# HomerGuy's new construction lawn (2021) in Michigan



## HomerGuy (Jun 5, 2017)

Hello all,

2021 was a busy year and I wanted to use this thread to memorialize my attempts at establishing a new construction lawn on approximately 73,000 non-irrigated square feet this past season. Cliffs note version…...It didn't go as well as I hoped  Now that winter is here and things have slowed down, I figured it might be fun to post how things went.

Back in 2017, we moved into a new construction home and I chronicled seeding a new lawn on this thread: https://thelawnforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=866. That lawn was approximately 35k sq ft of turf. We hired a landscaping company to install a paver patio, underground sprinklers, and do the seed bed prep. The landscaping company did a decent job of seed prep, but I still hand raked a lot before dropping a mixture of Award/Blueberry/Bewitched KBG. I seeded late into the year (Sept 17th to be exact) but lucked out with record setting warm weather that fall. I had what I considered excellent success. It did take a full growing season, but by the next fall, the 100% KBG turf looked amazing,

Fast forward a few years, and we found a vacant 5 acre parcel that we really liked, and built a new house on it. We moved into the new house in February 2021, with some of the exterior work such as concrete flatwork, wood staining, and final grading to be completed in the spring/summer.

With no irrigation, I elected to use a 90/10 TTTF KBG blend from Advanced Turf Supply hoping for faster germination and better drought performance than my 100% KBG previous lawn. I have to give a shout out to Jim at my local ATS. I'm definitely not his target customer, but he was super cool and helpful to work with while I priced out various options and let me walk around the warehouse to check seed labels.

The following is my timeline/story:


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## HomerGuy (Jun 5, 2017)

April
The previous owner of the property planted three rows of evergreen seedlings in one corner of the property. Clearly they intended to transplant these trees once they grew, because they were planted rather close together and were now growing into one another. The trees were planted along an east-west axis, and we got the idea to move them into a north-south axis to provide additional screening between our house and the neighbors. We met with a local tree moving company, and he suggested that we start thinning out the crop and find the best possible specimens to move.

May
Our property has a decent amount of topography, dropping about 30 feet in elevation in the from the front to the middle, then rising about 40 feet from the middle to the back. We had two good sized areas in the backyard that were fairly level. However, they were separated by a 3-4 foot deep swale. I decided that I wanted to link the two flat areas by filling in the swale with fill dirt. Drainage would not be negatively affected, and I thought it would make the backyard look much more cohesive and useable.

The search for free fill dirt had been ongoing pretty much all through construction of the home. Unfortunately, we simply live in too rural of an area to make free fill dirt economically feasible. No one was willing to deliver unwanted fill for free when they would pass 10 other closer spots on the way to us. If I lived in a more densely populated suburban area, I would have had thousands of yards of free fill available to me. So I started searching for fill dirt that I would pay for. The cheapest clean fill I could find was around $9 yard delivered. Doesn't sound terribly expensive, but when you need hundreds yards, that adds up real quick!

I stumbled across a place that was giving away topsoil screenings. If you aren't familiar with this material, it is all the crap that is left over when they make screened topsoil. The material was free and I just had to do was kick them some money to cover trucking. So I brought in 17 semi truck loads of topsoil screenings, which equated to about 400 cubic yards of material. The delivery process took multiple weeks, as the supplier would only bring it out when they had material to get rid of and the time to truck it.

Understandably, the driver was not willing to back down the big hill to dump the load in the backyard. This meant I had 17 semi loads of fill dirt in my front yard. I wish I would have taken more photos. Driving up to my house every night, all I could think of was that movie The Money Pit. "They testing missiles here or what?!?" LOL





+ 15 more loads


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## HomerGuy (Jun 5, 2017)

Early June
Spent two full days in a rented Cat 259D compact track loader moving the material into the back yard. I put 18 machine hours on the clock in two days, while my father in law ran my Kubota B2601 one of those days. The weather was super hot and I'm glad the machine had A/C. While it never got really cold in the cab, it was better than nothing. Work stopped when one of the tracks fell off the CTL and thankfully I was just about done at that point.

