Learning How / field preparation

[GrantMO]

Leef,

My neighbor prepared his yard by discing with a 9N followed by a lot of smoothing with a harrow pulled by his JD garden tractor. After seeding, covering with straw,fertilizing and lots of watering his grass looks decent with one exception of a flat compacted spot in the backyard left over from the original excavation work. I think he'll probably need some topsoil because it's just a bare clay spot.
He continually works his lot with the harrow, often pulling it while mowing and has smoothed out the bumps considerably. I'm trying to find a harrow(s) to pull behind my tractor.

Also, does anyone have experience with horse manure as fertilizer?

 

[Will]

I've been able to get pretty flat surfaces by doing the job in two stages. In the first stage, I did 90% of the work - plowing, removing rocks and roots, grading and then I chained a 2 x 6 x 10 to the bottom of my box blade and got everything nice and smooth looking. Finally I planted winter rye and admired the results. By spring things didn't look quite as great. There were all sorts of depressions in spots that previously looked level, but which were filled with less compressed soil. This turned out not to be a problem. I dragged the 2x6x10 around again and then planted the permanent grass (bermuda). The results were excellent. I say were because some idiot has been driving through my property and doing doughnuts lately, but that is a different issue.

 

[Kevin_mc]

Leef, your plan sounds pretty ambitious and will probably look real nice. You didn't mention your plans for irrigation. I remember what a chore it was to water 1.5 acres of new lawn and how much hose I had to move.

As for tilling 5 acres, it's just a therapeutic as mowing although a lot slower /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif.

Kevin Mc

 

[cowboydoc]

Grant,
Horse manure won't hurt it at all and is good fertilizer. Just make sure you don't clump it together or it may burn the grass in that spot. I have a little manure spreader that I pull over the yard in the spring and then in the fall again. Does wonders for the grass. In the pastures I use the large spreader and my grass always grows really well.

 

[alexcocco]

Re: overseeding

leef,
forgot to tell you after the first year i overseeded the lawn in the spring, that seemed to fill in any bald spots and brought the grass on thicker than i think it would have been. also added granular fertilizer that spring and the next, i have used the granular type fertilizer and the liquid types both seemed to work equally as well.

alex

 

[Benson]

Re: overseeding

Leef,
I put my lawn in last summer. I only did about an acre and a half around the house and left the rest of the fields natural. Most of the area I planted had been "leveled" with a dozer, leaving pretty deep furrows. I talked with some landscape guys about ways to plant, and ended up renting a bobcat with a rockhound (landscape rake) attachment. With one pass, about 4 feet would be leveled, rock picked, and the top inch or so of soil tilled for a seed bed. Our soil in Western PA is pretty rocky, so this saved a ton of raking. Since most of the area was pretty compacted before starting, I didn't need to roll much of it. For the softer areas, run a gill harrow over it to compact, and there won't be as much settling over the next year. The mistakes I made-leave extra time (I did everything in a weekend and stopped having fun pretty early) and 2, don't lift the bucket of the bobcat too high when the rockhound is attached and the bucket is full of rocks. Sorry I don't have a picture of that, but it would have to go in the stupid tractor tricks thread.

John