2016 S. Carolina Bermuda Lawn Leveling
Hi
all, just
a few words/pics about my lawn leveling experience with a local company last year.
Hopefully will help someone with their decisions.
The
home builders did a terrible job installing terrible sod in 2014. Thanks to the
excellent help on these forums and others, I finally got the grass to be strong
enough to level in 2016.
9
days before leveling I applied 15lb of a 24-25-4 starter fertilizer, along with
72lb of Milorganite. I worked the month before to get rid of as any weeds as
possible. I also aerated about 1 month before. The day before leveling I
scalped and bagged as low as my rotary mower would go.
Company
owner was really knowledgeable and he strongly suggested aerating before
leveling, in order to better incorporate sand with soil. I told him I had just
aerated a month before, but he felt so strongly that it was important that he
aerated again for free.
They
brought in 6 tons of sand and a team of 4 guys spread it using a metal drag
pulled behind a utility cart. Watching them work, I was glad I hired them
because without some kind of motorized way of pulling that drag around, it
would have taken me significantly longer and have probably not have been as
consistent. They hand-filled deep gaps and around the flower beds. Whole
process took about 3 hrs.
The
goal was 0.25-0.50” of coverage (other than in deep gaps), and they basically
achieved that with 6tons of sand. While I was happy to have done zero work
other than writing a check to get that sand spread, there were a few
disappointments after they finished. There were large hills of sand in a few
places, and in other places the grass blades were unnecessarily completely
covered. So I went back over the lawn with a rake, leveling the piles of sand
and “fluffing” the blades of grass to un-smother the worst areas.
What
was potentially most worrying though was the quality of the sand. It was
definitely what one would call “river sand”. Most of it was fine grained, but
there were plenty of small pebbles, about 1/4" in diameter. From what I
had read, that’s exactly what I didn’t want. Adding to my disappointment in the
sand, it also had a small, but not insignificant amount of junk in it, like
glass and a bottlecap or two.
So
after having to do work to straighten up the leveling job, and having sketchy
sand quality, I was nervous. But watching the grass grow over the next few days
calmed my fears.
Day 1:
Day 1, after I went over it with a rake and watering 1"
Day 3: Watering 1" every day and the grass is coming in *fast*. That nitrogen a week before was a good idea.
Day 5: Still watering 1" every day.
Day 6: Forgot to water and the grass was visibly thinner at the end of the day.
Day 9: Kept watering 1" per day and the grass has filled in beautifully. difficult to tell here but grass is about 2" above sand. Taller than I'd usually want, but now it's ready to mow!
Day 11: After first mow! Walking on it was like creamy butter, and the difference in how easy it was to push the mower versus before over the bumps was like night and day. It was a true joy. I did find a few of those larger pebbles from the sand, but they weren't a problem. The patches you see in the very front are over the sewer/irrigation access holes.
Day 11: Very happy with the result!
Did the aeration help or hurt? I don’t think it hurt in my case, but I’m not sure
it was necessary. It might have been a good idea since it was the first round
of sand on top of whatever soil was in my yard. If I do it again this year, I
might skip the aeration since I’ve now got a pretty sandy foundation.
Comments (8)
dchall_san_antonio
7 years ago
Brandon Bush
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agoRelated Discussions
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7 years agodchall_san_antonio
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agoreeljake
7 years agoBrandon Bush
7 years agoYes, this forum has been hugely helpful! Happy to blab on about my experience.
Once everything is green and growing strong, the two bermudas aren't easily distinguishable. However one greens up faster than the other, so in early spring there's a pretty clear line. This was March 31, 2016:
With the pattern of green shoots I'm seeing now, it's probably going to look similar in a couple of weeks. Oddly enough though, they seem to go dormant at closer to the same rate.
I've thought a lot about the question of what single thing made the biggest impact. I've got neighbors asking what I do, and when I try to explain the details of soil analyses and pre-em and boron, their eyes glaze. So ultimately the answer I've settled on, and that I think is most correct, is cutting frequency. If I could cut everyday, that'd be best, but over the summer I manage about every 4 days. My neighbor on the right takes great care of her lawn too, but mine I think is slightly stronger and denser because she cuts at most 1x per week. I also have a patch out back that is the same Bermuda sod but its in an odd area so I often go weeks without cutting it. The grass there looks like a completely different plant. It's thin and lanky with super thick blades and lots of brown stem, whereas the maintained area it butts up against is dense, short, with narrow blades and not nearly as much brown stem below. Really cool to see the difference cutting makes.
The next most important thing (a distant second I think) was the milorganite, mainly because the iron content gave my grass a unique deeper blueish green compared with my biggest competition in the neighborhood, which happens to be my neighbor on the right.
If I were rich, I'd be right there with you reeljake, and do the leveling again this year. Just enough to get those ruts out. But it's just a cost thing. Now that my grass is no longer a disgrace, I've got some other landscaping that I should probably prioritize. Another nice lawn I track has clearly been leveled many many times. It looks great, except for it sitting about 5 inches above the sidewalk. Fortunately for the homeowner, it a pretty steep hill, so no matter what, I don't suppose drainage would be an issue. Not the case for me.
Absolutely right that the leveling company left too soon. They started while I was on lunch break, and they were diligently working while I watched, but I had to get back to work and left them to their own for the last part. When I returned they were gone and I kinda felt like since they knew I wasn't watching, they could cut out before really finishing and maybe get started on another job. Ah well. Next time I'll make sure I can stay until the end.
Beach sand, ha! You just might be right. Come to think of it, they advertised a special blend of sand+topsoil, but that's clearly not what I got. Whatever it was, it was coarser than what everyone else in the area is using. My neighbors on the left had a company come in with a ridiculous amount of what looked like mortar sand. They covered about 5k sqft of lawn with 2"-3" of sand. Amazingly, the Bermuda eventually came back from that smothering. Theirs seems to still be fairly level and with less rutting than mine. They cut far less often, and they have lots more foot traffic with their kids playing on it, so it's not easy to directly compare I guess.
But I am really interested to figure out the rutting. From what you're saying, dchall, it's not necessarily my mowing that's causing it. it's just a pattern that the sand is settling in that encouraged by the shape of my grains.
Finally, the aeration was supposedly for what reeljake explained: reduce stratification. And nope, they didn't sweep up the plugs. If you look carefully in the first pic I posted, you an see the plugs being dragged along. Most of them broke up pretty fully, as I don't remember seeing any once they were done.
Brandon Bush
7 years ago
dchall_san_antonio