HOW TO Level your LAWN FLAT. Topdressing

people ask me all the time how do you get your lawn so smooth and flat like that if you want your lawn to be flat and smooth like mine follow these steps and over time you can have it smooth looking and beautiful like a golf course [Music] first step always is to mow the lawn as short as you could handle for a lot of people that's gonna mean scalping it i've cut my lawn at about a half inch or about 5 8 of an inch tall but for most people who are cutting it at three and four inches you're going to want to scalp it down to about an inch or two inches as low as you can mentally handle i promise you it's gonna be just fine it's gonna look really bad as you scalp it but it'll be okay i did aerate my lawn before i am going to top dress the reason i did that is because i want to let air water and nutrients peel to get down in there and i've cleaned up all the plugs but you don't have to do that if you don't want to the first step always is to mow the lawn as short as you could handle i'm at the gravel pit here okay i'm ordering 10 tons of sand his loader has a scale on it so i don't know how many scoops that's going to take or whatever but it's 10 10 tons this is how they mine the sand and gravel it comes out as gravel and then they use these machines here to separate it out into different sizes of sand this is a 1.5 millimeter sand this is two millimeter sand screen too so there it is that looks about like 10 yards to me or 10 tons so got the whey ticket right here and everything he prints it out in his truck it's 10.28 tons i am going to bring this truck right here onto the driveway and everybody's gonna say hey you can't do that it's gonna crack your driveway don't do that but i'm gonna put that truck right here on the driveway and everything's gonna be just fine i've done it several times before and i've had several videos showing that it's just fine look at the driveway no cracks okay except for that big one right there but this is concrete folks concrete cracks the concrete here is reinforced okay i've got a two by two rebar mat and pit run underneath and gravel on top of that i built this driveway and it is set up and ready to go and it can handle this kind of weight so just hold your freaking horses and chill out this is an ecolon top dresser okay compost spreader sand spreader salt spreader whatever you want to do with it this is uh of course sand screened to two millimeter okay you sell this to golf courses around here this is the kind of sand you want to get how are you going to find this kind of sand you either want to go to your ready mix concrete supplier ask them for mortar sand screened you want a coarse sand you don't want to play sand coarse sand screened one to two millimeter or whatever so when is the best time to be top dressing your lawn you want to do this in the spring or fall if you're a cool season if you're a bermuda in the warm season grass down in the southern states you're going to want to do this in the summertime when the grass is growing very vigorously the grass needs time to recover because you're going to kind of smother the lawn so with a cool season lawn you need to give it about a month or so to recover that's why i'm doing it early fall this is fall labor day weekend a lot of people ask and say well why don't you just dump the sand on the lawn where you're going to use it but that would defeat the whole point of top dressing the reason to top dress is to get rid of the bumps and the undulations if you drive this thing on the lawn you're gonna have huge ruts in your lawn i guess you could dump it on the corner but i've done that before and i've found this method works better just dump the dang sand in a neutral spot folks so many people are like just dump it on the lawn just dump it on the lawn oh my gosh get over your dang self and don't worry about it you can do this without a top dresser if you watch some of my other videos you'll see that i've done this several times with the shovel with the skid steer or just a shovel and a gorilla wagon cart you just want to make sure you've got something powered to pull the wagon around you're not going to want to try to do this with a wheelbarrow that will not be a pretty sight so this machine should make this a lot easier than in the years past should be able to spread this sand in about two hours with this machine i'm hoping in years past when i've done 15 tons of sand it's taken me i don't know three or four or five hours to spread that by hand [Music] holy crap oh do that fill it right up let's do it this this is the best yet folks this machine is amazing i realize that not everybody can get one of these machines so if you can find a rental shop that will rent a top dresser like this do it ask him for the ecolon top dresser spreader lawn applicator if not then just do it the old-fashioned way with a gorilla carpet don't try it with a wheelbarrow that just is misery gonna have something powered to pull the the card around like four-wheeler lawn tractor something [Music] i want to get a lot of sand over in this section over here where i did the new uh seating last fall so over there so after you seed your lawn and grow some sod or seed or whatever top dressing is amazing after this kid he's 10 almost 11 years old small guy for his age and he can seem to pull it off just fine on his own i'm looking at this lawn it looks to me like we're going to need more sand that was i normally get 15 tons that was 10 tons i'd like to possibly go get another load maybe i don't know maybe another load and then drag it i don't know because i'd like to do the back as well with this machine it's really easy to do this but not everybody's gonna have the opportunity to use a machine like this do not be discouraged you can do this with a