Okay, it's time to push this thread back to the top.

I know I'm 11 days early, but I think spring has arrived early this year.:thumbsup: Now, if I can just rely on the weather forecast of rain, I'll be a happy camper this weekend.
The last three days, I have been scrambling to get my ground prepared for seed and fertilizer. Wednesday, I put 100 lb of seed down on my filled area after spreading and smoothing the topsoil layer I hauled in from down by my lake. The conditions were perfect for planting, so first I got the seed down and then came back with around 120 lb of fertilizer. Since the area is about 150' x 100', that's 15k sq ft of area covered. I planted a rye/tall fescue mixture and also wheat seed. Some of that should sprout if we get good rain. Otherwise, I'll be draggin' hoses out there next weekend. My grandson got home from school just as I was finishing up. Since he loves to drive the Kawasaki Mule, I told him he could roll in the seed. I showed him how to look at his tracks and offset each time so all the seed & fertilizer were rolled. He loved it and really took on the challenge to get it perfect. I was proud of him. No photos because it just looks like what I posted in the fall/winter thread, only smoother.
Thursday, I got to my yard. I set my mower down to it's lowest setting of about 1" and scalped my Bermuda grass portion of the lawn with the mulching adapter on my deck. I created such clouds of dust/clippings that my wife said she couldn't see me, but knew I was in the moving dust cloud somewhere.

All my clothes, me, and mower were just covered in a grey-brown coating. Of course I didn't wear a dust mask. What fun would that be?

I raised the mower up to about 2-1/2" and clipped the dead Saint Augustine tops off too. All the leaves in my yard got mulched and returned to the soil. After mowing I started to use my old aerator to prepare for seeding and fertilizer. The ground was so hard that I could not get the aerator to do much more than scratch the surface even with the basket of rocks on top. Right away, I knew I'd need to water the lawn a bit to make the soil softer. So, I wrapped up for the day and decided to finish up on Friday. Here's a photo of my old aerator I inherited from my dad.
Yesterday, I first filled in a small erosion spot by my driveway and began sprinkling water from two sprinkler heads. I let the sprinklers go only long enough to soften the first inch of soil below the grass and then moved them to a new location. That worked like a charm for softening things up, so I started pulling the aerator with my riding mower. What I discovered was the aerator works a lot better when pulled in circles instead of a straight line. What I did was go in a series of offset circles, each time adjusting my path so I covered all the area. I was sure singing "
Got Me Going in Circles" by the time I finished. I went around and around and around so much that I must have looked like a crazy man doing donuts in my yard. However, the aerator worked well except for a couple of wet spots where the aerator sunk so deeply that the mower started spinning. Without 4wd and turf tires, the mower didn't have enough traction to pull in circles, so I had to get off and manually hog the aerator around to get free by driving straight. In the end, all that effort showed because my lawn was prepared perfectly with thousands of tiny divots.
Following the aeration, I planted another 50 lb of fescue and Bermuda on the bare spots and thin areas of the yard before putting down 150 lb of fertilizer. As I finished up, it started to sprinkle and drizzle. Perfect timing!
BTW: Generic yard fertilizer without weed control is around $30 per 40 lb bag. Seed prices are also through the roof. If you buy name brand stuff, you can add 25% to those prices. I can't believe how expensive all this stuff has become in such a short few years. If you have a big yard, the cost is staggering.
