any tricks for smoothing acreage for lawn?

[Egon]

Till/plough - disk/harrow and repeat several or more times. It will smooth out.

Sod is almost impossible to work with till the grass roots dry out and you can break the clumps up.

little dips can be filled with loose dirt but any time you dig up sod to try and do it you may not enjoy the experience or results.

Egon

 

[johan3400]

Ron, nice to see the link. I was not aware that a company had trademarked that name on a small unit like that. It does look impressive, but what I had in mind would be a larger unit which pulls behind a 100 hp tractor and I would look into renting both the tractor and the machine. Some of my past customers use them to level sod fields and I have always been impressed. I ran one for a good friend who runs a sod farm in Davenport Iowa and it leaves a perfectly level field. It does really require horse power though. I am going to run one over my new yard when the house is done.

 

[BadDog]

I use a heavy Woods grader blade to rip everything up, then a drag harrow over that. I have to pick rocks and debris by hand, but it works well and it's reasonably fast.

I've destroyed a couple of Harley power rakes already on rough land... they do a nice job but you have to use a lot of gradual passes if you want the rake to last. I destroyed them trying to do too much on each pass in very rough acreage.

On rough ground, the grader/harrow is cheaper and probably faster. A cultivator would certainly work instead of the blade, but I can use the blade for a lot more things than I can the cultivator, and you can buy a decent one for a bit more than it would cost you to hire someone to drive their bulldozer for a day. Get the heaviest blade your tractor can lift and pull effectively.

 

[DmansPadge]

Bob, does anybody else make an attachment similar to the Grademaster or Landplane? Seems like either would be hard to get ahold of.

How effective is a chain harrow?

Thanks

 

[johan3400]

I found an infield drag which could work behind a smaller tractor. Just a thought
infield-drag.com
look at the pro infield drag. A lawn care in central Iowa uses one to grade lawns he seeds

 

[kmdigital]

As Egon said, if it is sod, use a mold board plow to turn the soil over. Otherwise you will have large clumps of sod to deal with, which is very difficult. Then disk it several times, rather then using something that will have a tendancy to pull the sod back to the top. After this drag it with a harrow or even bed springs with weight on it. It will be real nice and smooth.

 

[DmansPadge]

Thanks for the info. My yard is not established yet.. just looking for something to smooth out fresh dirt (60/40).

Thanks

 

[Eric_Phillips]

I have been watching this subject on TBN for several months now. There are several threads relating to this subject. A lot of people are using self made chain drags. Some are using bed boxsprings. others are taking large logs or I-beam and attaching it to chain link fence. They have been saying these things work great for the final smoothing of the land.

Eric

 

[DougNelson]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( Bob, does anybody else make an attachment similar to the Grademaster or Landplane? Seems like either would be hard to get ahold of.

How effective is a chain harrow?

Thanks )</font>

DmansPadge, I just bought a 5' Grademaster, and it was easy. I checked with my tractor dealer to see if he was agreeable to accepting a delivery (he was), and sent his address to the Grademaster folks with my credit card info. Trucking the blade from Mississippi to Connecticut cost all of $150 (or was it $100?). I don't have much time on the Grademaster yet, but it made very short work of the ruts in my driveway.
Doug

 

[Panache]

What is grwowing there now? Consider chemicals to kill the current growth then start plowing or what ever. You can use a chemical named Fusilade to kill most seeds out of Zoysia, It will even kill bermuda out of zoysia. Been there, done that. It seems expensive when you get the price for a qt but you only use about 1/10 oz per gallon of spray. Makes a $50/qt go a long way. I have Zoysia and have used it. Amazing stuff. It is the same product marketed under Grass-B-Gone.