Paul,
I like to use ABC gravel. It has a mixture of fines and rock that
locks togather like concrete.
For the grass on the gravel I would just leave it alone. Its going
to grow back anyway. My 900 feet of road is covered in grass
since it gets very little traffic. My driveway started growning
grass this year as well....
I have learned that if you want to grow grass put down gravel.
All this nonsense about fertilizing the grass, plugging the soil,
dethatching, etc, is for the the birds. Put down gravel and
grass will grow.
You can put down geotextile fabric. This is to keep the gravel
from being pushed into the dirt. If your gravel is staying on
top of the soil you might want to forget about the fabric. If
you want to use the frabric it will make your life much easier if
it is put down on a flat surface. In this case you want to mow
or remove as much of the grass as possible if you put the
fabric on top of the existing gravel. Of course if you do this
you have to buy more grave to put on top of the fabric which
costs more dollars... You could scrape off much of the gravel
and grass to get a level surface, put down the fabric, and
then push the gravel back on the fabric.
The fabric I bought was 12.5 feet wide and on a 360 foot lond
rool. It was about $300 for the roll. The fabric is used to
stabilize the roadbed so that you don't have to bring in lots
of rock to build up the driveway/road.
I put the fabric down on my driveway. So far its holding up
reall well. I don't put alot of traffic on it yet but it held up the
50,000#+ dump trucks without a problem. No rutting. Time and
the house construction will be a better test....
Later,
Dan McCarty
