Full Lawn Renovation From START To FINISH // Scalp, Dethach, Aeration and Topdress

the time has finally come time to do the lawn renovation here on the car key so I'm going to run you through every single step in today's video and how I like to do a lawn renovation let's just rip straight into it so first step of a lawn renovation is to make sure that your lawn is actively growing which the lawn is actively growing here because we gave it for three weeks ago now I was planted in my lawn renovation a little bit earlier but we had some cool attempts unfortunately so it slide us up a bit so today the lawn is actually growing you can see that it's nice and green and I'm getting growth I'm actually bowing it twice a week now so it's definitely growing quite a bit so we gave it a photo couple of weeks ago just to make sure it was pushing so now we're going to give this bad boy a scalp and the reason we scalp is to get our above ground thatch so all the material in here in the ground after winter or the dead brown stuff here it's basically to pull all of that out of our lawn and the easiest way to do it is with a mower like this so what we're going to do is this is the Big Bob by Super Swift we're going to grab this set it to the lower setting and basically take it back to do it now we can't take every single lawn back to dirt we can do it with kaikuyu cooch there's always a you can actually do it with cool season grasses as well um as long as you leave a root system there you're not going to really have a problem I've taken rye grass back to nearly dirt before and Fescue and it has not been a problem and it has come back fine after lawn renovation but something like Buffalo we need to be really really careful because we've got those above ground Runners and nothing that actually goes underneath so you've just got to be careful don't cut it back too short because it takes a very long time to recover and you don't even cover those those grasshops with sand too much as well but book haikuyu and cooch and even zoosa take it back man it's Kappa back go nuts with it so I'm going to show you guys today we're gonna it's gonna take me a little while I've got this bit of wind about because we're gonna get sweaty let's scab it back okay so when I say back dirt I legitimately meant back to dirt as you can see so this male here is really really good for scalping down because as you can see it's got an open front so it allows you get to get nice and low down here I actually have drilled an extra hole oh come on stuck in there a little bit an extra hole just there so we do get that a little bit lower because it wasn't quite low enough in the lowest setting and it's perfect does the job well it can cut out a bit if your lawn is a little bit thick but you just got to keep going over it back and forth back and forth but these are utility mower probably not going to be able to do this with your standard like Honda Victor anything like that you need to get something like a utility mower that is going to drop down that little bit lower to be scalping like that if you can't scalp all the way down don't stress just get off the lower setting of the mode you currently have and then we'll talk about scarifying afterwards but let's do this all now this probably gonna take me like an hour just to get 200 square meters done so let's rip into it [Music] thank you so as you can see Brown as I love it I don't know why I love that so much I like just pulling all the stuff off the top and just making it look absolutely smashed need to get to the edges still come to the edges in a minute but yeah definitely going down to dirt in some areas summer is not quite we'll rip a lot more out with the scarifier now so you can see over here we've got this scarifier just here so this is a protea 510 SC you can see I've actually got a grooming reel in here but it's set deep enough that we're going to pull out quite a bit and it'll be using it as a scarf today basically probably going to go over this twice possibly even three times in this whole area and this is going to pull out all of the below ground thatch so scalping took all the stuff from above now there's what we call rhizomes with the car key below the soil surface we're going to thin that out as well because sometimes that can get really really thick and prevent water getting down to the root system properly prevent nutrients getting down there um stop even oxygen getting down there as well so that's the reason we are scarifying as well now with kakyu and cooch and grasses like that highly recommend you do this once a year at least if you can do it heavy or you can do it regularly really lightly with a grooming railing you just set it to just Nick into the surface of the soil there's a couple of different ways you can go better but I'm going to do a heavy one at the moment I may groom this throughout the season but the main focus for me is obviously the golf green down in the background just there so we'll do this now pull out as much as we can go in a couple of different directions so we don't miss any see how much we get here [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] so we ripped a lot out yesterday as you can see I