Starting a new lawn by hand

Slowtreme – posted 05 June 2001 19:57

I have a dead back yard, about 1000 Sq ft. It was a mix of St. Aug, lots of weeds and some odd roundleaf ground cover. I’m not even worried about the front lawn till the day water restrictions go away. (it looks worse than the back did)

Anyway, now that it’s mostly dead, I helped it along with some Roundup. The old grass is a nasty 2″ thick mat. I’m surprised it grew at all. I started turning the earth by hand with a shovel, but now I have a backyard with huge piles and lots of dead matted grass in 10″ x 10″ squares.

Any suggestions on how to even the ground back out again, short of getting a Bobcat back there. I tilled by hand because I was too cheap to rent a Tiller and a truck to get it home. Also, do I need to get all the dead stuff out of the ground?

Eventually I want to plant a nice carpet of Bermudagrass, something with a fine leaf for my kids to play on. St Aug is just no fun to run through the sprinklers.

Richard

[Note: This message has been edited by seed]

seed – posted 06 June 2001 05:55

Normally it is better to first strip away as much of the old mat or thatch, if there is much of it, off the top with a sod cutter or a rake. That can be assisted by getting it as dead and dried up as possible, maybe spray it more than once with Roundup, so its roots no longer anchor it to the ground.

The mat will actually not be a problem if it’s mixed in, but it’s really hard to mix it in if there is a tangled lot of it, and if it grows back in the meantime, you’ve got a mess. So if it’s greening back, spray it again and wait. When it is dead and dry, and depending how sandy your soil is, most of the lumps will disintegrate on their own, if you can wait, which will make the area easier to level, and at the same time any thatch or mat that’s mixed in can be more easily raked out when it’s dead and dry.

Once it’s dead and dry and fairly clean, a garden rake can be used to further bust up the squares and to level the area. The professional installers on golf courses use some kind of drag mat pulled behind a tractor, which provides speed and power. in the homemade version, an old link type of metal foot mat, or a section of chain link fence, 4 to 6 feet wide and maybe 6 to 8 feet long, would be tied to a metal pipe which would be dragged behind the tractor as a sled. That not only levels but also tends to roll up loose thatch into rows and piles, so it’s on the surface and can be swept into bigger piles.

If you don’t have power equipment, you can still make do with a garden rake; if the soil is loamy, not sandy, you may also have to beat some of the clods with a shovel turned backwards. The goals of levelling with a rake are to not only remove the dead stuff (so it doesn’t interfere with the raking) but to create a flat surface. Do not be too concerned with making it smooth, because a rough surface with 1/2 inch knobs will soon smooth out in the rain or irrigation. Instead be concerned with the broader undulations, and either borrow or make a wide (3-6 foot wide) rake, once you’ve beaten down the lumps. The best kind you make yourself by nailing a 1 inch x 4 inch x 6 foot board onto the end of a 2 inch x 2 inch x 5 foot handle. Then to the ends of the resulting “T” you nail a couple 1 inch x 2 inch x approximately 3 foot braces that go back the handle. You can’t bulldoze with this simple tool, but it is extremely effective in knocking off the tops of the undulations. Then at night, you can go out with a flashlight held horizontally close to the ground, and rotate it at different places to see where you still have humps and valleys.

Phil

seed – posted 09 August 2001 17:10

Better than trying to describe the “Fake Rake,” I’ll share a photo:

https://turfgrass.com/planting/rake.html

Phil

[Note: This message has been edited by seed]

[Note: This message has been edited by seed]