How NOT to start a lawn. Mistakes, Myths & truth.

[Music] get poofy with her [Music] my [Music] right [Music] so now we're here let's look at the three main components that you're going to need to successfully install your grass and let's get rid of a few mists let's start with the equipment that you need how do you lay the seed out now you've got spreaders you've got hand spreaders which is cheap as ten 10 each you can go all the way up to push spreaders and lawn spreaders which can go anywhere from the 30s 40s 140 here's a 170 lawn spreader that tows behind a tractor if you don't want to spend that much money but you still want a good job you can come down here you can get a nice little 20 one but here's the thing if you don't want to spend any money your best seed spreader is right here your nose pickers as long as you understand the pattern you don't need any of that stuff to success to successfully throw down your lawn seed now let's take a look at the next area single application lawn fertilizer now this is something that you've got to be careful of i don't prefer to use lawn fertilizer to start seed it's okay once it's established because this this an established lawn is a little bit more tolerant but when it's first germinating you got to be very careful about what you lay down how heavy of a concentration you lay down and how you do it i would prefer in my book i always prefer just to use a good organic base over chemicals but sometimes you may not be able to get a good organic base in and that's when a good fertilizer can help out tremendously for starting a lot just be careful that you don't burn it before you grow it i use none of this i don't use any chemicals period [Music] [Applause] so i believe if you start using chemicals you're always stuck using chemicals and fertilizer i prefer just to bring in a nice good base layer and let the seed go from there now you can get bonus growth you can control weeds you can then start to use chemicals and fertilizers to help really stimulate growth but without a good base then you're always trapped using them think you can make that corner nothing like having an obstacle course to try to get around you're good except for your front end other way turn your wheel the other way that turned in that way and then had a straighter shot to go in but to each their own [Applause] he's blind right there yep you're good friend end looks good [Music] that's good we got a bit of an issue going on with the lawn over here all through here everything is dead dying and compacted because this is where we've been putting all the snow and the salt and everything else so before we can get grass to grow we've got to bring the right materials in alex what did they call this at the pit was it just pulverized scream black dirt do you know if they mix it pre-mix it with any sand down there it looks like there's a little bit in there i don't know if they mix it themselves though you can see that it looks like it's been mixed with sand and that's ideal you don't want just pure black dirt because black dirt will actually pure black dirt will trap the roots and the water is go and caught cause root rot and so the water and your seeds got to be able to drain through but it needs enough organic material that it has something to build on so what the right material right out of the gate helps a lot but it's not necessary this is not a necessary step to grow grass you guys okay especially this much i didn't need this much that's all right silky smooth baby that is just nice that is just nice oh good okay that's all right it's got a little clay in it you can see a little sand it's probably not quite totally mixed up yet but that's fine so in this area where we're going to be working if we take a real close look at the conditions we've got wood we've got rocks we've got hard packed ground this is just not suitable to grow a lawn and we need to loosen this soil up but i want to caution you because when you're going through the process of loosening up the soil more is not necessarily better and let me explain to you exactly what i mean you want to just loosen up enough ground that will allow the roots of the new grass to penetrate you don't need to dig and loosen up this much dirt at a time and the reason i caution you against that is simple if you loosen up this much dirt it eventually will settle back down and when you well hi little one when you when you and thanks for going in the swamp when you have that okay go away sorry guys when you have that much dirt loosened up it's going to settle back down and that means that the top isn't going to stay true flat and level it's going to undulate it's going to settle unevenly so the deeper you go the more pronounced the settling is going to be down the road you really only need to go approximately six inches to loosen it up to get good root penetration if you want to extend it to eight inches go ahead but we don't need to go 18 inches we don't need to go two feet we're not planting crops we're planting grass so if you've got your subsoil here you don't want to just put four inches of black dirt on top of it this hard pack subsoil is not going to allow the roots to penetrate and the 4 inches of black dirt that you're putting over the top isn't enough of a moisture barrier to retain the longev the life of the seed if you have a sprinkler that you'd forget to put out or your sprinkler system fails for a day or two and the sun comes out and bakes it it can cook your lawn really fast so what i'm going to recommend you do is you take that same black dirt that you were thinking about just laying over the top like a sandwich and this is where you fold it into the subsoil together and that's what you're gonna see me do next i'm gonna use a big rake and i'm gonna loosen up the subsoil and after i get