did play all the existing grass that was here instead of using a catcher I just blew it across the road because I've got some property I can do that that's not a problem and it will break down over there might even get some quiet growing in some areas that I'd like some car key to grow because I've used some scarifyings if we get some rain if we don't store but as you can see we ripped the vents out of it like we took so much stuff out which is really ideal now if you've got a smaller yard and you can't get yourself a scarifier you can actually get dethatching rakes from Bunnings believe it or not and it's a cyclone one the brand Cyclone's got one there I did have one at one point but I can't seem to fly on where I've placed it but they actually are really good for getting your thatch as well and they can get a bit of the blow ground thatch if you're digging deep enough if you haven't got a huge yard probably the way to go not going to be a problem at all you don't have to use a mechanical one but you can hire them out from places like Kennards they do have those available as well so there is ways to get them instead of purchasing one hiring might be an option for you as well but it's gonna be perfect now it's gonna be perfect to get airflow down here got rid of all the sponginess the thatch that can just cause problems throughout the rest of the season so really good to have got that done so next in our lawn renovation is going to be our core aeration so today we've got this core machine here huge shout out to John from ecoscape Lawns and Gardens here in Orange for letting me lend this they actually do laundry Gardens and Co aeration Renovations in this area here so if you're interested reach out to the guys I'll leave the website on the screen here and the number you can call to contact them as well make sure you reach out to them if you want your lawn aerated and they even offer top dressing fertilizer applications as well so reach out to them if interested but yeah today we're going to use this the reason I like using this machine over one of those bluebirds is because it's so much easier to use pulls out a better core and a deeper core as well does a better job in general and it's so handy having these guys in town to be able to access this as well there are some places at Kennards that do hire machines out like this but here in Orange they only have the bluebird machine which last minute it hurt my back quite a bit so this thing's going to be ideal so the reason we do call aeration is to relieve compaction so over the season especially the growing season when it gets quite hot your lawn can actually get quite compacted when there's a lot of heat around also if there's traffic on there you're mowing all the time you will find especially with clay soils you tend to get compaction quite easily you can do a little bit of a screwdriver test I'll get a screwdriver now and we'll see how compact it is but if you can't push a screwdriver into the ground then you definitely need to think about getting some aeration which is going to help get some oxygen back down in here and just allow the grass to actually grow properly and get nice and vigorous if you've got a compacted lawn your lawn is always going to struggle to grow grass properly so I like to do an aeration yearly just to keep on top of that because believe it or not it's just not traffic that does cause compassion as I said it can be the season how much rain you get how dry it is compacted quite easily so let's have a look let's get a screwdriver and see how hard this lawn is I don't think it should be that bad so I did this last season and we didn't have a very hot summer last year sure it shouldn't be shocking I mean it's still it's still a little bit compacted but at least I can get the screwdriver all the way down sometimes you do this oh it's a bit more compacted there there we go go through sometimes you do this and you can't even get past like that on some Lawns so if you don't know if your lawn needs some aeration good way to test it with warm season Lawns perfect do it this time of year if you've got a cool season grass you can do it this time of year I really recommend that you look at doing your renovation the Autumn time if you've got some rye grass some Fescue even some bent grass any of those cool season grasses Kentucky Bluegrass look at doing it in the Autumn because that's the best time to seed cool season grasses now we're also going to fill these core holes in once we pull these cores out with some sand which is also going to help with drainage and allow the water to get down into the soil a lot easier because here we've got some decent topsoil but quite a lot of clay around here as well so the sand is really going to help with airflow and drainage as well [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] so you can see we pulled out a ton of cores here so they've gone about three inches deep they're breaking apart a bit because it's nice and dry which is good but do about three inches deep there's bad boys there maybe two two to three depends it was a little bit wetter here I probably would pull out a better core I should have really watered it last night beforehand