Landscaping can be one of the riskiest event when building your house. The weather has to be just
right or you can lose all of your work. If it's too hot, it can burn the new grass, too cold and
it won't grow. If you get too much rain, you can wash all of the new grass and topsoil away, if
you don't get enough rain, the grass can wilt and die. Talk to 10 different landscapers and you
will get 10 different answers on when you should plant grass, how you should plant grass and what
type of grass you should plant. Some landscapers recommend putting down sod. Sod is topsoil that
already has grass growing in it and the sod is usually rolled out in strips on your yard. When
the sod is all in place, you will have a green yard. Sod is also very expensive. Some landscapers
say that you should plant grass seed in the spring so that you have all summer for it to grow.
Here is the front yard with the pile of topsoil before it was spread out around the house.
There are advantages to this in that you have all summer for the grass to grow strong, the
disadvantages are that you have to constantly water the new grass if it doesn't rain much or you
have to worry about all of the grass seed being washed away if it rains too much. Some
landscapers say that you should wait until fall to plant the grass. The advantages of waiting
until fall is that you usually don't have to worry about the sun getting to hot and burning the
grass. The disadvantages are that you can wait too long in the fall and the weather will be too
cold and the grass will not grow.
We opted to plant the grass in the fall. We had about 6000 square feet of yard to plant which seems
like a lot, but it is a yard that is roughly 60 feet wide and 100 feet deep. (on a football field that
would be from the goal line to about the 30 yard line). We were only doing the area around the house
rather than try and do all 6 acres, maybe someday, but for now we can live with the dandelions in the
rest of the yard, it is green and that is what matters at this stage!
Here is the back yard with the pile of topsoil before it was spread out around the house.
Before we started planting however, we had to get the topsoil, that we pushed aside when the
excavator dug the basement, spread out around the house. The excavator came out and had
everything nice and level in about a day.
Here is the front lawn after the topsoil has been spread out around the house.
Now we are ready to begin the planting process. The first thing you want to do is to try and pick up
as many rocks, pebbles and any other foreign objects like roots, branches, etc from the ground. This
will help the new grass spread out and it will also help when you want to walk barefoot across your
new yard.
Here is the back yard after the topsoil has been spread out around the yard.
We accomplished removing the rocks using a combination of the following methods. Using hand rakes
and skimming the topsoil with the rakes to drag all of the rocks to the edge of the new yard. Walking
along the new yard area and picking up rocks as you walk along. Lastly, we borrowed a "York rake"
from a friend of ours. A york rake looks like a big yard rake on wheels. You drag the york rake along
behind a tractor and it skims the topsoil and drags all of the rocks to the edge of the new yard.
Here is our dad driving the tractor and Brian riding on the york rake.
Once all of the rocks and other foreign objects are removed from the new yard area, you are ready to
begin seeding the new yard. We started with a grass seed mixture of fast growing grass. We wanted
the grass to come in quick so that it would not be muddy around the house during the winter
months.
Using a drop spreader, Brian would walk down the length of the new yard and back two times, always
overlapping the previous row to insure that all of the row was covered. The rest of us would then
start spreading out straw. The straw serves a couple of purposes for the grass seed. The first
purpose is to keep the grass seed from blowing away. The second purpose is to help keep moisture
in the ground for the grass seed. By only seeding two rows at a time, we were able to spread the
straw out on top of the grass seed without much grass seed blowing away.
Here is Robert and his dad taking a break after spreading straw over most of the yard.
Once the straw was spread over a couple of rows of grass seed, one of us would start wetting down
the straw so that the straw didn't blow away either. When the whole yard was covered with grass
seed and straw, we placed water sprinkler's all over the yard so that the entire new yard was
covered and we started watering the new yard.
Here is Margaret's dad wetting down the straw.
The grass started coming up in about a week and had covered most of the new yard in about a month.