I moved into a house with a fairly established lawn, but it has a number of ruts from where a dog had worn paths plus holes in the grass where I believe daisy plants have previously been dug up. Any idea about how to level the yard up, short of scraping the existing grass off and planting new or putting down sod?
When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant.
I too have a lawn with a lot of bumps, potholes, and ruts. Some are from my dog and I simply aceept these. The others were casued by poor workmanship when the sod was laid.
I have St. Augustine and I live in Mississippi. The sod is about a year and a half old. For the second year, I am spreading topsoil and/or sand in the holes. This is very time consuming as I have 38 pallets of sod laid and St. Augustine grows so slow that the results take a long time to see. Plus, there are some many holes that it is difficult enough to simply find them.
I thought about buying a broadcast spreader and putting out 1/2" of sand, then using my ATV with a box blade to screed the sand into the low spots. So far I haven't been able to find a spreader that will deal with sand and have a reasonable price.
My other thought was to aerate the lawn very heavily, then water it heavily, and then try to roll it. Some of my turf is flat while other areas are on a 20 degree slope. I'm not sure how well this will work.
In re-reading that post I made in June, I realized that I never really answered the part of the question about leveling the lawn. When it comes to something like that, I ask the pros. Here's an answer to a similar situation as yours at a pro lawn site. http://www.lawnsite.com/showthread.php?t=239421
You might want to ask them at the Homeowners Assistance forum. Post pics if you have them as that's always helpful.
I'd love to know what they advise.
Newt
When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant.
When it comes to something like that, I ask the pros. Here's an answer to a similar situation as yours at a pro lawn site.