so it will pull out a really really good core but this will be fine there's nice like separation between them actually now once you actually put your finger in there it is actually close to a couple of inches which is good you want to aim for three to four inches so close to 100 Mil in depth if you can I mean if you can't get that deep that's fine I know those blue birds really do struggle to go that sort of depth okay that's what we've got so we're going to clean this off the lawn now you could mount back into the lawn if you really wanted to wouldn't be a problem but we're going to tidy it up now take it all off put it in the back of the Gator and dump it somewhere but there's not much to it man you just scrape it all into a pile and pick it up [Music] thinking about possibly selling these tools in the future as well because we've got some new lawn nibbles on the way which are going to be made by the same guys that made these um which are going to be a lot sturdier probably powder coated as well and just be super solid probably last you the rest of your life so hopefully mine turns up today and I'll be able to show you guys the new lawn level then I'll be looking at using in the future but let me know if you guys are interested in this thing just really handy to clean your cores up push some sand around if you want to with it I mean you can they're actually used for concreting but there's multiple uses for these things super lightweight and super super durable [Music] so aeration is all done and dusted last step of this whole process second last step technically is going to be our top dressing so we're going to be using sand and the reason we use sand is because it actually helps a lot with drainage it doesn't contain weed seeds and it's going to allow just it not to get compacted as easily when you're using your sand as well and it's so much easier to spread and get across the area and it's not going to break down over time like some of your more organic top dressers can do now sometimes Organics are needed because you may need to lower your pH now it's going to take a long time using Organics to bring your pH Down but it is possible because you're changing the actual soil or you may just need a boost of nutrients in there it's not a problem if you do use it just be aware that if you're trying to get areas level there's probably not going to keep it level over time as well by the way this is in your little puppy a little Maple a little girl fish need a little friend she's very cheeky foot put it on um but yeah let's go get the sand let's top dress this area and get ready to track some water so here I'm using the Eco 250 delay now you can spread out soil by hand I'll quickly show you how to do it that's how I've been doing on this area before I got this machine so all you gotta do is get your shovel get a shovel full and just flick it out like this that's all that there is to it now we usually aim to put about a cube of sand or soil for top dressing put a hundred square meters you can go a little bit more intense with Kuching clock we could go two Cube 100 square meters if you really want to and it's going to grow through fine just realize this can take a little bit longer to come back through now when it comes to selecting sand this is a question I get every single time so there's a couple of different options if you can find some USGA sand grab that because it'll be awesome if you can grab some 90 10 or some 80 20 so 10 Organics 90 sand same with the 80 20. um these are just really designed for grass because they don't have too many fines and they're not too coarse as well so this mixer I've got here is actually from ugara and it's very close to a USGA sand and a 9010 so I got some fines got some coarse particles in it now the reason you don't want too many fines is because then it will just Clump together and won't let water through and if you've got if it's too coarse it's going to let too much water through so you've got to sort of get just a balance with it sometimes some wash pit sand can be fine as well but again the reason why we want to use sand is because it's going to keep our levels over time not going to have any weed seeds in it as well and just so much easier to live in an area with it so let's put this out right now and I'm going to aim for a better meter per 100 square meters we don't have a lot of leveling to do today it's mortar filling core holes that's really about it if I really want to level this like crazy I'd have to cut some out because there's some humps and bumps like in the middle just some undulations which honestly I'm not worried about you can't even really see them until you're mowing over it but it doesn't have any impact on the mowing so doesn't really matter [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] that machine makes easy work of a hard job man so good so we went pretty heavy not crazy crazy heavy but enough for what we want to do here today to fill the core holes in as we can see like this and we'll get the lawn level out in a minute and push this around because there's some parts that will need some sand pushed in there hence why we still need to get our lawn level out but nice and