I did a complete renovation back in September. Killed everything and started with a clean slate. I had two sinkholes where the builder burried stumps in the yard ( I'm the second owner) so these were filled in, the yard was leveled up, and I did add a layer of compost that was mixed into the soil with the box blade during the leveling process. So far I've done 2 applications of the alfalfa, first in late January and the second was April 7th. I use one of the bag spreaders, the kind you fill up and strap over your shoulder with a hand crank. Takes me about 45 minutes to do the whole lawn. I would like to do another application late May if there's room in the budget. For the coffee grounds I just spread them by hand. They go in the areas where the grass looks a little weak and I also put them in the mole holes around the yard. Seems the moles don't like the coffee as they never return to a hole that the grounds are in. I'm also looking into possibly using some chicken feed too. Sometimes the local feed store will run chicken feed crumbles on sale and they have 16% protein just like the alfalfa. Not sure if that would work as well but might give it a try. Dchall is the organic guru here on the forums so hopefully he can chime in to help you out. The whole idea of organics is to feed the soil in order to feed the grass.

Look at this as a wonderful opportunity. Less organic material for you to find and labor to add for your plants. If I wanted a lawn with the plantings I know how I would go about it. Three to eight inches isn't very much, so it could be all done by hand ... if we're not talking about a ginormous amount of space. First I would get out as many garden hoses as I have and use them to sketch out the wanted lawn area. Doing it this way gives you a good idea of how it will look in real life, as opposed to a pretty drawing on paper. You can leave them there and reconsider after you've lived with the plan a few days. Move as needed. Once your ready to begin, gather up the mulch that's in the future lawn area and use it to create berms in the flower bed areas, keeping in mind these will decrease in height quite a bit over the next year. But with luck you will still have enough added height to add drama to the floral scene. IF the flowers are to be viewed from both sides , the height needs to be in the center of the beds, with tallest plants in the middle. I did this a couple times with a picket fence at the front of the house and the extra height of those taller plants on the small berm not only helped give more privacy to the front yard and front windows, but the street view was much more eye catching. Everything just looked so much bigger than expected. I'm not talking about a high berm, just enough. ;) Vary the heights of the raised areas too or the whole thing gets too predictable. If by chance you find old dead, thatch where a lawn used to be, and it doesn't seem suitable to be planting on top of , this too can be used for added flower bed height. Just clear a space, throw all that thatch can be used, then cover with more of the compost material. Regular shrubs and perennials can work their way through that sort of thing just fine over the next year or so it takes to break down. I have routinely planted directly in mushroom compost that comes from big trucks ( the bagged is finer) and never had any problems. But that doesn't mean yours isn't slightly different, plus your different climate. What about watering an area and then checking later to see how well it holds moisture ? Heck, throw a test plant in there while your at it and see what happens to it. Hopefully you will not need to spend $$ on more soil to maintain a moisture level. Better to spend on plants and cool hardscaping! Oh, and the perfect birdbath.:) Now get out your collection of garden books and magazines and have fun looking at all the beautiful designs you admired in the past. You have a wonderful, fertile blank slate to work with. How exciting.

Hi Des! This is a subject of great interest and frustration to me. Although my yard is less than 10% St. Augustine grass, that still means about 3500 sq ft. of lawn. The rest of my yard I handle in a completely organic manner. The most pesticides I use elsewhere are Bt, occasional iron phosphate granules for snail control, and recently, a little diatomaceous earth. I've tried to be completely organic with the lawn, and I come close, but fall short. No problem with fertilizers. The grass responds beautifully to once yearly soybean meal or alfalfa pellets (cheap), and a mulching mower is a must to preserve nutrients. In the late winter, early spring I sometimes use corn gluten meal (expensive) as a pre-emergent (only moderately effective IMO), and a potent fertilizer/greening agent (wow, really gets green). Recently, I filled in thin areas with a little compost, but I never have enough and it seems a waste to use it on the lawn. Weeds are not a big issue for us. We are the only ones who take care of our lawn, so our little mower never goes to other lawns to pick up weed seeds. My DH is an avid weed picker in the lawn and has done a great job in ridding almost all weeds. He's developed an incredible eye for any tiny weed that might get going! Chinch bug is where the problem lies for us. Every year around late May or sometime in June we start seeing suspicious areas. I do a chinch bug test (flooding an area with water to see if you see them scampering up the blades). Where I can prove to myself that there is a problem, I spot treat the area with a several foot margin with a product called allectus. This is in no way organic, although it seems one of the less evil choices. It is a combination of imidacloprid (what we put on our dog for flea prevention), and bifenthrin (a synthetic pyrethroid). Both chemicals are toxic to bees (better to apply it in the evening when bees are less active), and bifenthrin is toxic to fish. The application rate is very low (which I like), and the likelihood to get in the ground water is very low (good too). Last year I did well with only spot treating and only once during the summer. This summer I had less area, but ended up doing it twice. I hate using this. I keep thinking of ways I can get rid of more grass (HOA is a factor, but we also like a bit of green for us and the dog, throwing a football, etc.). There are times of the year the lawn looks pretty good (spring and fall), but right now the lawn looks kind of thin and tired. I'm sure I have other problems in it I really don't care to know about because I don't want to treat them (fungus?). It is presentable though. I look at other lawns in the neighborhood that have lawn care/ chemical services treating them on a regular, year-round basis, and some look better than ours, others look worse. I am still learning, and each year I hope I can chip away at more and more lawn. Anna

The word of the day is "Let the buyer beware" . How many here would call someone and say "I want a new car. Get me one and I will pay you what you want"? Why do we do that with soil? So often we see here someone bought some soil and it was not what they wanted, or expected, because they relied on the seller to give them what they wanted and that happens seldom. Someone wanting to purchase soil needs to determine what they want and go and look for it., same as buying that car. Do not rely on someone's description of soil as "topsoil" (a meaningless term), or "garden soil" (also meaningless), but go and look at what is being sold. Look at the soil, smell the soil, feel the soil, ask for a one cup sample of the soil for testing as described in "Soil test for organic matter" above. A good soil mix for a garden is one with about 45 percent sand, 25 percent silt, 25 percent clay and 5 percent organic matter, soil some maintain is improbable to get. If we all demand that mix it will become available if those selling soil want to stay in business. If we, as buyers, demand quality we will get it. kimmq is kimmsr