jk96, To put things into perspective the football field was a good example. A typical football playing field is 1.4 acres. And if you want the lawn portion to look that good requires a well trained full time staff of pros. Another thing to note is they donÂt use tractors, they use very specialized mowing equipment like golf courses do. Not too mention the expense of a lot of water and fertilizers. Mr. Hall also pointed out the beauty of the museum again that takes a large staff of gardeners and grounds keepers, which means a large expense. I am a sod farmer, rancher, own a landscape company my family operates, and have a large lawn myself. However I cannot tell you how to lay your grounds out as it is beyond my capabilities. So do what I would do if I were in your shoes, hire a designer. What I can tell you is it is going to be very expensive to construct, and even more expensive to maintain. What it boils down to is you are going to have to have a very brisk biz to break even if my assumptions are correct on what you want to create. So do some homework and really think about the scale of 4+ acres and the cost. Good luck to you. TW

skane; please give us a break on the Husky commercials. This problem has nothing to do with Lawn-Boy or Toro - it's something about that batch of B&S engines, which have been known as solid performers since the first power mowers. I think anyone with one of the 'Insight' mowers (which Toro is phasing out of Lawn-Boy and painting red) has a solid mower. These new LB models Toro has put in Home Depot are about as cheap as a decent mower can be, even though they incorporate features of the LB 'Insight' and the Toro 'Recycler'. With the usually reliable B&S engine, they should sell very well for Toro. I cannot imagine what is happening with the B&S engines. lb2009; if you haven't already taken it back, review the owner's manual for starting procedures and see if you're not doing something. These new B&S engines are supposed to have an automatic choke, so there's no manual choke or primer. My guess is there's an adjustment problem with that cold-enrichment system.

any comments? response about the corn meal issue? (i've looked it up everywhere on the net and it's very confusing, especially given that some places seem to lump them together or confuse the terms.) Sounds good. For your first year, if you want to fertilize more often, do so. No less than what you suggest, but more is not a problem. Corn meal is a slight to moderate anti-fungal (but shouldn't be avoided because of that). Cracked corn is pretty much the same, but not so dusty. Either does fine as a very mild fertilizer. I can't get corn meal but can sometimes get cracked corn (oddly enough, not as often as you'd think here in corn country). It's quite inexpensive. Corn GLUTEN meal is fine, powdery, and kind of yellowy-orangey. To my eye, more orange, but others describe it as yellow. Whichever. That's a strong fertilizer (the strongest nitrogen-supplying grain one I can think of at 9-0-0) and reportedly something of a pre-emergent. It's moderately to very expensive, comparatively. CGM (Corn Gluten Meal) seems to have pre-emergent capabilities at higher usages, but others here can describe that better. I've never used it. Another option that you might be able to find is soybean meal. It's fairly strong (7-1-2 or so), fairly inexpensive, and doesn't have any pre-emergent capabilities that I've ever heard about. Any of the bean meals (like coffee grounds) are great, though.

When I wrote the Organic Lawn Care FAQ I had in mind an idea to change the general thinking on the topic. Here's what was being passed around at the time. 1. Organic gardening is expensive. 2. It smells bad...for weeks. 3. You might kill your grass. 4. If you "go organic" it means you'll get weeds. 5. You'll have yellow grass. At the time the only organic "fertilizer" was compost. Well, compost is not a fertilizer but it is extraordinarily expensive. At the time not many people understood how to use compost (1 cubic yard per 1,000 square feet) so they were using far too much and killing their grass with it. Since compost is not a fertilizer, their lawns were relatively yellow compared to lawns fertilized with synthetic fertilizer. If they were not using compost, they used fresh steer manure and stunk up the neighborhood for 2 weeks while their grass died under the manure. Furthermore, since you are not allowed to use herbicide, organic lawns were doomed to be full of weeds. That was the paradigm for organic lawn care. Please take a look at it and see if you like what you read. Weeds are a force of nature. You combat them best by developing a dense turf. The best way to have a dense turf is to have enough grass plants, water deeply/infrequently, and mow the grass to make it the most dense. For most grasses, mowing high provides the best protection from weeds REGARDLESS OF WHICH KIND OF FERTILIZER YOU USE, synthetic or organic. Allowing the soil to dry completely between waterings is the other best way to keep weeds out. Weed seeds need continual water to sprout so by not watering every day, or even every three or four days, you prevent the seeds from sprouting. Your back pond is a serious issue. Did you say it has concrete under it? If not, then you should be able to build it up with soil or sand to divert the water elsewhere. It looks like your lawn is suffering more than the neighbors. Did they already build up their yards? The basic problem is the builder did not do his job properly. At this point the way to fix it is to dig a swale or ditch down all the back fencelines to a real drainage point. There is probably nobody going to go for that idea, least of all the people at the low part of the ditch. I would quietly start bringing in topsoil or sand and extending your high point back. You have to be careful not to flood your house and out building so build some soil up near the building, there, too. You only need enough soil to move the water elsewhere. Technically it is probably illegal to do that, so do it very slowly and without fanfare. The only organic solution to wild violets and ground ivy is to dig up the entire lawn to a depth of about 2 inches, remove every violet and ivy root, and replant. There is a chemical solution, so if you want to read about that, go to the other lawn forum and ask. You might want to do that spray and get it out of the way before you move to organic. Otherwise you'll never be happy. Then the long term solution to ward off repeat attacks is to install a concrete curb between you and your neighbors. I see that done all the time in the town where I'm working. They put in about a 6-inch wide curb about 2 inches above grade and probably 4-6 inches deep. That gives both neighbors something to mow and edge up against. It looks pretty good. At my house my wife built a ground cover garden on our side of the wall. Our wall is made from local stone and is about 6 inches above grade. It was made back in the 30s when the house was new.