thick which is what we want and what we can do this with cocky grass cooch even Zoysia Buffalo as I've mentioned before do not go too heavy because it will struggle to push back through it's just the way it is same with cool season grasses bent grass you can go a little bit heavier Kentucky Bluegrass you can as well but raw grass and peskies make sure there's some Leaf popping at the top and showing after you do your top dress so let's go get the lawn level let's spread this around make sure that it's actually nice and level and fills those those core holes in and then we'll be under fertilizer so this is a lawn level here it's basically going to help drag the sand into spots that are a little bit low nice and flat and just allows you to level your lawn out properly seriously if you didn't have this tool it would be super hard to push the sand or soil around and make the area nice and level [Music] thank you [Music] so next we're going to put out my dominate fertilizer on top of this the reason I'm choosing Domino today is because of the higher nitrogen so it's got 28 now some of that is going to be some slow release for in there but it is going to give this a kick of growth and help it push through the sand now I haven't gone soup heavy with the sand this time around I kind of wish I did go a little bit heavier but I'm actually out of sand I thought I had more up there at my sandpile but it's fine I don't need to level this out like crazy so it's not a big problem probably only gone about one kilo not one kilo one Cube but 100 square meters on this area here so yeah I'd love to have got probably double that out and just give it a really heavy top dress because our temps are perfect at the moment we'll put this fertilizer out I'm going to put about two kilos per hundred square meters of this dominate you can put it anywhere between one to three kilos we're just gonna go half because we did give this a feed about four weeks ago now maybe five weeks ago so there's still a bit of growth pushing from the fertilizer we had down then which again was a lower rate so we'll just give a little bit of a boost now and that should just really help with this area repair you run [Music] thank you so Lauren Renault is all done and dusted really good feeling to have that all done so just remind you guys of the whole process first we scalped it back got rid of all the above ground thatch scarified it to get the below ground Thatcher for that and a little bit of the above ground stuff as well because scalping's not going to get absolutely everything and then from there we did our core aeration after cleaning everything up and taking all the stuff out of there core aeration cleaned off the cores then top dress with some sand and then we put some fertilizer down to help kick it back into gear after leveling it out as well with that lawn level so the process from here on in is just making sure that you keep this place nice and moist don't let it dry out too much because you have got a bit of sand on here it does get a little bit water retains a little bit more heat as well and we are trying to repair from absolutely stressing it out like crazy so I'm going to order this at least once a day for the next week and then I'll show you guys how it's looking by this time next week you guys will see a full update on this area just here but you just got to baby it along make sure you're not letting it stressed out too much once a day for like 20 minutes of water is going to be enough but always keep an eye on it you'll be able to see if it's stressing out a bit and if it needs a little bit more water as well some guys liked it a little bit in the morning a little bit in the afternoon if you're doing a Renault later in the season it's fine to do a lawn renovation as well anytime during the season that your lawn is actively growing and you're going to be able to give it at least a month of warm weather after you've done your lawn renovation as well so if you did too late in the season like in March or April there's a chance that it's going to cool off suddenly maybe get some frosts depending where you live and you're just not going to get good results enough time for it to repair so that's why we do it this time of year because we've got the whole season ahead for it to go absolutely nuts right guys thank you so much for watching if you have any questions about it flick it down in the comments there hopefully you guys learned something new from that subscribe the channel if you haven't already like this video If you enjoyed it and I'll see you guys very soon [Music]

Channel: Lawn Tips

Views: 343,903

Keywords: lawn tips, lawn renovation, lawn reno, kikuyu grass, fixing my lawn, how to fix a lawn, scalping a lawn, lawn scalp, topdress, topdressing with sand, levelling with sand, scarifying a lawn, dethatching a lawn, core aeration, how to core a lawn, how to renovate a lawn, sand topdress, sand on lawn, lawn renovation from start to finish, scalping grass, fixing kikuyu, lawn care, how to fix your lawn, dethatching lawn, fix an ugly lawn, renovating a lawn, ryan knorr lawn

Id: 1833cgOr6j0

Length: 22min 51sec (1371 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 22 2023