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