Home for a very bumpy & hot two days. Holy cow these things haze zero suspension on them.


FIL rocking the B2601. He was a lot slower in that machine than the CTL, but I'll bet he moved 20 yards of soil that day, and every bucket was one bucket closer to being done.


You can see the area we are filling in this photo.


Almost done!


Rut Roh!


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## HomerGuy (Jun 5, 2017)

July 4th
Had a baby girl!



August 1
Started thinning out the crop of evergreen trees in preparation for transplanting. We cut down about 20 trees in total. We would cut a few, reevaluate, then cut some more. It was a pretty slow go. I'd have to crawl into the trees with the chainsaw, shake a trunk or two to help identify the individual trees, and then my wife would stand outside and direct me which one to cut. I'd pull the cut ones out and then we would repeat the process. I'm happy to say that I think we only made one boo-boo where we cut down a tree that we shouldn't have. Had a nice fire to dispose of the cut down trees.


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## HomerGuy (Jun 5, 2017)

August 3
Poured additional concrete apron in front of the garage.







August 19-20
Final grading! The dozer operator did a really nice job and was able to soften a few areas that were super sloped. Of course I didn't get any photos of the bulldozer working.



Added some more crushed concrete to the drive


In the foreground you can see the fill dirt area. Turned out pretty good!


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## HomerGuy (Jun 5, 2017)

September
Began work to bury the downspouts. As I mentioned earlier, we have some significant slopes on the property, and I was already concerned about wash out of the future seed, so I decided to extend the downspouts to the edge of the turf areas whenever feasible. This added a lot of drainage pipe but I think it was the right thing to do. Got some good use out of the backhoe on my Kubota B2601.

Had 36 yds Topsoil delivered and 6 yds mulch. The intent was to use 24 of the 36 yards to cover over the fill material, and thankfully this driver was willing to drive down the slope to dump the topsoil right where I needed it. Used the 6 yards of mulch to rough in some landscape beds around the house.

Also cleared a big pile boulders/rock out of the way and piled it in a corner of my property.


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## HomerGuy (Jun 5, 2017)

September 28
Now it was time to hit the seed prep in earnest. I've lived in south east Michigan my entire life, and the soil at our new house is unlike anything I have experienced at any previous residence. It is very sandy with lots of rocks/stones. I actually found out that the neighboring property was used as a miniature sand and gravel quarry many years ago. Needless to say I have lots of rocks. Like never ending amount of rocks.



The finish grade was pretty good but obviously needed some touch up. My original plan was to rent a track loader with a harley rake for seed prep. Factoring in rental, delivery, and pickup, I was looking at over $1k+ to rent the machine for 2 days. However, my previous rental experience left me a little gun shy. I hated being under the gun to get things done with the time crunch of a rented machine. I just like having equipment at my disposal, to use when I want to use it. So instead of the harley rake, I went looking for an implement I could use with my Kubota B2601. I found a used ABI Attachments TR3 rake on Facebook marketplace for a good price and purchased it. It is probably one size too big for my Kubota B2601, but it was a good price and I couldn't pass it up. I then spent $300 in parts adding rock teeth to the TR3. These teeth replace the straight cutting edge on the box blade with teeth to help sort the rock from the soil. Side note…..ABI Attachments was super good to work with. Prior to using the implement, I watched the instructional videos on Youtube showing how to use the TR3 rake. There were a few tidbits that I totally missed or mis-understood that would have made my life a little easier. It wasn't until I spoke to one of their tech support guys who had extensive personal experience using the TR3 for seed prep that it all came together for me. This unfortunately resulted in some wasted time, but I learned from it.

Rock teeth for the TR3...thought it was cool how they came nested together. Super heavy duty.


Making the initial passes in the back yard.