wheelbarrow and a shovel or a dump cart you don't have to have this fancy equipment all right so i'm back getting more sand back here at the pit and he's weighing it out right now i asked him for 10 ton and then he'll dump it right here in my uh dump bin so i went and got another 10 and a quarter tons of uh sand i felt like i was running out and it was just a sad day we weren't really able to get much of anything done over here it's laid on pretty thick through here i have a really low spot over here uh where it's settled where i dug the trench for my water line to my shed if you want your sand as dry as you can get it's so much easier to drag in and i can see we need more sand over here so the next step after spreading your sand is going to be to knock down your piles you want to use a landscape break to do that or some kind of drag or something to knock your piles down you can use a motorized piece of equipment and use your drag to knock down your piles if you're using like a wheelbarrow or a gorilla cart next thing you want to do is get some sort of leveling device right here you want to find something you can drag around you need a motorized piece of equipment whether it be a lawn tractor four-wheeler you can use a leveling device like this you can use a pallet you can use like a couple of two by fours nailed together or two by six is weighted down this thing is really simple and easy it's just a couple of pieces of metal bolted together this thing's eight feet long i built one of these a few years ago and i showed that in a video you can refer to that video if you want it really doesn't have to be complicated at all just use whatever you got laying around you can make one you can buy one you can use a pallet something easy you just need something to drag around anything you can find to use to drag use that so you want to just drag and drag and drag slowly and consistently you're trying to get all the sand work down into [Music] the soil level sand will fill in all the low spots keep working at it and working on it and the sand just melts into the soil you can see it's just kind of disappearing i've drugged this area probably the most you see there's not that much sand [Music] so the drier your sand the easiest this is to do the best course of action is to spread it out and then let it dry and then come back drag spread it out let it dry come back drag [Music] some places are harder to get than others because your obstacles that you got in the way trees and stuff such we've got a really low spot right over here so that is uh that's a hard spot for me to get hard for me to get right over here around this tree i just uh came along and hit this tree right here broke my bamboo state which is okay didn't didn't damage the trees so we're good there that tree is pretty well dead i think that's pretty good the rest will just have to get by hand with the broom there you do have to use a broom or one of those little leveling tools with the stick here and there on the really heavy spots you want to get out your broom and you sweep and that'll work the sand down this is a really low spot right here but if it's just mildly low using a broom works great but here it's just too low so it's just gonna have to be sand and i'm gonna have to reseed that if you completely smother the lawn then the grass will not grow back so with the broom you can kind of get the grass blades up and get the sand worked down lower i think it's been about two weeks since i put the sand down i've since mowed the lawn one time the sand is hard on the lawnmower so i like to wait as long as i possibly can to mow it but this has been about two weeks since i've mowed the lawn and the sand has pretty well all disappeared it is thin in certain places okay and those are some of my low areas and that's pretty normal but with fertilizer water and time those places disappear and you end up with just straight lawn and grass the biggest question that we have here is why sand and not soil why not maybe a mix why not straight soil why straight sand and this is the reasoning behind that the soil has organic matter in it and the organic matter breaks down so if you put if you cover your lawn with soil and you put it down in there work it down it's nice and smooth the organic matter eventually breaks down and you end up almost right back where you started not quite but you end up with bumps and undulations in the lawn the point of the sand no organic matter it does not break down your lawn will naturally build soil over time as the roots cycle and as you get leaves and organic matter put into your lawn and soil will build but in the meantime what we're trying to do is smooth the lawn out make it super flat and get all the bumps out so sand works very well that way to make it smooth so hang in there give it time and patience and your lawn can look amazing if you want a lawn that looks like a golf course you got to do what the golf courses do so water mowing fertilizer and leveling so that'll do the trick for you guys if you want your lawn to look amazing i appreciate you guys thanks for watching and i will see you in the next one [Music] [Music]

Channel: Connor Ward

Views: 179,075

Rating: 4.9174042 out of 5

Keywords: level lawn, level yard, leveling lawns, leveling yards, prevent scalp marks lawn, how to level lawn, diy leveling lawns, lawn is uneven, repair uneven lawn, Connor Ward lawn, conner ward lawn, lawn rebel, how to level your lawn, connor ward sand, lawn care tips, fixing ugly lawn, ugly lawn, how to fix an ugly lawn, how to revive a lawn, reviving lawn, reel mower, leveling kentuck, sand, level lawn with sand, gardening, lawn care, lawn stripes, topdressing, top dressing

Id: xL3ZSOsllSw

Length: 14min 14sec (854 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 26 2021