Building a lawn from scratch

[supafamous]

Anyone here build a lawn from scratch? Raccoons totally destroyed my yard over the winter and I'm doing research on whether to start from scratch or to just get new sod on it. My dad redid his front yard himself so he's offered to work with me to redo it and I have decent amount of free time. The underlying soil quality isn't great from what I can gather (my previous lawn was super patchy).

[Hondaracer]

Imo sod is trash and not a long term solution unless it’s installed and maintained absolutely perfectly

Imo the strongest lawn needs drainage and then seeding

It looks like you might have a sump in that back left corner, if you really wanted to go crazy you could tie in some perforated pipe, and lay out like an H of drainage that drains into the sump. Cover the pipe with gravel, landscape cloth, lay down a nice base of 50/50 washed sand and soil and then seed and seed and seed

This is gonna be a multi year process but it will yield a lawn that will last. Sod, raccoons and crows are just going to destroy again.

Also start doing whatever the best thing is to remove those chafer grubs

[Traum]

Don't have a recommendation specifically about which route would be more suitable for you, but I've been growing patches of grass here and there on my lawns for the past 3 years, so here are a couple observations I've noticed from my own experience that would only apply to growing my own lawn.

1. I always start as early as I can (and this year, I sowed the seeds ~3 weeks ago in early March). This is weather-dependent, of course, but I need enough time for the grass to grow before the sunny and dry weather sets in. IMO it takes at least 3 months for the newly grown grass to be thick and dense enough to have any chances of surviving through to next year.

The problem is, growth is quite slow, and during the initial "baby period", the newly grown grass is high maintenance in the sense that they are both pretty frail and are pretty sensitive to the amount of moisture that is available to it through the soil. Too much rain means there is not enough sun, and then they don't grow. Not enough rain either means there is not enough sun, or there is too much sun and the soil dries out, so again they don't grow.

They are picky little bastards.

2. By May / June, the newly grown grass are gonna start looking unhealthy again bcos they don't have enough water. By June / July they are gonna brown out and die. Grass lawns are insanely water-intensive, and with the lawn watering restrictions that we have every year, lawns just turn brown every year. If the newly grown lawn isn't mature and strong enough by the time the dry weather starts arriving, they are not growing back the next year. I pretty much lost most of my newly grown patches this way in my 1st year of lawn grown bcos of this.

3. Once the water usage restrictions hit, you can only use an automatic sprinkler at some ungodly early wee hours once a week during the weekend. A similar rule applies for manual watering. No lawn is gonna grow from scratch with that little watering when the weather starts drying out.

I think you can purchase a lawn watering exemption licence from the City, but even that only affords a pretty minimal amount of extra watering time.

4. Get good bulk soil from a proper gardening place if you want the grass to grow well, and your lawn to look good. None of the pre-packaged soil from any of the standard big box stores are good. In fact, they are all crap. Their so-called garden top soil is mixed with so much sticks, wood chips, and mulch that those junk can take up anywhere between 20 - 40% of the bag. Those may work well for growing shrubs or something (I dunno -- that's just my guess), but for grass, they are horrible in my experience. The grass really doesn't grow well when the non-soil junk ratio gets high.

The quality of the soil within the same brand is also lacking -- the bag of Vigoro or Scotts soil that you buy 3 months ago could be very different than the bag you buy 3 months later (in terms of the mixture of soil and crap). The consistency only exists within the same batch of soil.

That is to say -- if I buy 6 bags of Scotts premium black earth at the same time, I can expect the contents of those 6 bags to be largely the same. But the next 6 bags of Scotts premium black earth that I buy 3 months later would not have the same mixture ratio.

And this applies to all the different brands that I've tried -- Vigoro, Scotts, Miracle-Gro, Crappy Tire / Superstore specials.

5. My immediate area seems to attract / have a lot of birds -- I really enjoy their presence. The flip side is -- I'm sure those guys eat up at least 50% of the grass seeds that I sowed. My kid and I get a good laugh out of it every time we see them pecking away on the soil, and we laughed a lot from this LOL~

In your case if you decide to grow your own thing, you'd definitely want to put up some sort of nesting to discourage / prevent racoons from digging up your lawn again -- at least during the growing period. IMO, nesting is not going to deter birds from pecking away at the seeds though.

[sonick]

I used beneficial nematodes last summer for grub prevention to avoid my lawn getting dug up by crows and racoons and it worked wonderfully.

I didn't treat my front lawn and it got torn up but my backyard was untouched.

I suggest getting bulk yards of good quality top soil from landscaping centres you will probably need to level it out. Get a sand mix for additional drainage.

Get good quality seed, starter fert which is higher in phosphorous.

Also suggest getting a mail-in soil test analysis so you know for sure what levels of fertilizer you need.

[Hondaracer]

Costco is by far the best deal on seed. You get double the seed for the same price as Home Depot.

Also imo, that coated seed is actually worth it and not just a gimmick, in my experience it grows wayyyy better/thicker

This old hippy landscaper I used to work with had a saying, you seed 3 times. One for the birds, one for the wind, and one for the grass. In terms of how much seed you’re actually tossing down

[supafamous]

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

Imo sod is trash and not a long term solution unless it’s installed and maintained absolutely perfectly

Imo the strongest lawn needs drainage and then seeding

It looks like you might have a sump in that back left corner, if you really wanted to go crazy you could tie in some perforated pipe, and lay out like an H of drainage that drains into the sump. Cover the pipe with gravel, landscape cloth, lay down a nice base of 50/50 washed sand and soil and then seed and seed and seed

Yep, we have a sump on both sides so it's an option - drainage doesn't seem to be much of a problem for us though (our neighbour who has an identical house does have a drainage problem but it's from the neighbouring yards that are draining into his yard. This is probably way more work than I'd want to do though pops has experience with that kind of stuff.