I also ran into some new, inexperienced owner tractor issues. I had the stabilizer arms on the three point set too loose, and the 700 pound TR3 rake hanging off the back came swinging around as I made a turn on a side slope and bent one of the stabilizer arms. The bent arm didn't seem to impact operations, so I kept using the tractor. I kept on until the bent stabilizer arm literally broke in two where it had bent previously. Of course the stabilizer broke while turning on the side slope, and with the stabilizer arm broken, the implement was free to swing to the downhill side, and wedged itself against my rear tire. Unfortunately I didn't realize that till I took a few chunks out of the rear tire. Oops. Made an emergency 45 minute drive to the one Kubota dealer that had the part I needed (arriving 10 minutes before they closed) and I was back in business.



More progress


Front yard is getting there....notice all the rocks


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## HomerGuy (Jun 5, 2017)

October 2
"Finished" with the seed prep. Now, I'm not saying that that the seed bed was ready and in good condition. I'm saying that I was finished. It was super late in the season, my back was against the wall weather wise, and I just didn't have any more time & energy to throw at it. Prep was a much more time consuming task than I anticipated on such a large area, and in the end I ended up with something that I hoped was good enough. There was just so much square footage to cover it was honestly daunting.

During the seed prep, I used a combination of implements on my tractor. The TR3 did an awesome job at smoothing the ground. It took practically no skill whatsoever to make a nice smooth surface. Adjust the ripper shanks and length of the top link, and then you just drag it behind the tractor. It took much less time and skill to produce a nice result than it did with my box blade. With the rock teeth I added to the TR3, it also did a really good job of picking out the bigger rocks without picking up the soil. With my rocky soil, it seems like there is a fine line between scraping up rocks vs trying to scrape all of the rocks (which is futile). I also tried a landscape rake, and while that did a better job of picking up the smaller rocks, it unfortunately it also pulled a lot of soil with it. Not that I was overly worried about trying to conserve soil, but I realized that if you collect a large volume of soil/rock, that large volume then needs to be moved somewhere. Scooping it up with the loader and driving it to the corner of the property isn't hard, but time consuming. So I mostly stuck with the TR3 as it did a much cleaner job of separating rock from soil.

It could be very frustrating at times. There were multiple times that just as I felt I was getting close to being done in an area, more crap would come up to the surface. Pretty demoralizing when after hours of working an area, I'd be making my last pass or two, feel a monster bump, and look behind me to see that I just pulled up a basketball sized rock and a brick. Ugh!



In the end, the whole area could have benefitted from a hand rake to pick up the smaller stuff. I've attached a few pictures of the finished result in what I would consider the worst of the worst area. This particular area of 5k sq ft started off with so many rocks it was unbelievable. This area isn't anywhere close to what I would consider "ready" for seed, but I felt like my back was against the wall and I needed something for erosion control given the slope and sandy soil combination.









I decided to drop the seed. Here is the the forecast from the National Weather Service Facebook page on 10/2 @ 5:35am: *High temperatures return to about 10 degrees above normal today and hold mainly in the 60s tonight. Low pressure moves into the Great Lakes while spreading rain showers west to east into SE Michigan this evening. There is a low chance of sub-severe thunderstorms. Showers continue off and on through Sunday with a rumble of thunder possible.*

Not shabby, right? Since I don't have irrigation, I needed mother nature's help to water the seed, so I rolled the dice and dropped 450 lbs of TTTF the afternoon of 10/2. It started to sprinkle about an hour after I finished dropping the seed. I was relieved to have the seed down and the light sprinkle made me feel like all was right in the world.

Now I didn't seed everything. The fill dirt area never got prepped or seeded and the 24 yards of topsoil are sitting under tarps currently. It is at the back edge of the lawn area and I just didn't have time to get to it. Noticing a theme here?


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## HomerGuy (Jun 5, 2017)

October 3
Woke up to the following forecast from the NWS Facebook 10/3 @ 4:58am
*A slow moving low pressure system will bring widespread moderate to heavy rainfall to southern Michigan today and tonight. There is a chance of thunderstorms with this system and though these storms are not expected to be severe, any storms will help to enhance rainfall rates and totals.*

I read that and immediately thought……WTF?!? Rather than sit around the house all day and commiserate, we decided to go on a little day trip adventure. Came home to find that 1.5" of rain fell…...Total carnage. Areas of major washout.



