- So the last major topdressing
project for this year is to do the entire back lawn. And because I'm dealing
with 9,000 square feet, I obviously don't want
to do all that by hand. So I got a little bit of equipment to make the job a little bit easier. Now let me step through
everything we've got here. Obviously there's things you're gonna need for doing a topdressing job of this size are a wheelbarrow, some shovels. What I also got here is
something that I think that everybody should invest
in, is a nice leveling rake. It makes the job of moving the
material around way easier. Should definitely invest in one of those if you're considering doing this. Because we're really going
all out with this job, I also got an aerator. This is a Billy Goat. This should be a lot
easier to use hopefully than the Ryan that we had
to deal with last year. As a pro tip, whenever you're aerating, be sure to rinse the tines off and make sure they're nice and clean so you don't introduce any fungus issues or weed issues into your lawn. This one's all cleaned,
so we're good to go. Next up is the Toro Dingo. This guy's job is to make quick work of putting sand into
our topdressing machine. And of course the last
machine of the hour, the star of the hour, is
our topdressing machine by Earth and Turf. This guy's gonna make it really easy for us to get super even
coverage of applying the mixture that we're gonna be using for our lawn. Now I'm gonna show you
guys the topdressing mix we're gonna be using. For topdressing this year, I'm going with a level
of mix from Super-Sod. I've always heard really good
things about the product. So when the opportunity
came along to give it a shot on the back lawn, I jumped at it. And the level mix consists
of two major components. It's 70% silica sand and 30%
of their soil cubed material, which is a really rich organic compost. If you want to take a look at this stuff, it's really, really rich
material and super clean. Again, we're dealing with silica sand that meets USGA standards, so there's no trash, no
garbage, nothing in that. This is gonna spread really easily and work really, really well on the lawn. Can't wait to put this stuff down. Onto the process. So the process we're gonna be using for topdressing the lawn is as follows. The first thing you're gonna want to do is cut the lawn really short. (crickets chirping) That's done. Second is to mark any sprinkler heads or any other special pieces
of equipment that you have in the lawn that you
don't want to be damaged by the upcoming step,
which is to core aerate. Core aerating is important because it helps break up compaction and it helps that level
mix integrate better into the existing soil. After that, we're gonna be fertilizing, applying a little bit of Essential-G to help build up the quality of the soil. And then it's on to the major
job, which is topdressing. And after that, I've got a
bonus coming up for you guys. So again, be sure to keep watching. Let's get started with aerating the lawn. All right, guys, this year, we're using a different aerator,
which is the Billy Goat. The nice thing about this one
is it has a water tank on top that allows you to set
how much weight you want to put down on the tines. Because we want to air
it as deeply as possible, we're gonna fill this all the way up. We're just gonna add 50 pounds
of weight onto the tines. (energetic upbeat music) (engine whirring) Okay, guys, so core aeration is done. Got my workout in. And as you can see, a lot of
you guys are really worried about picking up cores, and
I've personally never done that. And you can see it's
only been, I don't know, 20, 30 minutes, maybe a
little longer than that. And you can see how these
guys are already breaking up. I mean, they, you know, that's free sand for
your organic material. There's really no reason
to pick that stuff up. I've never done it in the six years I've been topdressing my lawn. So it's up to you guys whether
you wanna do that or not. I will not be doing it. The next step is gonna
be our fertilization and feeding the soil. So what we're gonna be using today is Country Club Fertilizer,
the Humic Max 16-0-8. This is a fertilizer I'm
gonna be putting down on the entire lawn at
three pounds per thousand. Not super heavy, just a little
kick to get the grass going. And then I'm gonna be going
super heavy on the Essential-G. So in this case, we're gonna
be putting down six bags over 9,000 square feet,
which is pretty heavy rate. But given that we just aerated the lawn, and you know it's fully opened up, now's a great time to add a
lot of rich organic material, some carbon, some silica, lots
of great compost to the soil. So the Essential-G will go down first, and then the Humic Max. Let's get to it. All right guys, as far as
