- All right guys. So last week you saw
how to top dress a slope using nothing but organic material. This week, we're changing it up. I'm gonna show you how to
spot top dress a location using sand. Now, why are we going to
sand for this location, instead of going purely organic? Well, this area, if you take a look at it, gets a lot of wear and tear. Like it may not be easy
to make out on camera, but whatever Alex or I mow this spot, there's actually little ridges in here, like almost little laddering
that happens in here. And that's strictly due to wear. So while we could use organic
material to top dress this, sand is a much better medium,
because it tends to hold on to a leveling job a lot better than just purely organic material. In other words, it doesn't
break down as quickly. So let me show you what you're gonna need. So obviously we're
going to need some sand. If you wanna take a look
at what we've got here, this is not your standard play sand. This is what in Georgia,
we call it river sand. And what it is, it's a coarser material, it's a little bit coarser
than a than play sound. This is what you want. You don't want to use play
and to top dress your lawn. So we're using that. And then as an optional adder, what we also be doing is going to putting down some Essential G. I like to do that anytime
I'm top dressing a lawn, because it's always a great opportunity to introduce some organic
material, to help, you know, just feed the soil, and also help improve the
grass's ability to recover. So this doesn't have
nearly the nutrient value of a sand and soil mix,
or a purely organic mix. So we want to take this opportunity to add some organic material to the soil. We'll do that first, before we
actually get on to top dress. Now, as far as the rate that
I'm gonna be using for this, I'm gonna be running my
Earthway fairly wide open. The actual bag rate on
this calls for 14.5. The high rate is right at 23. So I'm running this I'm
right around 25 today, just because I want to get
down a nice heavy coat on it, so I have to make a bunch
of passes back and forth to build up a nice layer here. So let's do that now. (upbeat music) Now the Essential G's down. Now let's start actually get
to top dressing the lawn. All I'm going to do is
take one of these buckets and I'm literally just going
to just start laying it out. Kind of like what you guys saw in the video on leveling a slope. I'm going to leave some open area as I drop the material out. So something kind of like that. It will probably take a
little bit more than that, but we can start with that. And I'm going to take my leveling rake. There'll be a link in the description of where you can pick
one of these guys up. Be sure if you're gonna do
this, invest in a good one. Don't get like a cheap leveling rake, because the heavier ones do a better job, allowing the rake to do a lot of the work. So make sure you invest in a good rake. All right. So all we're going to do is first begin just getting the material spread out around the area around the vanity strip. And all you're going to see me doing now, I'm just gonna keep
working it back and forth until identify some low spots. Just keep working it in and out until we find low spots in the lawn. All right guys, and as you can see here. What I'm looking for is, this section here where my
part of the vantage trip starts is a little bit higher. So I'm really trying smooth this contour the transition between
Alex's lawn, and mine, out a bit. So now that we've got it worked in, now I'm gonna start dragging it, and try and expose some
of those grass blades. So I'm gonna start here and just drag it, and see what stays on the vanity strip. Literally, this is how we
really get that nice level, and we work the sand
into those little ridges that we had before. And actually, if you take a look here, you can see where there's sand, grass, sand, grass, sand,
grass, see it's very subtle. But this shows you when you leveling, how you're really filling in
those low areas in the lawn, and overall is going to
give you a smoother turf once it all goes back in. Let's put a little more sand down. Yeah. Same thing guys here, rinse and repeat. Again this area along the edge, where we tend to get that laddering is what I'm mainly targeting. So I wanna make sure I
get plenty of sand there. And then I'm going to drag it smooth to really do the leveling work. So right now it's just
behaving kind of like a shovel to move material around. I wanna make sure there's enough to actually do the leveling work. I'm actually a push a little bit more on top of this section
here I just leveled, and then we'll just drag it smooth. So again, we'll bring it all
the way back here, lay it down, allow the weight of the
rake to do most of the work, and just plant it and drag
it in nice and smoothly. You see right in here, all along the edge, that's taking quite a bit of sand. And the reason for that is this portion of the vanity strip is
mainly mowed with a True Cut, and those tractor tires have
the unfortunate side effect of creating a slight rut on the edges to both here and on this edge, so you can see there's
really like a low spot that's kind of burned in all along there. So we're trying to fix that too, along with leveling the laddering areas. So something to keep in mind. As you can see, the entire vanity strip is now
done, both Alex's and mine. I couldn't resist the urge. I was putting sand on his, and I figured why not do mine as well. Now, the thing you want
to keep in mind is, you see how light the sand is on the lawn? That's what you're going for. There are some people that will tell you that you can go ahead
and turn the entire thing into a beach, you know,
put down an inch of sand. And you can do that with
Bermuda and get away with it. It can work. But I prefer to go lighter
for a couple of reasons. One, the lawn is going
to recover a lot faster. You're also going to be
able to see the low areas of the lawn, so that you know that you're actually addressing the areas that are the problem spots. And then most importantly,
when you get a heavy rain, you're going to have less
chance of it running off, due to being too heavy on the lawn. So you really wanna, you know, get the material worked into the lawn so that it actually holds onto it. If you guys have not yet seen
the video that I did last week on how to top dress a slope, that time I only use organic material. Be sure to check that out. I'll have a video right
here that you can click on to watch that. Thank you so much for watching. I will see you next time. Have an amazing day.
