of each part of the rake as described in the text to the left.
York/Landscape Rake/Wheels,
Scarifier & Grading Blade
|
| Next, you'll want to rototill the entire area you're working on. If it's a small area, you can use a walk behind tiller. A reverse tine tiller with rear mounted tines works best. If it's not available, you can use a standard rotation tiller but, get the rear tine type. The ones with the tines on the front are bad for your back, arms and general anatomy.
If it's a fairly large area, you'll want to use a tractor of some size for this job. Large tillers will actually do a better job as they are better built and the controls are usually more accurate. The shear weight of the machine helps smooth out the vibrations and helps the machine do it's work.
When I say, till up the area, I don't mean till it as deep as a vegetable garden. Lawns don't need that much loose soil to get started and you'll want to preserve some of the roots of the old lawn if possible. Tilling really deep can stir up weed seeds that you don't want and bring up rocks and debris that are best left buried. You just got through raking those off!
Tillers usually have depth gauges on them to regulate how deep they go. In most cases you'll only need to till up the top couple of inches, and, you'll only need to go over the area once or twice, depending on how hard the ground is.
You want to till with the door on the tiller in the down position. The door smooths the soil as it passes over it, it keeps the rocks and debris from coming to the surface and, keeping the soil out of the light will help prevent germination of the weed seeds in the soil.
*Stay away from the roots of trees when tilling. The feeder roots are very close to the surface and sometimes exposed. Don't till any closer than the spread of the branches and don't smother the feeder roots with compost or soil. A light top dressing is okay but, be sparing. The feeder roots of trees need to breath.
|
Tiller Legs Use for Adjusting Depth of the Tiller
|
| There are now universal machines that can do the raking and smoothing all in one pass. These machines work well in loose soils and relatively flat areas. If you live in such a place, you may be able to rent one or a landscaping company in your area may have one. They are a real time saver in the right situation.
They're not so good in hilly terrain or places like Vermont where the soils are full of large rocks and debris.
|
|
| Another tool in common use today is called a Harley Rake ( It goes by other names too). It's a skid steer attachment that smooths and rakes off the stone and debris in one pass by making a windrow of the refuse material you can then pick up with a loader. They work pretty good with the exception of the fact that, skid steer loaders don't work so well on hills. They can tip over. Also, the Harley rake tends to leave little dimples in the ground that on clay surfaces can become hard over time. You feel them when you ride over them with the mower once the lawn is established. On soft soil, you won't have this problem. |
|
| Okay, so now you've cleaned out the lawn of debris and loosened up all the soil and pulled out any small stumps and roots you don't want. It's time to bring in some compost.
You'll need enough compost to cover the entire area with at least 2" of depth. It's usually sold by the cubic yard, which is a volume 3' by 3' by 3', or 27 cubic feet.
Dump truck bodies are measured by the cubic yard.
One yard is one cubic yard, a measure 3' x 3' x 3', or 27 cubic feet.
To estimate your project, measure the length x width x depth, using the same units of measure for each.
Use foot units for easy calculations by changing the inch measurements into decimals.
Example: Say you have an area that is 12' x 18 '. You want to cover it with 6" of material.
Multiply, 12' x 18' x .5' to get 108 cubic feet. You see, 6" is .5 feet or 1/2 a foot.
Now, divide 108 cubic feet by 27 cubic feet(1 yard) to get your total yardage at 4 yards.
- A 2" cover will be 1/6 of a foot or .167
- A 3" cover you use 1/4 of a foot or .25'.
- A four inch cover is 1/3 foot or .33', etc.
|
|
If you're buying in compost, make sure it's mature. If it's steaming when it comes out of the truck, you don't want it in your new lawn. It could contain weed seeds that haven't been killed off by the heat of decomposition and, it's probably acidic too. Bottom line, get mature compost. Check out the pile before you buy.
Spread the compost out as evenly as possible over the entire area you're working on. If it's a big area, you'll probably want to use a bucket loader to cut down on the work. If not, a wheel barrel will work. Just take your time and don't over do it. This is hard work.
You can rake out the piles you make with a bucket loader, the landscape rake and or the hand tools you have on hand. The cover doesn't have to be perfectly even right now. Just get it about right. You're going to till, one more time.
On huge jobs, a Bull Dozer is usually used for spreading compost and top soil.
|
Front End Loader Mounted on a Compact Tractor
|
| The tilling you're about to do now is meant to combine the compost with the natural soil. Just like before, you want to set the tiller for a shallow depth and only go over the area enough to combine the two materials. This may only take one pass. |
|
| Once you've completed tilling, you'll want to grade the area. You can do this with the York Rake or a landscape rake. Even if you use the York Rake, you'll probably use the hand landscape rake to finish certain areas.