the rate on the spreader, it's wide open. We're really gonna be throwing this down as fast as the spreader can put it out because we're going super heavy. So the Earthquake goes to a max of 30. That's what I'm running it at. I've got it wide open, 'cause the idea is that I'm
gonna be putting down six bags. I want to get it down as soon as possible so we can get to put the fertilizer down and get to topdressing. Let's go. And guys, for the Humic Max, we are not gonna run the
spreader wide open with this one. You're gonna use this setting
of 13 on the Earthway, or check the links in the description. I'll have settings for
other common spreaders. All right, guys, so the aeration is done, the Essential-G iS down. The Humic Max is down. We are ready to start topdressing. So there's a couple ways to
load up the topdressing machine. What I'm gonna show you guys
is just using standard shovel, and just loading it up this way. So a lot of you guys may
not have access to a Dingo, but you might be able
to find one of these. And literally, you're just
gonna load this guy up until it's full. This is what the process would look like if we are using a shovel to
fill up our compost machine. Once done, we can go out on the lawn. Start to spray the topdressing mix, and then start working
with the leveling rake. Now I'll show you how we're gonna do it. (dramatic music) (loader engine whirring) (gentle music)
(spreader engine whirring) All right guys, as you can see, the compost spreader is making quick work of getting the topdressing
mix out on the lawn. But if you're not using that, and you want to see the technique for using just a wheelbarrow,
shovel, and a leveling rake, perhaps a broom to get
a pretty good result, I'm gonna show you how to do that. This area, whenever it rains
heavily, water pools here. So we're gonna do a little
spot topdressing here. What I'm gonna do is I'm
gonna take my leveling mix. Just grab some here out of a shovel. I'm just gonna cast that down like that. I'll do another one, probably like do three shovel fulls here to kind of work that area. Because I know I'm
filling in a lower area, I don't mind going a little bit heavier. Probably just one more, we should be good. All right, kind of like that. So now what we're gonna do is you've got a couple of options. If all you have is a broom, you can use a broom to begin
moving the material around kind of like this to kind of work it in. You can use a broom as a means to work the leveling mix into the turf. You know, kind of allow it
to drop down in the canopy. But the real way, a great way to do this to get even better results,
and I think overall is easier, is to use one of these
guys, a leveling rake. Now I'll have a link in the description where you can pick one of these guys up, but literally this is
like a two-in-one tool. It acts kinda like a shovel in the sense that it moves the material
around very easily. And does a great job
of planing the material and getting a nice level result as you work it into the turf. So literally with this, you can see, I can just move material
around nice and easily. And as you can see, it
makes it nice and smooth. Not only is it getting rid of
any high spots and low spots, but the net result is very, very smooth when using a leveling rake. I absolutely highly
recommend one of these guys if you are doing a larger
topdressing project. Again, you can get decent
results with just using a broom, but if you want, you know, the best result with the least amount of effort, it's definitely worth
investing in one of these guys. And as you can see some
of the material there, that's all the compost
that's in the Soil3. Once we water that in, that's
going to break down nicely, help feed the soil. And we'll just keep working
it back and forth like this until it all disappears in. So I think I've done a pretty good job getting rid of that low spot. And you can see right here
where there's a lot of sand, that's where the water tends to settle when it rains heavily. So I think we've addressed the problem. Very cool. So we're gonna keep doing this. We're gonna keep filling it in. Something else I want to show you guys. You'll notice here that
we put Frisbees down over the sprinkler heads. While we were doing the
aerating we had the flags, but now when we're topdressing,
we're using Frisbees. Reason for that is we can run the topdressing machine
over it no problem. And what that prevents
is sand running down into where the sprinklers are. Because if sand gets down in there, it'll ruin your sprinkler. It tends to be kind of gritty. And what you'll find is
that the sprinkler head will begin to stick, it won't rotate. All kinds of bad things happen. So if you can pick these up on Amazon for I think it was like $6
or $7, not that expensive. I'll have links in the