the subsoil loose to the depth that i feel comfortable with at approximately six inches i'm then going to start to fold the black dirt into the upper layer but i'm going to work it down into the lower layers of the soil now how you loosen up that soil is your business i don't care if you use a shovel i don't care if you use a rake i'm going to use a rake it's just that my rake has a diesel engine and six tires with it you don't need a machine like this to do the job you can use anything to get that sub soil loosened up and then you'll see me fold it in so let's just get started on that now so this ground is extremely hard packed and the attachment i'm using is actually called an sr3 made by abi attachments and it basically has three components to it it has a front rake it has center tines which are adjustable up and down and then it has a back rake and when i'm initially starting to loosen up the grade i'm using the center tines to control the depth that i'm actually loosening up the subgrade once i feel like i've got that subgrade loosened up to the depth that i'm happy with i'll then just concentrate on using the front and back rakes to smooth everything out going to be converting a previous parking pad into a grassy lawn area so i really wanted to make sure that i got the right depth scarified to allow that soil to mix with the fresh black dirt [Music] now you'll see the two wheels on this attachment rolling and what that is is kind of an indicator that i've got the attachment resting on the wheels so the attachment is contouring to the ground and then from there i'm just tipping the attachment forward and backward to either help me scarify or define all right so now we can see we're really starting to get all of these grades blended together and i'm taking my time there's this is a critical step i really want to get this part nailed so you can see the grades and spreading the black dirt is actually more important to me than the name brand of the seeds you get now here's where it gets to be interesting is in the seed now you're going to see a lot of different options with seed you've got northern blend you've got shady you've got hardy you've got high traffic you've got sun and shade really what you've got to determine is don't worry about the name on the bag worry about the conditions that you're going to be growing in and when i say don't worry about the name on the bag let me just give you a quick side by each demonstration here's kind of one of the high end grass seeds out there sun and shade mix okay now this is 67.40 and this 20 pound bag has a combination of perennial ryegrass bluegrass and fescues now we go right down the row we're going to go over here now this is a five pound less bag but it's 34.99 it's almost half price and it has a combination of fescue perennial ryegrass kentucky brew glass and annual rye grass now it has almost the same types of grass for a lot less money oh wait here's what you need to know grows well in full sun to light shade that's what we're looking for is the conditions not necessarily the name on the bag this one albeit has a larger variety inside of those three mains and this also the price has an absorbent coating on the outside of the seed which will help it retain moisture okay but we're gonna show you how you can get bypass that as well so you don't need to have a high end mixture with an absorbent coating and still get great results okay so see that area right there i'm not a hundred percent sure i like how deep i have that scarified so i'm just gonna drop my skirt my tines down i'm on my wheels as i go forward i'm now scarifying i can raise up you can kind of see let's go bass backwards and put them down don't break your aquariums think i got enough aquariums yet see now look i'm really digging deep i don't need to go that deep but look at instantly you can see just see how it broke that up that's the beauty of this thing that control it's not for everybody no no no but it's got its applications it really does if you look at tracks you see the tracks that means my back rake wasn't down enough but really what we're doing here guys is we're just bringing everything together we're getting all these grades together and in just a moment i'm going to show you a really cool trick how to blend an area like you see we've got our defined work zone there how we can actually blend that in with the other lawn and get the grades to so with this sr3 attachment i can actually blend existing turf into another area and basically what i do is i just start cultivating it in i work it into the sub soil and then i can use the front and back rigs to fine tune everything now there is going to be a part two to this video and i'm going to show you some of the tricks that we use on our commercial sites to grow a lawn with the least amount of maintenance remember that coating that was that special coating that was on that seed i'm going to show you guys how you can duplicate that for next to nothing in cost i'm going to show you how to recognize the good and bad patterns when hand casting your seed and i'm just going to share other tricks of the trade with you guys so i hope you enjoyed this video and coming down the pipeline i'm also going to do a full review on this sr3 attachment in case some of you guys are really interested in knowing if this is the right attachment what kind of jobs to do with it and when it may not be the right attachment because there's a lot of mixed reviews about this thing and there is good and bad with this tool and i just want to make sure that guys understand when they buy it are they buying it for the right application so a full video is going to be coming out on that god bless you guys and hopefully we'll see you on another one well like part two because that's coming right down the pipe line next