(playful upbeat music)
(lawn mower whirring) (man sighs) You know,
when you have something that you really should work on, but you don't because it's kind of a pain. Well, today, that's this rut and a few other bumpy areas of my lawn. If you're dealing with
similar issues in your lawn and want some tips on how
to make a bumpy lawn smooth, keep watching! The rut we're gonna be filling today is a result of a tree that
died and had to be removed. Now, if we take a look at it, for the most part we can see the grass has grown in fairly well, but there's still a couple of low areas are gonna need a little bit of love to look their absolute best. Things we're gonna need to pull this off: (car door thuds) Filling material. Options for this include
top soil, compost, or sand. Today, we're gonna be using a combination of sand and compost for three reasons. (car door thuds) First, a buddy of mine had some leftover from a recent leveling project
that he was working on, so I got it for free. Second, sand and compost make
for a great leveling mix. Since the compost helps
improve the quality of the soil and the sand has a great
job of adding structure. And the third reason, I already told you. Got it for free. Next, you're gonna want some basic tools. A shovel and a standard
rake can work in a pinch. But for the best possible result, you're gonna want to invest
in one of these bad boys. This is a leveling rake
and it makes it much easier to smooth the leveling mix
out to achieve a great result. Now, we'll start by filling our low spot with a bit of sand and compost and roughly even it out. You can see here how I'm
using the leveling rake to work the sand and compost into the lowest spot as much as possible. Now, here's a quick tip that'll help you minimize
the chances of having to do this again in the future. Once the rut is about halfway full, compact it down to help
settle it in place. So you can see here, I'm just using my body weight
and shoes to pull this off. Now, we add a bit more sand and compost and work it in and then compress again. We keep doing this. Fill, level, compress, we keep repeating these
steps over and over, until the rut is completely
filled and smooth over. When you're done, your goal should be to
have the filled in area match the grade of the existing
lawn as much as possible. This is gonna increase the likelihood that once the grass grows through, it's all gonna blend in really nicely. Now, this rut is one of
the more extreme cases of what you'll probably
have to be dealing with in your lawn. But now what
about when you just have an area that's just slightly bumpy, but you still wanna make
it golf course lawn smooth. Let's see how we take care of that. The area of this lawn has
some serious washboarding, largely due to the way the
lawn has been mowed over time. The way we fix it is
using a similar process. We'll start by applying
some sand and compost. We'll use a leveling rake to work it in. And as we go along through this process, we're gonna lightly compress
to help it stay in place. We keep rinsing and repeating this process until we build up a layer of about a quarter to half an inch of sand to fill in all those low areas. (bright energetic music) Now, we've got both sections
of our lawn taken care of. The next step is to
apply a bit of fertilizer to help speed up recovery. The fertilizer we're using today is called Humic Max from Lebanon Turf. It's super easy to apply. Because it's a quick-release fertilizer, you're gonna see results
within just one week. (bright upbeat music) With our fertilizer applied, our next step is to water
it in to activate it. If you have irrigation, you
can definitely use that. But a garden hose with a bit of patience can work just as well. All that's left is to wait
for the grass to grow through, so you can start enjoying
your now smooth lawn. If you like this video and wanna see how lovely if we'd done it on a much bigger scale, I put together a video here
that I think you'll enjoy. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you in the next video. (gentle upbeat music)
