Planting a New Lawn Yourself

Planting a new lawn is a lot of work, but it pays off if it is done right. Following these basic steps will ensure that your lawn will turn out beautifully. Keep in mind that the best times of the years to do this is fall and spring.

The first thing you will want to do is to get a soil PH test kit from your local nursery. Make sure your soil is the right PH level to grow grass, if it's not, you may need to add lime to your soil. Talk to your local nursery for more information on that. Next, you will want to till your yard. If your yard is small enough, you can use something like a 7HP rototiller. This is what I used on my yard, and my yard is a 1/3 acre lot(including the house). It took me about 3-4 hours to do the entire yard. If your yard is bigger than mine, you should look at getting a tractor with a harley rake attachment.

All of this equipment can be rented at a local machine rental store. Once the tilling is done, you will want to rake the soil to smooth it out and fill low areas of the yard. You should also remove rocks and other debris from the ground. I recommend renting a landscape rake to do this step. It is much larger than a regular rake and will cut your work time down substantially.

Once the soil is smoothed out, you'll want to apply a starter fertilizer to the yard. DO NOT use a regular fertilizer, make sure it is a starter fertilizer. You can apply this with a spreader, so that it is evenly spread over the soil. Next, you will apply the grass seed the same way you applied the starter fertilizer. When choosing a grass seed, make sure it fits your area's climate and also pick a quality seed and not a cheap one, this will pay off later. You will have to deal with less weeds with a quality seed compared to a cheaper one.

Now that the seed and fertilizer is applied, you will now go over the area with a leaf rake. I recommend using the back of the leaf rake, and dragging it across the ground. This step is needed, because the seed needs to be about 1/8 inch under the soil to germinate correctly. Do not bury the seed too far, it won't grow.

We are now ready to water. This is probably the most important step. Your new yard should be watered twice a day for 10 minutes each time. Do not over water! Adjust your watering according to the weather forecast. Once the grass starts to grow, you can stop watering so frequently. At this point, you'll want to water once a day for about 20-30 minutes, so that the water goes deep and consequently the grass roots grow deep.

A good seed will take about 7-10 days to begin germinating. This information is available on the bag when you buy the seed. It's a good idea to keep some extra seed around just in case you have to patch up certain parts of the new lawn. That is all it takes to get a great looking lawn. Good luck!