Sorry no more photos.....It felt like rubbernecking at a fatal accident.

I'm sure you are asking yourself, why didn't this mope put down any sort of erosion control? I ask myself the same. The answer is frankly time, money, and acceptable level of risk. I could spend $1k+ on erosion control blankets and hours installing them and it still wouldn't cover all of the areas I needed to, and who knows if it could have withstood the torrential rain we had. So I rolled the dice and lost that round.


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## HomerGuy (Jun 5, 2017)

October 14
Tree moving commences. It was a terribly wet fall for us and the tree moving truck kept getting stuck. They were only able to move 5 of the 10 trees in 5 hours before they threw in the towel and decided to wait for things to dry up.













October 18
In a panic, I went back to Advanced Turf and purchased 200 lbs of PRG to seed the washout areas, in the hopes to get some quick germination in the heavy washout areas. I also purchased a used cultipacker/seed bed roller for my tractor and ran over the whole yard with the cultipacker after dropping the PRG. Also put down 15 bales of EZ-Straw (I know….I know…..weed seeds!). Admittedly this whole PRG endeavor was a shot in the dark and had a low probability of success, but it seemed worthwhile to try.


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## HomerGuy (Jun 5, 2017)

November 11
We finally lucked out with a spell of dry, warm weather late in the season, and the tree moving company came back to complete the job.











January 2022
So where are we today? I honestly had decent germination given all of these issues. It's not great, and there are large portions that will need to be re-worked due to the erosion, but it isn't a complete lost cause either. There are some large areas that never got prepped & seeded that will need to be done next year, and the tree moving tore up some areas I had seeded. And of course I will need to re-do some areas that were washed out.

What would I do differently? Hard to say exactly, but I think the core of my issues stem from the fact that I frankly bit off more than I could chew. New house, new baby, new tractor & implements to learn, new topography to learn. It all just added up to be just too much. Looking back, I should have put the downspouts in, concentrated my seed bed prep on the 15k front yard, and dropped PRG/TTTF over the bulldozer rough grade everywhere else. Then I could have worked in sections in future years. But hindsight is always 20/20 and without the benefit of hard experience.

Looking back, I do wonder how well a harley rake would have done with these smaller rocks. I don't have any personal experience with them, but I am told you still need to plan a hand rake after the harley rake anyways.

I also think I should have purchased the cultipacker/seed bed roller earlier in the process and rolled everything after the initial seed down. I did use it after I added the PRG, and it is clear that it helped with germination/washout as there are many areas where I can see the lines of germinated grass in the soil where the cultipacker cut slits.

And that's it for me. Unfortunately I didn't think to grab any photos before the snow hit showing the extent of the germination. To be continued in the spring…..


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## bernstem (Jan 16, 2018)

That is a huge project and turned out well all things considered. Lack of an irrigation system is challenging. There is a reason so many people sod new lawns. Honestly, I think that your plan to get grass into the soil to stabilize it was good and worked well. While not ideal, a spring seeding with PRG may be worth the risk to get some coverage in the bare areas. Once you have a lawn established, work on leveling if needed and plan a renovation if you don't like what you have. With grass already established, you won't have run-off issues and will have time to address any remaining issues. I have seeded a 5k area of bare dirt and done a few renovations. The renovations after killing an already established lawn were much easier. The dead turf holds the peat moss and seeds nicely. If you do have bare areas you need to seed, seeding blankets work well on bare soil to hold things in place.

Looking forward to pictures when the snow melts. If you can find the budget, definitely invest in irrigation. While less critical in Michigan than some other areas, water still remains the most important factor in a healthy lawn. Having pulled off this project, you can certainly pull off a self-installed irrigation system.


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## HomerGuy (Jun 5, 2017)

@bernstem Thanks for the words of encouragement.

