7 Mistakes beginners make when LEVELING their LAWN

are you thinking about leveling your lawn i'm currently in my fifth season of leveling this long and there's a few things that i've learned along the way that i wish i knew sooner so in this video i'm going to share with you guys 10 mistakes that most beginners make including myself that i've made when leveling their lawns and what you can do to avoid them and if you've never leveled your lawn before feel free to ask any questions i'm sure myself or anyone else in the comments can answer for you to help get you started on the right path so the first mistake that i see people doing is not using materials like dirt and sand that are fully dry nine times out of ten if you get off some dirt from your local dirt supplier you pick up some sand from them it's going to be left outside under a canopy it's going to be rained on all the time so there's two things you could do a you could try to get a supplier that has dry materials or b if you're using sand for example what you could do is you could put out the sand on your driveway if you have an asphalt or concrete driveway spread it onto the driveway with a landscape rake and then you can let it dry for a day or two under the sun and this will work out great but the only problem is you want to make sure that it doesn't rain immediately after you put it on the driveway otherwise that's just going to make your situation worse and we don't want that i remember first time i leveled my lawn i went to lowe's and i picked up a bag of soil and i just immediately threw this one bag of soil on my lawn and it was so wet and clay-like and it was clumping and when i tried to level my lawn i just ended up making it more bumpy so moral of the story make sure that your materials are bone dry before you put them on your lawn because that's how you're going to get the most complete level surface and be able to massage it into the canopies if you're leveling your lawn you're probably wondering should i use sand soil or should i use both well here's the way that i look at it there's going to be people that are gun hole for sand and people that are gun hole for soil and compost and all that so i personally used the 50 50 mix of sand and soil when i leveled my lawn that's because there was some crazy ruts in here this thing was like the grand canyon so when i used that mix i got it pretty much mostly level and now that i'm getting to the point where i'm finally starting to get a golf course lawn i'm using just sand to cap it off so i can get that perfect smooth flat finish and another big mistake that i see people doing is they'll try to level their lawn with just soil and think that that's going to make the lawn level but really that's not the case you guys have to keep in mind that soil is an organic matter and over time it's going to break down and you're just going to get those lumps again so what you need to do is at least incorporate some sand into the mix of soil so that when you level it the sand won't break down you'll still have the nice leveling properties i could see where people are coming from where they don't want to throw sand onto their lawn but at the end of the day if you want to get those leveling properties you're going to have to incorporate at least some sand into your soil to make sure that it stays level over time now here's the thing most people don't realize that all these top dressings from lowe's and home depot it actually contains more sand than soil in it so really when you buy those bags you're already kind of buying a pre-mixed bag of sand and soil that's mostly sand so don't feel bad about throwing sand on your lawn [Music] now another mistake that we have to talk about is something that i personally made and i don't want to ever make that mistake again and that's choosing the right grid size sand you might be tempted to get an all-purpose sand because why not it's all purpose it should work on the lawn right no you definitely don't want to use all-purpose sand because the pebbles in it are humongous and it'll get sucked up into your mower and if you're real moy you could just say goodbye to that reel and it's just bad news so you're definitely going to want to skip out on the all-purpose scent opt for something more like this which is a mason scent it's more fine as you can see there's dust going everywhere but at the end of the day that's what you're going to want to use because you're going to get a more flat surface and it's going to incorporate down into the soil better over here you see all these large pebbles this is when i used all-purpose sand to level my lawn a few years ago and it's been already like three years and you could still see these pebbles are sitting over here on top of my soil so if there's one piece of advice that i can recommend to you do not make the same mistake that i made now what i want to talk about is your height of cut right before you level you're probably thinking if i leave the grass blades taller then it has a better chance of survival in getting through the grass but really that's not the case what you want to do is you want to sculpt the grass down as far as it can go so if you have a rotary mower bring it down to its lowest setting or if you're using a real mower like a greens master i personally like to put it right under a half an inch so like about point four zero inch inches i find the best but what i personally recommend for most people who don't have a powered wheel mower is to get a scotch reel more because you can set the cutting height all the way down to a half an inch and that's going to give you the best leveling surface and the reason why this is is when the grass blades are short you can massage the dirt or sand into the grass canopy and they'll be poking out through the sand so they can get some sun so they can keep growing and not get smothered because when you leave the grass blades tall there's more mass that's put down on the grass blades and when you try to massage it in with the lawn leveler it ends up just getting buried underneath another mistake that people make is they try to level in non-optimal conditions and what i mean by that is in the springtime they'll get a little overzealous about taking care of their lawn and they want to level really early but really you want to wait until your grass is fully growing hardcore one piece of advice i can give you is make sure you hit the lawn with at least a half a pound of fast acting nitrogen about a week before you start leveling if you're looking for a good fertilizer that will push a lot of top growth really fast i could recommend the scott's lawn food in the green bag just throw about a half a pound to three quarters of a pound down about a week beforehand and you'll be all good ready to go another mistake i want to talk about well technically it's not a mistake but you'll definitely thank me later is not having one of these gorilla carts or a similar kind of cart like this that you could pull around the wheelbarrows are just too much work you're going to have thousands of pounds of dirt or sand you're going to be lugging it around you're going to have a heat stroke you're going to fall to the floor trust me it is no good so make sure you invest in one of these gorilla carts because it is going to make your life a hell of a lot easier you could put like two or three hundred pounds of material in here and you could just pull it around super easy it's not going to break your back or anything like that and it's going to make your leveling project 100 times easier trust me get yourself a gorilla card all right guys i told you that i'm going to save one of the best tips for last and this is going to be a very simple guide on how much material you specifically need to level and the general rule of thumb is when you level you don't want to go more than a half an inch i know that doesn't seem like a lot but this leveling thing is going to be something that's going to be ongoing over multiple seasons it's not going to be perfect that after one season and when i give you these numbers real quick you're going to be like oh my god that's a half an inch it's that much material yeah so you're going to need one and a half cubic yards of material whether that's sand or soil or combination of both it's going to be one and a half cubic yards of material per thousand square feet to cover a half an inch now some of you guys might not be 100 familiar with how cubic weights work so just to simplify for you guys one cubic yard of sand weighs four thousand pounds which is two tons and you need one and a half cubic yards of sand to level one thousand square feet so that means you're going to need six thousand pounds of sand just to level one thousand square feet most of you guys watching i'm guessing your lawns are between the sizes of three thousand square feet and ten thousand square feet so we're talking about tons and tons and tons and tons of material but hey this is your guys first time to my channel my name is george and i'm obsessed with my lawn thank you guys so much for stopping by if you found any value in this content hit that like button and with that this is george from princess cuts peace [Music] you

Channel: Princess Cut Lawn Care

Views: 1,413,884

Keywords: lawn leveling, level lawn, lawn care, leveling rake, lawn leveling rake, leveling lawn, how to level lawn, Lawn rake, diy leveling rake, diy level lawn, golf coarse lawn, Mistakes leveling lawn, lawn leveler, diy lawn leveler, how to make a level lawn, lawn leveling mistakes, lawn level tool, leveling tool, sand leveling, level lawn sand, dirt leveling, diy, level lawn with sand or soil, bumpy lawn, lawn leveling drag, lawn lute, princess cut lawn care

Id: MGy7KfsZi3w

Length: 8min 7sec (487 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 05 2021