I realize this will be hard for anyone to give an accurate number on, but here is the deal.
I Bought a house a couple years ago, and the lawn was a mess. Plants, trees all kinds of crap all over the place edgings and rocks in random places etc. I spend last summer’s free time clearing out the shit. So it is mostly flattish land now. But the grass is shit. there are a couple areas that after removing shit I put a couple bags of top soil and new seed down. This year early in spring those areas are much nicer than than the rest of the yard. I’m not a psyco yard guy. And my lawn is only slightly worse than average. Most look pretty bad around here honestly, with only 1 in 8 being what I would consider a “good” lawn. But even by my standards, it is just not good enough currently.
It has bad thatch, and I’m pretty sure the fertilizer runs off and down the drain. It’s SE Michigan, so water from the sky is pretty consistent, especially in Spring and Fall, so I don’t think lack of water is an issue, lack of effective water most likely is.
It also not that big, maybe 2500 sq feet of lawn.
So today was a nice day, and an off day. My plan was
- Run over with mower set high to gather leaves that were on the lawn when the snow started.
2.Dethatch lawn with leaf rake
3.(possible) buy hand aerator, make lawn holey. - Overseed lawn
- Put new seed fertilizer on lawn.
The actual sequence of events was
- Run lawnmower over grass, doing absolutely nothing.
- give up on mower , get leaf rake and start scraping.
- Thirty minutes later start feeling enormous blister in thumb crotch, and look at handy gloves still sitting on can hood.
After 30 hard minutes of scraping I was on the disabled list, and had managed to barely kinda sorta dethatch a 10 by 15ft area.
So my plan is shot to hell. In order to get this done in any kind of time frame to get grass growing early enough in Spring, I could go spend 50 on a true dethatching rake, which would still take a crap load of time and effort, and need to wait a few days for skin healing anyway. Or I could spend +++money on a power rake, which I would likely only need to use once.
Then probably find out that the hand aerator sucks , and be in the same position of looking at spending money on a power one to use once.
So basically, has any one been in that situation recently? What does a one time(I realize it’s likely not a single visit) “Fix my shitty lawn” service cost? I am fine with mowing and fertilizing in the future, And I think If the thatch is brought under control in the first place I can handle that once in a while with hand tools. Or is a re-sod job better or cheaper possibly these days?