I had a nice, low maintenance front lawn until we had major construction a couple of years ago, that involved digging big trenches across the yard. I think they replaced my mediocre topsoil with random fill. I’ve certainly been picking small rocks out of it ever since. Lots and lots and lots of small rocks.
I initially planted clover. That looked great for a year, any then it all died in a drought. So i tried planting fine fescues. And those all germinated, but have barely grown. I fed the lawn in the spring (corn gluten) and after the first flush of growth, the lawn hasn’t grown all year. Like, i haven’t mown it, and except for a couple of tall weeds i didn’t remove, you can’t tell. (I hand-picked most of the weeds out of the lawn.) The grass is alive, but sparse.
The land is moderately shaded by mature oaks, and is well drained. (It’s also on a hill. But the soil drains well, too.)
I’m thinking of hiring a landscaper to put down a lot of topsoil or even compost. But I’m not sure what’s actually best for this situation.
I’m not looking for a perfect lawn. I don’t live in an HOA, there are no rules i need to follow, and i don’t really like perfect lawns. But i would like a solid cover of short green plants i can walk on. And if like a dense enough growth of lawn-like plants that they will crowd out the majority of leggy weeds, so i don’t have to do a lot of weeding.
You can buy large bags of topsoil at home improvement centers, etc. Whether this would be cheaper depends on the amount–if someone trucks it in there is going to be a substantial minimum fee.
I am dealing with shoulder and knee issues right now, and carrying sacks of soil is not how i want to spend my health points. I know I’ll pay more to hire someone. That’s okay. My question is “what should my goal be?”
And I’m pretty sure one of the problems is, “not enough organic material in the soil”, because that affects the texture of the soil in ways i can tell. But it may not be the only problem, so that sounds like a great idea.
Ask your county extension; they ought to know who does soil tests in your area.
Compost is the usual cure for not enough organic matter; but you might also need to adjust pH in one direction or the other, and/or might be short or even in excess on some specific nutrients. A particular compost might help with that also, but might need assistance.
Nope. They aren’t maples, which are all of those. Also, i had a perfectly nice lawn under those trees for more than 20 years, before the yard was dug up and the soil replaced with bad soil. The trees are regularly pruned, they were mature when i moved in, and the shade today is no denser than it was when i moved here.
In the back yard, i have much nicer grass under the oaks than in the sun. The area in full sun often gets too dry, and it’s hard to maintain a lawn. I’m working on switching it over to thyme, which grows really slowly, but it’s drought tolerant. The grass under the oaks is nice.
They are new England white, black, and scarlet oaks.
Also, I’m not trying for a perfect Kentucky blue grass turf. I’m looking for a mix of fine fescues with some clover, maybe some violets, and a handful of dandelions. (My husband loves dandelions, i need to leave some for him.)
I had a similar problem when I moved into my current house because the front yard covers my septic and leach field. It was replaced when I moved in and the contractor just used fill and very little topsoil, so I am very familiar with all the rocks. My solution (which may not be appropriate for you) was to add raised beds for vegetable gardening. I let the grass and clover do what it will around them, but over the past several years we have added good garden soil to the raised beds, buffered by adding compost at the beginning of each growing season. If I’m going to pull weeds, I’d rather pull them from soil that feeds us rather than scratching an aesthetic itch. If what you want is a healthy lawn, you might want to have a landscaper lay some topsoil and either seed it or sod it.
You can safely assume the replacement soil is bad, but @thorny_locust’s advice is sound: you need to know how it’s bad, and what its deficiencies and imbalances are.
Blindly amending mystery dirt is expensive shotgunning and can actually be counterproductive.
I wouldn’t just hire someone to bring dirt. Like @gnoitall says that would be an expensive guess.
I also wouldn’t hire just any local guy-with-an-excavator to bring dirt and put down grass seed. We have one local such guy, and I had him do my mom’s lawn last year - patching holes where we’d had trees cut down, and filling in low spots. While the grass grew just fine, and lush (cuz I was a watering superstar!) it doesn’t seem like it incorporated very well with the ground beneath the new dirt. It feels spongy in spots, like the grass only grew in the new layer of dirt. Dumb.
If you’re serious about having a nice lush lawn or even a nice lush clover lawn, I would recommend reaching out to a lawncare company. The kind of company that you contract out to spray for weeds and fertilize on a regular schedule. Those companies also do aeration and overseeding and have fleets of machinery that do that sort of thing, and more importantly they have people on staff who know how to grow a lawn.
Anyone can grow grass in a pile of dirt. I’ve done it tons of times. Grass is really hard to stop from growing! But if you’re trying to re-establish a lawn and have a lasting lawn, you need someone who knows lawns. Not just grass seed and a pile of dirt.
I have found my local extension program, and they offer soil testing and advice. $20/sample for basic testing, or up to $38 for more complete testing. And i need to mail them a cup of dry dirt for each sample. I’ll do this, because it seems like the best first step.
I don’t want a lush lawn that requires tons of maintenance. I want an okay lawn that i can walk on, and that prevents erosion, and that crowds out most of the uglier weeds. And i don’t want excess fertilizer to run off into the ground water. And I’ve kept the yard mostly organic for nearly 30 years, and want to keep that up. Also, i have all sorts of random plantings next to the lawn. Peonies here, blueberries there, clematis along the fence over there. I’m afraid a lawn care company would weed-whack down something I’ve been nurturing, and that would make me sad. Sadder than my crappy lawn. So I’m not going to hire a lawn care company.
A lawn care company might also apply weed killers that will kill your desired plantings. There are some exceptions, but most of them are set up to produce monocrop lawns which require frequent visits from the lawn care company.
Seems to me that the treatment for all diagnoses will be: add more organic material. (I kind of feel the same with aquariums - no matter what the answer always includes more water changes.)
I can understand the wisdom of testing to determine which plants would do best?
But not getting what other actions analysis will advise other than more organic material? I assume there is and I don’t know but don’t know what I don’t know.
Well, as mentioned before, the pH of the soil is important. It’s also possible that your soil has too much of a particular nutrient, such as phosphorous. In that case, the only real solution is to not use a fertilizer that contains phosphorous, or don’t use fertilizer at all and just plant nitrogen fixing plants.
In my state (Wyoming) the county agricultural extension agents are eager to help homeowners with plant-related questions. Where my daughter lives in Colorado they are not. So ymmv.
That’s my lawn (probably too many dandelions)! I’m really happy with the clover, it stays green through most drought (although this was a wet year here). Haven’t fed it in decades, and (other than the ‘weeds’) it is at least as healthy as the average in my neighborhood. I give credit to the clover fixing nitrogen and a mulching mower.