Leveling the lawn

[savageactor7]

Years ago my neighbor got my started leveling our lawn by just filling the depressions with sand and back bladeing over them. The grass eventually grows up threw the grass...easy as pie. I suppose if you have a large area to take care of you can put an old box spring mattress frame around to really level things.

If you have a good loamy soil to start sand is the very affordable and easy to work with.

[Army grunt]

Years ago I did mine with sand an pulled a Aerator in front of a box spring..it worked great .I gess i weighted the box spring with a few cement blocks .The Aerator kept things from packing down.

[sixdogs]

I have done a lot of lawns like this and there are several options. The best way I would go about it is to rototill the area, rake or grade smooth and seed. The idea is the existing grass root system is difficult to deal with and tilling it knocks down the high spots and fills the low spots. As i said, this is ideal and my first choice.

Next in line is to fill the low spots with dirt by hand and rake smooth, but that's a lot of work and will still leave an irregular lawn. A better choice for the dirt idea is to spread the dirt by hand and use a landscape (rock) rake with the tractor to drag around the dirt to fill the low spots and, to a degree scrape off the high spots. The vibrating times tear off some of the high spots and spread compacted dirt around better. A little seed and this works pretty well. I have never used a boxblade with this approach but I think it would work well by spreading dirt around and pulling over the surface, not pushing. Tines/teeth would not be used.

If you spread dirt around it needs to be very dry or it won't spread well and will hump up into little piles that are hard to deal with. Same thing if you dump it with a bucket loader. It will work if the dirt is very dry and you "shake" it out of the bucket a little at a time, move the humps around by hand and immediately grade it.

[jenkinsph]

Hi

Thanks,
I have purchased a box blade and will try it on the lawn. I need it as well on some driveway.

Working with boxblades requires some time to be proficient at it, working with the lawn areas may seem difficult but practice makes perfect. Hope you get good results but if you do have problems with it there is a trick or two. Besides tilting the boxblade rearwards so that you can feather the loose dirt smooth you could also bolt on some boards (lumber) to the sides with a shape similar to the small landplane I posted pictures of above. This will help smooth the ground out as these ski shapes ride across the ground averaging out the high spots and low spots. This is a cheap and easy way to get good results with a novice operator.

[jenkinsph]

I have done a lot of lawns like this and there are several options. The best way I would go about it is to rototill the area, rake or grade smooth and seed. The idea is the existing grass root system is difficult to deal with and tilling it knocks down the high spots and fills the low spots. As i said, this is ideal and my first choice.

Next in line is to fill the low spots with dirt by hand and rake smooth, but that's a lot of work and will still leave an irregular lawn. A better choice for the dirt idea is to spread the dirt by hand and use a landscape (rock) rake with the tractor to drag around the dirt to fill the low spots and, to a degree scrape off the high spots. The vibrating times tear off some of the high spots and spread compacted dirt around better. A little seed and this works pretty well. I have never used a boxblade with this approach but I think it would work well by spreading dirt around and pulling over the surface, not pushing. Tines/teeth would not be used.

If you spread dirt around it needs to be very dry or it won't spread well and will hump up into little piles that are hard to deal with. Same thing if you dump it with a bucket loader. It will work if the dirt is very dry and you "shake" it out of the bucket a little at a time, move the humps around by hand and immediately grade it.

I agree with this post^^^^^

I would add that most weeds will stop germinating by late summer or about August in my area. If you till the lawn area up and seed heavily after the weeds stop germinating you can get a better crop of grass growing through the fall. The roots can keep growing all winter (even if the grass on top browns out) and by next spring the grass roots will choke out most of the weeds. Weeds have a hard time competing with a hardy grass such as Fescue.

[bcp]

I have JD LT180 lawn mover...

What's a lawn mover?

[poppey]

It's not easy with multi language; it should of cause be lawn mower. Sorry for making this big confusion. I will try and use spell checker next time or may be just stick to Norwegian forums:-)

[bcp]

I hadn't noticed your location. You are excused for typing with an accent.

Please don't go.

Bruce

[poppey]

No problem.

[sixdogs]

Yes, especially welcome. Most of us are very interested in the rural living or agricultural aspect of different different places and would appreciate anything you could comment on or any rural or tractor photos you could post. My only farm contact with Norway was from a friend's forestry experience and he was really impressed with the quality and attention to detail of the people he met and the forests he saw.