Many years ago, my parents bought a house that had no topsoil and a very rocky yard. The rocks were about the size of average sized and smaller potatoes. We had many little “camp fires” over the first years and we burned many sticks and yard waste during the cleanup. My mother worked hard and cleaned up the rocks and her and my dad turned that yard into something much nicer than the “rock festival” they started with. To this day, the retaining wall my dad built still stands and hasn’t moved and the lawn is still nice. A tribute to them both.
Something I noticed was that the spots where we had a “camp fire” the grass would grow and was very bright green a few weeks later. It became evident to me that there was something to this burning and appearance of nice green grass following the burn. I later discovered that it was a release of nutrients from the woods and yard waste that were being made available to the grass that was growing where the fires had been.
Flash forward to about ten years ago, I remembered this effect that the fires had been having on the ground before and decided to try an experiment. I started dumping the ashes from my fireplace onto my lawn and the grass did exceptionally well. About a year after I slowly dropped off doing this, the lawn reverted back to it’s less than strong state of being nice and green. The weeds came and I just was happy mowing green weeds rather than just having dead grass. Eventually, the weeds also died from a lack of water and it all turned crunchy and brown.
The next event for my yard was the 4th of July about 3 years ago. The neighbors threw a block party and the fireworks were a hit. In fact, one hit my crunchy brown grass and some of it burned. It wasn’t a big deal though. I decided to burn the rest of the lawn off because I had recalled the effect that the ashes had. This later made for a nice lawn for while and I enjoyed that green once again.
Moving forward another year or so…I left the country for a year and my lawn suffered terribly and the weeds came in with a vengeance. I had a landscaper moving my “lawn” to keep it under control and to stop it from turning into a small field of hay but it was full of crab grass and was in terrible shape as far as weeds and sickly grass upon my return.
Knowing that the burning and the ashes and nutrients had helped my lawn and killed weeds, I recently decided that it was time to pass the torch over the lawn once again. And so it was. After a few days, I decided that burning wasn’t enough and I decided to really give my yard a boost. I brought in a tractor and scraped off what turned out to be only about 2 inches of poor quality topsoil and below that, was a sandy bottom. It’s no wonder my poor grass had been having such a hard time staying healthy and green. I couldn’t keep it watered most of the time and I now knew why.
Ahh…the sound of the dump truck beeping as it backed up to my yard must have been music to the future grass seedlings. I’m sure they were anxious to get out of the seed bag on into the ground. The beeping truck dropped thirteen yards of fresh topsoil where that lawn once suffered and the new yard installation had begun. I spread that dirt around and worked it for what must have been two or three hours. It wasn’t hard work mind you, I had a tractor. Maneuvering it was a pain in the….never mind. Anyway, I got the dirt spread out and put some fertilizer and grass seed on it and waited…..I kept looking at it and just wasn’t satisfied with how it laid out in the yard. It was lumpy and I really really wanted to fix it with the tractor but I just kept thinking that I didn’t really have enough dirt to spread it around properly and the tractor was a bit too big for the job at the hands of a newbie…
The clock ticked and the days went by and the lumps of the lawn just sat there….lurking. ghaaaa! I couldn’t take it and decided that the lawn must be leveled! But how? That same day a friend told me about a product that was an incredible fertilizer. It’s called “Tagro” and is a product that comes from a local city water treatment plant. In it’s most basic element, it’s “Humanure”…yeah…people dook….I know, gross, but it’s said to be an amazing fertilizer and it capable of making your grass grow like no other fertilizer can. I have ordered a truckload of this crap and we’ll see just how good it really is….
It’s supposed to arrive on Turdsday…I mean Thursday and for now, I must move my existing topsoil to the side, dig out a few inches of the sandy bottom of my yard and drop the dook dirt into place and mix it all together and see what happens….and figure out how to level it all out too. I’m rubbing my hands together and laughing in a sinister way……mwuhahaha
….More to come.
….one day later
I decided to tackle the lumps. After all, I have a truckload of fertilizer coming and it might be a good idea to have figured out a way to spread the stuff around without tearing the yard to pieces…again. Sooo, I decided to make a drag. In my case, a drag is a piece of farm fencing with a metal pipe woven into the end of the trailing edge of the fence. The fence is about 3 and half feet long and 4 feet wide. I tied a couple of ropes to the leading edge and to the back of my quad. I laid it out flat and dragged it around and around for a while over the lumpy yard and presto! The lumps are gone. The yard is smoothed out now and it’s all nice and pretty.
Tomorrow….the fertilizer comes.
So the Fertilizer “Tagro” arrived a few days ago and it was very stinky! In fact, it was so bad that I was convinced I had made a mistake. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get past the odor but now things have subsided. The odor has declined to a faint hint of what it was in the beginning and it’s smoothed out and seeded in the front yard as I wanted…I also gave some away to my neighbor as an act of goodwill and a way to not waste the waste by just pushing the remainder over the hill. Now we wait for the seeds to grow.
Next step, A driveway.
Rowland Ramble - 