# Drainage question



## Erichnagle (Jan 17, 2021)

Not sure if this is the right spot to ask but worth a shot.

I have clay soil. I redid my lawn last year and put in Tifftuff. It did well but I'd like to make sure it does better in the future. That being said, I also have a lot of water issues. I've installed a French drain and that alleviated most of my problems but if it rains multiple days in a row the water just can't soak into the clay. I was wondering if adding something like humic acid would help with this? I've also seen that I could add gypsum? Or is my best bet to just level my lawn with sand and aerate and let the sand work it's way down to hopefully help with drainage down the line??

Thanks!


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## Mightyquinn (Jan 31, 2017)

@Erichnagle I moved this over to the Landscaping sub-forum as it's more relevant over here.

I don't think Humic will be your best bet to cure your problem. I think aerating and sand will do wonders and you might also want to look into using a wetting agent like Panterra to help move the water down.

I would post some pictures of the affected area as we might be able to come up with another solution to your problem. Having a healthy thick growing lawn will do wonders at breaking up that clay too as the roots will drive through the soil but that will take years to see any results.


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## bernstem (Jan 16, 2018)

I agree with Mightyquinn. Aerate as deep as you reasonably can with a hollow tine aerator. Remove the cores and sand top dress. Adding a wetting agent that helps with water infiltration will also help.


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## Erichnagle (Jan 17, 2021)

Mightyquinn said:


> @Erichnagle I moved this over to the Landscaping sub-forum as it's more relevant over here.
> 
> I don't think Humic will be your best bet to cure your problem. I think aerating and sand will do wonders and you might also want to look into using a wetting agent like Panterra to help move the water down.
> 
> I would post some pictures of the affected area as we might be able to come up with another solution to your problem. Having a healthy thick growing lawn will do wonders at breaking up that clay too as the roots will drive through the soil but that will take years to see any results.


Awesome thank you! Here are some pics after a heavy rain. I had some moss growing along the fence and very little grass coming out of dormancy over there mostly weeks. Maybe filling in the lower spots will help push water towards the French drain better but other than that I'm not too sure.

I was thinking about possibly adding some plants to the fence line that would soak up the water but I'm not too sure what would go best there.


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## Mightyquinn (Jan 31, 2017)

I would aerate those areas and add some sand to help bring them up and push the water to where it can drain off. You could probably get away with a few bags of play sand from Lowe's or Home Depot. You will also need to buy a hand aerator too. Just use the back side of a rake or a push broom to smooth everything out and work the sand down into the canopy of the grass.


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