description for these as well. They're actually like dog Frisbees. So definitely consider doing one of those if you have sprinklers in lawn. Let's get this job finished up. (energetic upbeat music continues) (upbeat music) All right, guys, so this is day two. We are, I don't know, a
couple of hours in to day two? What do you think Alex? I'll get closer so you can actually talk. - Yeah, hard work, but I
think it's all paying off. Everything's starting to even out. I think you're good. - Yeah, man. So let me show you guys what we got here. So again, this is two days worth of work. We already aerated, finished topdressing. And what you see around here. A lot of what's in like right around here, a lot of this brown you're seeing, that's a lot of the Soil3 compost. I really wanted to get this
area a little bit heavier because if you guys remember from we've over seeded
before with Arden 15, this area here is where
it didn't take as well. So I really want to get it a
lot of the organic material in this area, so we'll
see how that works out. Overall, you can see
how the coverage looks. Overall, you can see a
lot of the grass blades are still sticking through, and that's really what you want, right? We haven't watered this
in as yet or anything. And once we do that, it's
gonna settle a lot more. But what you're seeing here
is about what you're going for whenever you topdress. You can still see, you
know, sand going into a lot of the low areas, but there's still quite a
bit of grass sticking up. So you're not burying it. And again, this hasn't
been watered as yet, which will cause a lot of it to sink in. Now it's time for that bonus. If you guys watched until now,
you guys kind of earned it. So I'm gonna show you guys that bonus I was telling you guys about. All right guys, so a big part of also why I was so keen to topdress the lawn at this time of the year is to set up a good bed for Arden 15. I want to get a nice,
good application of it. There's no pre-emerge
on the lawn this year, so I just get really good germination. Now as far as how I've done this. I mix the Arden 15 seed with play sand. And you can actually see some footage now of me mixing it up. I take about a 50 pound bag of play sand and add the Arden 15 in there. Mix it up. So when I put this
down, when I apply this, it's not gonna blow all over the place. So what you're looking at here is about 15 pounds or so of Arden 15. And again, there's some play sand to kind of give it some body. As far as my spreader setting with this, I have it set to 10 on my Earthway. That produces a pretty
good setting that allows me to put down the seed at a good rate. I'm gonna make passes,
obviously lengthwise. And to and from the
house just to make sure we get great coverage. Let's get to it guys. All right, guys, so the
Arden 15 seed is down. I've lightly worked it into the turf using the leveling rake. The next step, and something
that's gonna help me with germination is to
put down some Hydretain. The hardest part of getting
Bermuda grass seed to grow in is keeping enough moisture on it. And by putting out some Hydretain, it's gonna help the
ground retain moisture. It can help the seed, the
root zone, maintain moisture. Which is gonna help me with germination. And we will be applying
this all over the back lawn. I probably got a little extra here, so I'll do the front, too. This stuff is what we're gonna
be putting down on the lawn. Now, the only trick with Hydretain, why I chose the granular,
is that it's less picky as far as when you have to water it in. And if you use the liquid Hydretain, as soon as you... The ground's gotta be moist, first of all. You got to put it down, and then you gotta water it in right away. With this one, literally
I can put it down, and I might get rain in a couple of days, I can wait for that. But this is a little bit more forgiving, which is why I decided to go with this. So let's get the Hydretain down and get this seed bed prepared. Well, as you guys can see,
it's a ton of work to do this. To aerate, put down the
Humic Max, the Essential-G, to topdress the lawn and seed it, and then put down all the other additives that help with germination. It's a ton of work, but
the lawn, I am positive, is gonna grow back really, really nicely. So if you guys are interested
in seeing how this develops, be sure to hit that subscribe
button if you haven't as yet. If you have any questions, leave
them in the comments below. And if you can't get
enough of topdressing, I'm gonna have a playlist right here that I'll put up on the screen right now, that's gonna have links to all
my other topdressing footage. Stuff from last year
when we did Alex's lawns. If you want to get some more tips in addition to what you
already learned today, be sure to click on that
playlist coming up next. Thank you so much for watching. I will see you in the next video. (cool music)
