The First Lawn

If you're having a house built, you'll also have the honor of having the first lawn put in. You're probably also going to be busy with a lot of other details, but if you ignore the new lawn, you might as well block-off the next few years worth of weekends to fix it. Or you can tear out the mistake, and start from scratch again. Renovating will be cheaper, but starting over takes less time.

First off, make sure your contractors have cleaned-up. Some contractors will dump left over building materials into any hole they can find. Sometimes, if the land needed to be stripped of a lot of trees and rock, they'll be bringing in loads of "top soil", and will see that as a chance to burry more junk. Anything that can decay will eventually result in voids that will reflect as depressions on the surface. Any rocks burried better be down far enough that they won't start popping through the surface in a few years. Don't let your contractor cheat you by turning your lawn into the dump.

If there are some huge boulders, don't burry them. Put them off to the side for later use as landscape interest. That may be a good compromise if your contractor starts to balk at hauling the bulk waste to the dump.

Start with a level base, sloped for good drainage. You don't want run-off infiltrating your foundation, but you also don't want to be blamed for your neighbor's new water problems, either. Sloping away from the house, and towards the street is typical for front yards in the city. The backyard may be a problem if you have neighbors on all sides. You need to slope away from the house, but you can't create an artificial slope towards a neighbor that'll cause erosion problems for the neighbor, either.

Ways to solve this problem can include sloping towards a drainage ditch, building a stream bed, or building storm sewers. If you're building in a subdivision, check with your developer. In many areas they need to resolve drainage problems for the subdivision before they can build. There may be a retention pond or catch basin somewhere. You may even find that the master plan involves uphill neighbors run-off going across your property. If that's the case, plan something other than a lawn (or hardscape) for that area. Whatever the situation is, do your research before changing any grade, but don't leave any grade that slopes towards your house without a plan, either.

The Soil

Before putting down any "top soil", put down some composted manure. Steer manure is better than horse manure because of the multiple stomachs our bovine friends have. Dairy manure is even better, as dairy cattle are less likely to have been fed weed seeds to begin with. Either way, the manure should have been mixed with straw and other plant material, and hot composted to kill any remaining weed seeds. Don't just spread fresh excrement. It won't work. It needs to be compostedmanure. Once you have an inch or two of composted manure down, then cover it with "top soil".

Now would be a good time to think about what "top soil" is. The name sounds like it means "top quality", but it doesn't. "Top soil" is nothing more than soil scraped off the top of some land. Any land. Generally it's screened to remove rocks, and the biggest lumps of clay, but the quality of "top soil" can vary quite a bit.

Ideally you want a nice loamy soil -- a mix of clay, sandy soil, and silt. Get it wet, but not saturated. Grab a fist full, and squeeze out the excess water. If you're left with a handful of solid clay, that's a problem. It also shouldn't just crumble into a zillion pieces with no body at all. You should be able to form it into a rough shape, but be able to shave-off crumbly pieces, and then reform those crumbly pieces into another reasonably solid lump.

Be there when the "top soil" is delivered, and make sure it's what you chose before they dump it.

By the way: A "yard" of soil is not "enough soil for a yard". It's a cubic yard. One yard, by one yard, by one yard. Or three feet by three feet by three feet, which is 27 cubic feet. If the soil is going to be spread six inches thick, then one yard will cover 54 square feet, or a six foot by nine foot area. When measuring, get your aproximate square footage (width times lenght), and then multiply by depth. Make sure your measurements are all common. That is, if you measure six feet by nine feet, and want it six inched deep, you would multiply six times nine times 1/2, not six times nine times six. If lenght and width are in feet, then depth needs to be converted from inches to feet before you multiply. Make a mistake, and you will either be calling for more truckloads of soil, or you'll have a pile big enough to sell to the entire neighborhood, and then some!

The "top soil" over the manure should be shaped for drainage, and lightly flattened, but not too compressed. Walking on it should still leave a footprint, but your shoe shouldn't stay behind. Walk on this as little as possible. Strap some big squares of plywood to your shoes if necessary to distribute your weight over a wider area. Compressing the soil is bad. It should be leveled by raking, not by compressing one area more than another. Uneven compression will be reflected in a wavey surface down the road.

This brings up another question: Rolling. Should you roll the soil? In most cases, the answer would be that it's not necessary. Rolling compresses the soil. If the roller is wide enough, this may also give the appearance of an even surface. But it's not. Let's say you roll over some foot prints. The soil under the foot print is already compacted. Some additional soil gets pushed into the depression and is compacted more. Now your footprints are even more compacted! When things start settling, those footprints will be little mounds. Rolling might be a good idea if you have a very loose soil mix, and your slope is so great that if you don't partially compress it you'll loose it. Rolling also has an advantage if you use sod instead of seed, but the rolling should be after putting down the sod, and not part of the grading process.

Now it's time to spread seed and fertilizer.

Seeding

Check with your county extension office to find out what the best mix of seed for your area is. Consideration should be given to the predominant soil type in your area, even though you may have put something much better on top of the existing land. Also consider shade and sun, keeping in mind seasonal shifts.

Whatever your conditions are, you'll want a mix of seed. Using only one kind of grass, no matter how well suited, will make your job exponentially harder. Most likely there is a locally predominant grass that isn't the best looking, and it will invade any mono-cultural lawn, making it immediately look splotchy. A mix of grass will be more resistant to invasion, and if there is an invasion, it won't look so horrible.

You can spread the seed with a broadcast spreader or a drop spreader. If you have a broadcast spreader available, it would be better because you won't need to walk as much on the soil. Be careful about spreading beyond the lawn into any garden beds. You can sweep the concrete, but you can't sweep the garden. Make sure that your spread overlaps, and that there aren't spots on the lawn that don't have seed. Double-spread is better than nothing. It may be a little wasteful, but it's not going to hurt. Do the edges by hand, or with a drop spreader.

The fertilizer you use should be "starter" fertilizer. Don't use weed-and-feed. You won't ever be using weed-and-feed, but to use it now would be a fatal mistake. Anything other than a "starter" fertilizer would be bad.

Fertilizer should be spread with a drop spreader. It means more walking on the soil, but the application is more precise. If you're left with a small area that hasn't had fertilizer spread on it, don't worry. It's better to miss some spots than to double-spread the fertilizer - just the oposite of when you put down the seed.

That brings up another though. Fertilizer is not magic powder. You could totally skip the fertilizer, and still grow a fine lawn. It is entirely optional. The application rates on the bag are essentially the maximum you can spread without burning the lawn. The more you use, the more they sell. But that certainly doesn't mean you should use as much as you can. I recommend spreading one-third to one-half the rate specified on the package if you bother to spread any in the first place. (Imagine having the best lawn on the block, and the look on your neighbor's face when you tell him that you didn't use any fertilizer on it!)

Once your new seed is spread, your plan of attack is not much different than the plan of attack for an over-seeded lawn renovation, so don't skip the next section!

NEXT: Renovating an Existing Lawn >>
NEXT: When to Start <<

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