The Step by Step Guide to Levelling Your Lawn

hello there and welcome to proper diy so today i'm going to be leveling my lawn so i can finally get rid of my lumps and bumps [Music] [Music] wow glad we're coming out of spring and straight into summer so you join me part way through this process and so far i've given the lawn a really short haircut and i've scarified it and i've not shown you any of that because you can see that in far more detail in a previous video i made called how to scarify your lawn properly i'll put a link up here and in the description below so the reason i've scarified before i've started to level the lawn with sand is twofold first of all i want to get all the rubbish out the lawn and get down to the soil surface because as well as leveling lawn i'm reseeding as well so i want as much rubbish out the lawn as possible to allow that seed to germinate and to get well established and secondly it's only when i scarify that i really cause major damage to the weeds in my lawn see most of the weeds i've got in my lawn tend to grow horizontally like power annual and i've also got other creeping things that tend to fly out and they never seem to get cut properly it's only when i scarify that i rip those to shreds which is a good thing so i need to do a bit more cutting but i'll show you what i've been using to scarify so this is the scarifying cartridge that fits onto my allen kensington and it's got lots and lots of these springy tines that whiz around and rip all the nasty stuff out of your lawn now if the comments from my last video or anything to go by by now lots of you are shouting at your screens to tell me that this isn't scarifying well as far as i'm concerned it is scarifying this is the alet scarifying cartridge if you don't believe me go and have a look at the alec website i'll put a link in the description below and they'll tell you all about scarifying and verti cutting as well anyway while you're doing that i'm going to change this cartridge because i've got one small cut left to do where the power annual are sitting up and i've got to get that out of the way the best i can before i start leveling so excuse me while i change cartridges i find that the process of scarifying does raise quite a lot of grass and weeds that then stand upright like they didn't before so giving it another cut after scarifying is quite often required so the sand i'm going to be using today to level the lawn is what my local company calls their lawn repair mix and it's 50 sand and 50 compost and organic matter that's why it's so dark and they sell this to golf clubs and parks and green keepers all over the place for exactly the same purpose what's nice to see is that this has been sitting here for a couple of weeks and i've already got growth coming out of it here which is a good sign which means that there is organic matter in there and hopefully just like these weeds are taken off in the surface so will my grass so i'm going to be putting sand on this lawn in two phases the first phase is to fill up all the deep lumps and bumps i'm sitting in one at the moment from where i'm sitting to here must be maybe two inches difference so i'm gonna fill areas like this fill all the valleys and i'm going to have to compact them if i don't compact them now they will do over time so i'd rather compact them now get them out the way the second phase is then to go over the whole lawn with a thin layer of sand to fill up all the small lumps and bumps i can't necessarily see at the moment but i know it's there because when i take my lawnmower over it i'm bumping all over the place now in the deeper areas like where i am and all the valleys i could well be smothering the grass because i'm putting so much sand on top of it it could well die but anyway that's just a part of life this is where i'm gonna have to over seed at the end of this job and if the grass doesn't grow through again well that's just the way it is i can't spend five years gradually coming up an inch at a time i need to get this done now so that's the way it is [Music] [Applause] so now comes the heavy work of moving the couple of ton of sand around the garden [Music] i start by just placing piles of material in the biggest depressions that i can find and then spread them out and compact them [Music] these are the main depressions i've targeted around the garden and all of them are at least a couple of inches in depth so let me take you through one of these low areas in a little bit more detail this is an area that i repaired in a video not that long ago which is actually this area here which is standing up quite nicely now it highlights the area next door so here i've got maybe two two and a half inches maybe 60 70 mil of gap it goes in this direction it goes in this direction as well so the first thing we need is a big glob of sat so with the rake i'm just going to very roughly smooth it out leaving the majority of the sand in the middle where the big dip is then comes compaction so just doing that i can actually feel when i'm walking over it it's gone down quite a lot here so now i need to top it up a little bit and maybe do it again [Applause] i feel that there's a bit of a dip here i need some more material in that's the one so just with the basic rake i can tell by the way the sand is moving over the surface it's a lot flatter it's not flat it's just a lot flatter but the secret weapon now is my lawn leveling loot [Music] more material after attending to the main depressions i started to spread the sand uniformly over the whole area of the lawn i found using my rake was a quick way of generally spreading it out before changing over to the loot [Music] in the general areas most of the sand tends to just disappear into the short grass and you have to just trust that the loot is spreading it evenly as you can't really tell at this point [Music] the whole