I am planning Irrigation in the front yard and areas immediately adjacent to the house on the sides and back. Not planning to do everything. I actually have a contractor selected, but I've used him before and know he is a bit of a bull in a china shop. He does good work at a good price, but when he shows up to work, he is going to work whether you are ready or not. And I didn't feel like I knew enough about where we would locate our landscaping, deck, etc.

You bring up a good point about the PRG in the spring. I probably should throw out some PRG in the bare spots with minimal prep, just see what happens to stop erosion, and then start focusing on manageable areas in the fall.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

Do you know the organic matter of the soil? If low, i would suggest trying to incorporate compost now. Don't expect an awesome yard right away if the soil if mostly fill material.


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## bernstem (Jan 16, 2018)

To add on to g-man's post. Depending on your lawn goals, a soil test may be a good idea. If you do want to start increasing organic matter, incorporating compost at the time of seeding is the best way. For an established lawn, though, you are limited to top dressing 1-2 times per year (consider combining the top dressing with core aeration). Of the things you can do to build for the future, fixing the pH, P, and K with a soil test and building good healthy soil (e.g. with compost) are up there as the most valuable.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

One thing I forgot to add. I think the washout is a blessing in disguise. Now you know the trouble areas and the water flow path. The question is, do you like it? Do you need to regrade or add more fill to change the flow path?

Now the snow will also tell you what ares have dips that should get more smooth.

As far as seeds, i like the prg for these new construction. It helps with erosion control. I do think you should mix some KBG too just for the repair ability.


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## HomerGuy (Jun 5, 2017)

@g-man @bernstem I did not do a soil test. Not that I don't believe in it, or think they don't offer valuable information, but I just don't have the resources to correct any noted deficiencies on such a large area. In the future I can see myself maintaining the front yard with a high level of input, with the remaining receiving low input levels. I'll probably do some soil tests this spring just to see where I'm at.

I wouldn't be surprised if the OM is low. The soil is just so darn sandy/gravely. During construction, we were able to strip off the topsoil, stockpile it out of the way, and then re-spread it on the front yard so I think that area would come back with decent OM. But I suspect the rest is low. I did look into bringing in some compost, but at $25/yd and with such a large area, I just can't afford to spend several thousands of dollars on it. I'm going to have to try to improve the OM through root cycling and mulching.

I used a 90% TTTF 10% KBG mix at my initial seed so I did have some KBG in there to begin with. How much of that germinated or got washed away is unknown at this point. I think the immediate plan in the spring will be PRG to control erosion and then I'll do more in depth work in the fall.

The point about identifying the water flow paths is important. I did have a few surprises where I thought the water would sheet flow evenly across the slope, but it has definitely channeled itself in a few spots more than I expected. Also one spot in the front yard is going to be an issue. When we started spray painting out the landscape beds, we ended up with a significantly different design than originally planned, and that is now right in the middle of a major flow path. The water is already washing away the mulch as it flows through. It's perfect example of a situation in which I knew about ahead of time, but just ran out of time to address it.

I'm glad I didn't proceed with irrigation this past fall. We just weren't ready, and I would have been ripping out sections to re-do the grade, move landscape beds, etc.


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## HomerGuy (Jun 5, 2017)

Got a phone call out of the blue from someone offering me free, clean fill dirt. Possibly 250 yards or more, which would help me soften a few more areas. I plowed the snow off a portion of the yard so they have a place to dump it. Not the most ideal time of year to take delivery, but beggars can't be choosers. Hopefully it shows up this week.


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## HomerGuy (Jun 5, 2017)

The free fill dirt back in February never materialized. However I was able to get some more delivered. This is the first of 7 loads that came in so far.



Also started planting a few extra landscape trees.



May 22nd: I decided to focus on the front yard this spring. Brought in some topsoil to fill in the washed out areas, and then seeded the whole front yard again.







Also filled in this washed out area on the side of the house. You can see how rocky my soil is.



June 19th: First cut! Amazing how quickly this TTTF establishes compared to the KBG I am used to.





Lots of weeds to deal with, and still some thin areas, but at this point I am just excited to look out my window and see green grass and not brown dirt! Only about 60k SF to go, but who is counting? :lol:


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