Rewilding My Lot

A few weeks ago I experimented with leveling my very unevenly laid Bermudagrass front lawn. For that pilot project in one small area I used soil that I had purchased in bags, and to spread it, the back of a regular rake and then a special leveling rake.

That project went well, and now I’ve completed leveling of most of the front lawn area, using about two cubic yards of enriched topsoil that was delivered by Maldonado Nursery. (The total soil purchase was seven yards, but I’ll write about the rest in another post.)

I chose enriched topsoil instead of sand, which would have been easier to spread, because I’m always looking to add more organic matter to the soil here. I focused mainly on the areas where there is most traffic because the unevenness of the ground is really quite dangerous for walking.

In my opinion, turf could be leveled using the back side of a regular rake alone. It certainly is easier to do the first spreading with this tool. However, the leveling rake finishes the job more quickly, easily, and evenly.

The job is not perfect, but it is MUCH better than it was. I think that I will probably repeat this process sometime next year as well, after the ground has finished settling. In the following photo, the center region is a high point flanked by lower regions. So as the rake passes over the area, soil is pushed into the valleys but skimmed off the peaks. Note that we are also recovering from a drought and the Bermudagrass is in the process of growing back after that, since I did not water it.

It would be fine to leave the bare patches as they are — the existing Bermudagrass will eventually fill in the gaps. However, in my ongoing quest to diversify plants on this lot, I am going to be adding different seeds to those gaps — to be described in another post!