How the PRO'S Grow a lawn From Scratch. Plus MISTAKES! Finish!

let's do a bit of a ride-along you guys while we're riding along i'll explain a few things one of the things we're going to do next is fold that black dirt in right in front of us into the grade but i was very careful not to say into the upper layer because really what we're trying to do is just incorporate the whole thing together we're not looking for any stratification we really want to bring everything together and we do not want layers so we're just going to work it i mean it's we're just gonna work it one way we're gonna work it another way we're gonna also use the tines this might be a great spot for you guys to see how these tines work hope they work better if i hit the auxiliary button yep a little green light canes go so i can control how deep i actually right now i'm digging kind of deep don't want it deep bring it up but i've also got on this attachment i've got a front rake to work with and i've got a back rake and i say it like that because it's easy when you're in the very first stages of learning this thing it's easy to go wait a minute why do i got that pile at the end of a run well maybe because like right now i'm just leaving my back break down i'm not feathering or floating anything and what happens is i get a pile that was my fault now if i feather it or float it as i'm backing up i eliminate that but i don't mind having files right now what i'm doing is i'm folding this all together so i'm taking piles now what we used to have to do in the old days before we had cool attachments like this or other things when we were out grating on a site is we would have to feather the dirt carrying feather because we can't compact it that's one of the things that we really gotta touch base on is you can't compact this dirt if you compact this dirt if you drive over it with a truck if you've done anything like that then everything that we've done up to this point in the video has been for nothing okay but wait if you look right there i'm driving over the dirt so how do you grade it and fluff it well with this attachment you can drive over it all you want because you can scarify it to whatever depth you want at the end of the run [Music] in the old days we would use a bucket and slough the dirt out and then hand rake and get everything brought together so this saves a lot of time [Music] we've got to be careful now back to the black dirt and spreading that we've got to be really really careful that not only do we get it incorporated into the upper layer but we don't get it compacted into the upper layer we don't want it compacted but with this thing we don't have to worry about that all we really got to do right now is get it where it's got to go and then if we feel anything has been compacted i just hit the tines [Music] and i'm not running at a high idle for one i want to hear you guys but for two i just don't feel a need to this is not a high horsepower situation this is a finesse that's finesse there all right i got to get some over that way so lifted it carried it now let's push it once i get it all positioned i'm just gonna then right now i'll i'll do a little light great backwards but what i'm doing is i'm looking for the tires on my skid loader i don't see them right so now i can start to lift up lift up and i won't have as well i kind of did that wrong because i was looking at this bucket right beside me as i was backing up not paying attention you know i live here i could move a lot of the obstacles but you can't move obstacles on a job site so you just get used to working them around them and then when you're doing stuff like this i don't mind leaving them because it's a way to keep my skills sharp because if you don't use it you lose it right and my job no longer is to be out on the site with the boys is to me the boys then wonder are they good enough do they need me there do i feel that they need me there none of that is true a lot of times i just want to go out in the job and have fun and keep my skills sharp but i also want to make sure that the guys know that i'm not there because they're they need help or they're doing anything wrong i'm just there because i want to have fun i also like having fun right at my own house see i could just go in and get a spin drift bet you didn't think this how to see the lawn from scratch like a pro video would be so much machine work right well this is how we do it actually do it on a job site we don't use chemicals on a job site we don't use any fancy seed we use the landscapers mix because it's all around we found that it just has the right wind a great growth rate it can get the lawn established and then the lawn can be tweaked afterwards because you can reseed it and so i tell my customers that i mean they can actually control the color of their lawn just through the kind of grassy they get that's crazy and then the only reason i even bring that up is i've actually had customers complain because the color of their new lawn didn't match the color of their old lawn that's when i had that aha moment like well it wasn't really an aha moment it was like an old crap i can't believe there's people that picky out there but there are so you got to know how to address that you know how you address that you tell them ahead of time i'm not going to color match your lawn and you go oh man i don't want to tell i don't want to tell people that every single time no it's boiler plate you put it into the contract the fine burning of your contract i'm not going to color match your lawn and that goes on every proposal like every one of my proposals it has a fine claw saying i'm not going to do a soil correction i'm just not going to do a soil correction that means once we start digging if we find if we find unsuitable soils once we start digging under the ground that aren't structurally safe to keep working then we need to be able to change those soils one time when we were digging underground we found a barn buried and that was just last fall all right there we go that is some fine tuning it's just like combing your hair with this thing so really i stopped on the fine on the fluff one i stopped using these at all and it was just uh front tines back times i don't know if that's the right word for it but it doesn't matter so i just just combed this all together all right it's the final fluff down what i'm trying to say what i want to do is just poof it let's get poofy with it but one of the things i want to point out i am not doing is trying to drive any more than i have