I still want to come up with a diy top dresser idea, and I'd still like to come up with a way to make my tilting trailer a dumping trailer for yard work, but this is what I came up with.
It wasn't nearly as time consuming as I thought it would be to just ferry dirt back and forth from the back yard, even with my baby bucket. I think I'd find it easier to spread my dirt thinner with a top dresser. I'm supposed to top dress and level at a max of ½", some spots are and inch and I dare say a few more than that, but I decided not to try working it down further as I like the smoothness that I have and the contours that I'm at now. Some of the centipede will struggle to come through and no doubt I'll lose at least some of it, but that's part of the game! Centipede is painfully slow to fill itself back in and almost impossible to propagate by seed. When the seed does take it's very slow.
Not sure why the fence panel picture shows, I clicked it mistakenly but deleted it.
I picked up this three point fertilizer spreader for $30. It's rough, but it spins freely as it should. I hope I can patch it up and see how well it works to broadcast sand and/or compost. At this price point I don't mind going hog wild on any half-brain ideas I might cook up to modify it. If it's a complete failure and I can't patch this hole well enough I'll harvest the 3 point frame for some other ideas.
If I can experiment some and find a recipe of modifications that works, I might be willing to buy a new one or more expensive and in better shape used one. If it won't top dress I don't have much use for it.