Originally Posted by Traum

Get good bulk soil from a proper gardening place if you want the grass to grow well, and your lawn to look good. None of the pre-packaged soil from any of the standard big box stores are good. In fact, they are all crap. Their so-called garden top soil is mixed with so much sticks, wood chips, and mulch that those junk can take up anywhere between 20 - 40% of the bag. Those may work well for growing shrubs or something (I dunno -- that's just my guess), but for grass, they are horrible in my experience. The grass really doesn't grow well when the non-soil junk ratio gets high.

Thanks, my neighbour did a pallet of bagged soil to patch his lawn and I don't think it worked well and my back of napkin says I probably need 6-9 cubic yards of dirt/sand (2-3 inches) which probably does mean buying proper stuff.

Originally Posted by Traum

In your case if you decide to grow your own thing, you'd definitely want to put up some sort of nesting to discourage / prevent racoons from digging up your lawn again -- at least during the growing period. IMO, nesting is not going to deter birds from pecking away at the seeds though.

I think I'll do a blend of micro clover and regular grass plus the nematodes treatment going forward. We probably could have avoided the problem in the first place if we used micro clover in the first place but my wife didn't want it so here we are.

Originally Posted by sonick

Also suggest getting a mail-in soil test analysis so you know for sure what levels of fertilizer you need.

Any suggestions on who to send it in to? I started looking but the ones I've seen seem like they only do industrial testing and not consumer testing.

[SSM_DC5]

My lawn looks almost like that. I probably help bring down property value in my area.

[sonick]

I got this test kit from Amazon https://a.co/d/4dXoe6f

First time trying this one, the other one I used last year shutdown unfortunately but it was quite useful. Hoping this new one is just as good.

[supafamous]

Ok, looked further into it and thought about the advice here and I'm gonna do a re-seed by myself. Rip out the existing turf, do a soil test, put a new layer of top dressing on top (from a quality source), and I'm going to plan a different blend (https://www.westcoastseeds.com/produ...=8709232328764) that's chafer beetle resistant and much lower maintenance than regular grass (less water, less fertiliser, and less mowing). Wife finally agreed to a non-standard lawn and will accept clover as the alternative was a browned out lawn during the summer.

Pops got his rototiller fixed up so I can get the soil ready this week if the rain eases up.

[Hondaracer]

Originally Posted by sonick

I got this test kit from Amazon https://a.co/d/4dXoe6f

First time trying this one, the other one I used last year shutdown unfortunately but it was quite useful. Hoping this new one is just as good.

What did the other one provide you back?

Like was it something you could understand in terms of amending the soil appropriately?

[sonick]

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

What did the other one provide you back?

Like was it something you could understand in terms of amending the soil appropriately?

Yes these were my results

https://app.rxsoil.ca/kit/ca-001014

You mainly look at phosphorous and potassium. Nitrogen varies too much by external factors and is generally something you add on a regular basis

You take the guide of how many pounds of NPK each, and find the right fertilizer mix to fertilize the lawn with. In my case I needed to find something about 3 parts nitrogen to 1 part phosphorous to 1.5 parts potassium.

[unit]

if it's such a problem maybe consider just getting rid of grass altogether? thats definitely my long term plan

[Hondaracer]

To replace that square of lawn with something most people would deem “acceptable” and prep, compact, and purchase the fake turf, even a small area like that is probably $6000+

When you actually go look at the products out there, only the top third are a quality that even resembles grass. Which is why most people opt to battle a regular grass lawn over and over again, im guilty of it as well lol

[sonick]

Ya last year I made a point to try to rejuvenate my backyard lawn to see how successful I would be, and if not I would just plan to nuke it with something lower maintenance.

Time and cost of it was less difficult than I anticipated and the results were decent enough that I've decided to continue on for this year. Its not golf course or professional lawn but it was equal if not better than most.

Based on research my rough schedule last year was this:

Spring
- lime (early march, 1 month before overseeding)
- corn gluten pre-emergent (late March/mid April, applied wet and few days of dry)
- dethatch (early April)
- overseed (mid April)
- beneficial nematodes (early April 10 deg soil temperature)
- fertilizer

Summer:
- killex weed killer (above 19 degrees)

Fall:
- lime (early September)
- aerate (early September)
- corn gluten (early September)
- overseed (late September)
- fertilizer

[unit]

yeah for me i wouldnt choose turf i would choose some sort of mulch/rock garden with some perennials in there.

[supafamous]

Originally Posted by unit

if it's such a problem maybe consider just getting rid of grass altogether? thats definitely my long term plan

In my case I'd like a natural lawn (or similar) for the look and use - eventually we'll make it more like a garden but that's as my kid grows up and stops wanting stuff like the bouncy castle to be out all the time.

I'm hoping the seed mix I'm getting (which is a mix of wildflowers, clover, and grass) provides enough beetle and drought resistance that I have a usable lawn this summer and for a few more summers. After 2030 I figure more of the yard will turn into a garden (the seed mix is designed to grow into that too).

[Mikoyan]

I filled in/reseeded my chafer beetle attacked lawn with micro clover/creeping fescue mix and it's held up well against the beetles over the last few years. I still do get the occasional spot dug up by skunk/racoon/crow, but they're loonie sized spots, rather than the large turf chunks it used to be.