Ready to level?

9 years ago

Just cut my grass (Zeon Zoysia) on the middle setting. Put down milorganite and alfalfa pellets weeks ago, seems to be growing in quite well. All around pretty healthy.

Got the week off this week, so my plan is to progressively cut shorter over the next few days (finishing at the lowest setting on my rotary mower) and put sand down on Thursday. This will scalp the zoysia quite a bit, I think, but from reading that seems to be the best way to go about it?

Doesnt have to be perfect, but at present it is really quite uneven.

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Comments (6)

dchall_san_antonio
9 years ago
It might be an optical illusion but is the grass already crowned higher than the walkway and driveway? Out toward the sidewalk it looks like it drops off quickly.

The idea of leveling is to fill holes up to the height of the hills and stop. The more grass you have the harder that is - the grass just gets in the way of the dragging part of the leveling.

Are you going to use a drag...I hope? With a small yard like that it will go quickly. Stay away from the metal borders to the beds. After you get it sanded and watered the first time you can come in and get up closer to the metal borders by hand. If you come up with a better way, please let us know.
bobstrauss
Original Author
9 years ago
There is a small drop-off by the driveway - yes. When the irrigation system was installed, that was dug out quite a bit and not filled in back to normal. I wasn't planning on doing too much there, but maybe just lightly evening out that slope a bit.

And yes, I was going to use a rudimentary drag of some sort. Is there a certain material that works well for this? When I attempted to level out my center strip prior to sod installation, I simply used an old 5 ft piece of 1x4 I had leftover in the garage.
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dchall_san_antonio
9 years ago
I nailed some chain link fence to a 2x4, tied some rope to it to pull with, and put a few bags of soil on top for weight.
bobstrauss
Original Author
9 years ago
Did you put down any fertilizer before you did yours? I've got some really uneven areas, so patches of my grass will surely be completely covered. Maybe a small shot of nitrogen would help them poke through the leveling sand more quickly?
reeljake
9 years ago
Indeed, a quick shot of fertilizer will help them push up through your sand
bobstrauss
Original Author
9 years ago

Timeline -

Alfalfa down around Feb 20

Milorganite down around March 17

Sta Green 29-0-5 (half dose) March 28

Scalped down gradually, as low as possible with my rotary mower on March 30

~ 1200 lb of sand/topsoil mix (80/20) put down March 30

Took a few photos, one after mowing and a few prior to watering, but they don't show things well, as the morning lighting is pretty bad. I'll take more as the weeks go on to let y'all know how it works out.