process of moving the sand and spreading it around is as you can imagine quite tiring and takes quite a bit of time obviously depending on the size of your garden [Music] i found that the two bulk bags that i purchased was just about enough for my area but with no material left over [Music] so i think we're gonna call that the end of day one i've just distributed two full bulk bags of sand which i think is pretty good going for someone half my age i must say this long leveling loop really helped to spread it evenly and to fill up all the valleys and keep away from the high points the only thing is it does feel an awful lot heavier than it did earlier today i don't know why that is so we've got the sand down the lawn is a lot flatter than it was before and i need to over seed but there's an important step here that most people miss and i've not seen it on any other youtube video and that is a glass of wine so i've just had a look at what i did yesterday and it all looks really quite nice so now i do need to do some seeding before i put the seed down what i'm going to do is just use the rake to make some furrows so the seed has got somewhere to sit in and then i'll show you afterwards how i close those up first of all i need to finish my coffee i very lightly rake the surface so i don't move the sand around the lawn other than creating the furrows which i'll be able to close back up and still keep a flat surface this is the seed i'm using today it's from the grass people they're very easy to find online but i'll put a link in the description below and the reason i went for this one was because i wanted a hundred percent perennial rye grass and this gives it to me it's got what they call their amenity mix it's like a sports mix and it's got various different types of rye grass but nothing else so i'm trialing 100 ryegrass this year after watching daniel hibber who's got an excellent youtube lawn care channel i'll put a link to his channel in the description below and i've calculated the 35 grams per square meter which is pretty standard overseeding rate i'm going to need half of this bag that's 10 kilograms on my main lawn but before i spread that by hand i'm going to give additional seed to all those really deep areas where i don't expect the grass to ever come through that sand and then i'm going to spread the rest of it over the whole thing with my spreader whenever i sow seed it always seems to be a windy day but anyway standing up wind and giving it multiple light passes spreads the seed fairly evenly while i'm at it i also hand sew along the edge of the border so i don't need to get so close to this with the spreader or else i'll end up seeding the flower bed which i really don't want to do this hopper takes around five kilograms of seed so i fill it up and then on a low setting take multiple passes around the lawn in different directions to try to get an even coverage this takes a bit longer but it does give you a better result so that's the seeding done and if you've got a spreader it makes a seed in an awful lot easier and quicker and it distributes the seeds so much more uniformly it's a really good investment to make even if you're just doing this once a year and obviously you can use it for fertilizer as well so we all know for seeds to germinate we need three things we need temperature we need moisture we need contact with the soil temperature should be okay we're at the end of may beginning of june moisture i can control with my water in over the next couple of weeks a contact it with the soil is important so at this point if you've got a roller it's a really good idea to roll the lawn so those seeds sitting in the furrows that are made with the rake earlier are now closed up and you've got that good seed to soil contact now i haven't got a roller but i've got the next best thing and that is my alet kensington without using the cutting function i'm just relying on the back roller and the vibration of the machine to flatten back down the furrows this actually works really well and better than a roller as it's powered so at least i don't have to drag it around however i do get some strange looks from the neighbors who can't believe i'm cutting the grass again that's after they've seen me cut the grass the first time and scarify which to them looks like cut in grass and me cutting the grass the second time [Music] the last thing i have to do is to water the seed which i do by hand fairly lightly so i don't disturb the seed and end up washing it away [Music] so after all of the lugging of material about doing everything i've just done this is definitely the most relaxing part i'm just giving it a quick cover of water that means i can make sure that the seeds don't go anywhere while i'm doing this before tomorrow starting with my pop-up sprinklers that will definitely come in useful over the next couple of weeks to be able to water this regularly so i hope you've enjoyed this video if you have please check out the other ones on the channel and please subscribe please go and have a look at our patreon page where the membership is growing and there's extra content over there so i've got probably about another half an hour of doing this but at least that doesn't mean i'm lugging material about so that's good isn't it see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Proper DIY

Views: 304,191

Keywords: how to level your lawn, level lawn, lawn care, lawn renovation, top dressing your lawn, lawn leveling rake, level lawn with sand, top dressing lawn, lawn leveling tool, leveling lawns, bumpy lawn fix, leveling a lawn, diy leveling rake, level lawn sand, allett mowers, allett kensington, how to level my lawn, how to level your grass lawn, leveling lawn by hand, overseed a lawn, leveling lawn, overseeding lawn, sand leveling lawn

Id: iD8WTzv60QI

Length: 15min 15sec (915 seconds)

Published: Sat May 28 2022