to over the center i'm trying to grab the edges and blend them into the existing brackets so the fence will help do the final blending of the existing grass and the black dirt together so you don't get any rough edges or transition joints from one grade to another grip all right well we got one more step we're gonna hit it one last time with the times on the sr3 just to do a nice all right it's time to seed i'm going to opt to seed the old-fashioned way and that is just using my nose pickers there's one thing that you gotta really keep an eye out for and that's that you see that right there that's really the worst thing you can possibly do over seeding will have all of this grassy will compete against each other and eventually kill each other off so over seeding like this is the biggest no-no and it's simply if you do it kick your foot around but we do have to embed the seat anyway but the easiest way to do it it's not very windy tonight so what i'm doing let me just show you it's coming out between my my thumb my neck i'm casting like i'm casting a fishing lure it's really simple really straightforward it's just a very gentle flicking wrist motion and anywhere you miss a spot you can always fill in just a titch and you've got really good control simply by opening or closing your finger in your thumbs like this i want a little there you go i want a lot simple and you can see how you can get a beautiful pattern now it's going to take you a little longer than it will if you use a spreader oh and don't worry about going too light going too heavy is way worse than going too light if you go too light you can always overseed it when you're over seeding it that's you can just spot seed over seed or you can do a general overseeding as well so let's say you're worried when you buy sod have you ever seen sod farms and tree farms at the same place the answer is no the sod has grown wide out in the open right so with it being grown right out in the open it's automatically a sunny mixture you can only get sunny mixed your sod but if your yard is shady guess what's going to happen to that side it's going to die it's just the lob nature right it's gonna die man we'll fix that in a moment um so the way you fix that is if you want the instant lawn you don't want to wait for seed so you saw and if your yard is shady over seed it with a shade mixture of seed what will happen is as that sunny that sunny sod will still take it'll still start starting to grab roots and you now it's time to embed all we're really doing here is a light rake in the soil needs to be moist not muddy moist you can kind of see that it's not dry powdery that's moist that's perfect for the seed too heavy too light problem solved so i'm really as i'm embedding the seed breaking up the areas that i screwed up like like this entire thing but it doesn't take much and it does a really nice job of getting all your final contours ah i'm gonna grab my less efficient but longer this should i say less efficient it's still a spring rake it's just not as wide that's it but what a nice savers on the back [Music] interesting story about fisters i know some of you guys know this story but not all of you do i was at a fiskars booth at a tool show and i was talking to like the fiskars media people and everybody we're just literally having fun chit-chatting and i'm like so fiskars has this lifetime replacement warranty if you ever break a fistus tool they'll give you a brand new one brand new one and i'm like so i turned the camera and i'm like so are you telling me and i got it on camera anything you do like you can break it anyway and the guy's like if it's broken we'll replace it we don't want to know how you broke it though that's pretty epic like all you got to do is take a picture and send it in or yeah i mean frankie's i can't tell you how many sisters axes frankie's just brought brought in and they just hand them a new one they don't ask here's your new one all right let's check out see what she looks like the seed is now in it's embedded you should have the soil moist and this is your job now to keep it moist not muddy you have to anticipate what mother nature is going to do as well because she may have a torrential downpour and let's talk about how you can protect your seed and preserve that moisture and that's by adding a layer of straw now let me just point a few things out because some people may say well i don't i don't have straw okay and i get that you don't have you don't have straw right you may be tempted to use grass clippings or leaves let me just tell you a little bit about the negatives of those before you go and use them grass clippings are pretty fine and they tend to blow away although they'll help you preserve your moisture for a short while they really don't do the same thing as true true straw now this isn't true straw but it's very similar now how about leaves they're too big leaves just have too large of a surface area which can block the sun underneath it and shade it so that the seed won't germinate properly how about straw let's look at straw straw this is not straw but very close straw stitches the soil together it also allows good sun penetration and you see how it interlocks and inner weaves like this but it has length to it so the individual pieces are fairly long and that's beneficial because then the longer the heavier the material still allowing nice penetration like you can see here the better it is for your soil and this would be about as dense as i would go over any area if you go too dense you're now blocking your seed okay if you go too light the straw doesn't interlock right so you really just want to have this nice screen or mesh and they actually have it in rolls and you can just roll it out and it's got a mesh fabric behind it and you got to staple it down and it takes a couple years for that mesh to go away or you can just do this get a couple bales of hay a couple bales of straw and lay it down and that's our video guys i know we went pretty deep huzzah there you are all right guys that's our video for today hope you enjoyed it it was a real fun just to hang out with you guys so i want to say thank you for coming along taking along for the ride we've got a lot of cool stuff coming down the pipeline um and so i'm just excited to have you guys along on each and every video and thank you guys for pre-liking the videos i see you doing it much appreciated and i hope whatever you guys are up to i hope it's just awesome god bless and go get them you guys and hopefully we'll see out another one