There's an art to the landscape rake. It's not meant to move huge amounts of soil or to dig with. you want to make long sweeping strokes and not dig in too much when you do. If you find yourself needing to move lots of earth, you may want to go back and use a regular steel rake and then use the landscape rake when you feel the land is sufficiently graded.
|
|
| Now, you need to compact the soil a little.
Most of the time, this is done with a roller. If your soil is fairly hard, even after all the steps you've taken, then, you want to plant the seed and apply all that great fertilizer and lime you bought from Dirt Works. It doesn't matter what order you do this in. It's all going down on the ground.
If you're using lea lime or quick lime, which I recommend against, then, you might want to put the lime down, water it in and wait a day or so before you plant. Quick lime shocks the soil and can harm the grass seed.
Then, roll the entire area as best you can. You can use a hand roller and a tow behind roller. Most areas require both, for treating large and smaller, hard to reach areas where the tractor can't go. This step presses the seed into the soil and compacts the soil so it won't wash away when it rains, and, it gives you a sense of the final grade. As you do this, you may notice a few areas that need more finish raking and this is the time to do that. As you walk around with the roller, pick up any remaining rocks or debris as you go.
|
Hand Roller
Tow Behind Roller
|
| Mulching is your next step.
New lawns need mulching for a few reasons. One is, the birds and critters will eat up all the seed if you don't cover it. I've seen an entire area of seed get eaten up in the time it takes to eat a sandwich. No exaggeration. I watched it right out the window one day.
Mulch also helps keep the seeds and soil moist. It stays wet after a rain and heavy dew. This prevents the news seeds from drying out while they're germinating.
Mulch prevents erosion. If you left the soil bare to the elements, you'd soon fin most of it running off into the low areas and possibly running off altogether, possibly into a near by stream or water source. You just spent a lot of time on that soil. You sure don't want it to go away and even organic fertilizer can be a pollutant in a stream or waterway in sufficient and sudden quantities.
Mulch also adds organic matter to the soil as it rots.
If you're mulching a rough area with live hay the hay will add some seed to the mix and you can cut back on the amount of seed you use. This is only recommended for rough areas and fields which you don't plan on mowing or using that much. Hay seed is full of weed seed and grass species that aren't good to have in a lawn. If you want to use hay for mulch on your lawn, make sure it's old and dead(has no live seed in it). One way to tell is, open a bale and leave it out in the sun and water it occasionally for about a week. If nothing grows out of it then, you can probably use it but, be careful of each bale you use and make sure they're all from the same lot, cut at the same time and that they are dry.
|
Bale chopper
Click on the picture for a larger view. The bales of straw or hay are fed into a rotating hopper and a propeller type of drive blows the chopped material through a hose. Generally it takes at least two people to do this.
|
Mulch materials can be:
- Old dry hay
- Wheat Straw or Oat straw
- Landscape Matting
Deciding which product to use for your landscaping job will depend on many factors.
- Cost
- Availability
- Application
Old hay is the cheapest thing to use. You can shake it out by hand or use a bale chopper
Straw is great stuff but, may not be available in your area at any reasonable cost. We sell organic straw and ship it. It can be shaken out by hand or fed into a bale chopper.
Erosion blankets are best but, they can run into some pretty good money. However, they work really well and the application is simple and quick. You roll the stuff out like carpet and anchor it to the ground with long 6 to 8" staples.
On steep slopes and banks, it's definitely preferred over straw and hay which can wash away in a heavy rain.
It comes in rolls about 7-8' wide and sometimes you can find it 3' wide or so.
|
|
| Some landscape companies offer hydro-mulching. This sends out the mulch as old newspaper with the seed, fertilizer and a colored die to mark the area from a large mixing tank and powerful gas driven pump.
I never used this method and usually recommend against it, because, the fertilizer used is synthetic and of low quality. You have to fertilize very soon after the grass comes up because the fertilizer in the mix is very week and soluble. It gets used up and leaches out very quickly, polluting the water table and any water source near by the job site. Also, there's no quality standard for the mulch/paper. It has ink on it and, even though most newspapers are printed with soy ink these days, there's no way of knowing what other swill might be in there.
Some day the problems I mention may be resolved. In which case, the process would be a very good idea. It does three things at once, saving time, money, materials and fuel.
Using dead hay, landscape mats or straw will always add more organic matter to the soil so. In areas where the soil is poor and/or thin, hay and straw will be the better method when the material is available.
|
Click the picture for a larger view of the polluting process
|
| So now you've done all the work and, if you keep the soil moist by watering in the morning when it doesn't rain, you'll have yourself a nice lawn to enjoy for years to come.
Of course, you'll want to get some organic fertilizer from Dirt works each year to keep it in tip top condition.
|
|
|
