My Recent Lawn Renovation Project

Hey all,

Northeast – Long Island, NY

Figured I'd post a little rundown on what I did this past month to renovate my lawn, since it looks like it's working pretty well.

A little background:

Basically, I had been trying to rehabilitate my lawn (Approx. 4000sqft) for the past 3 seasons. Unfortunately, due to not having consistent watering combined with the ridiculously hot and dry summers here on Long Island, it went by the wayside this past summer and I threw in the towel and decided to do a complete renovation from scratch.

Prep:

The 'lawn' was a complete weedy dried-out mess, so my first step was to nuke it all with glyphosate. I started this early so I was in no rush and gave it a good 21 days for everything to completely die. Then I did a second pass for any stragglers.

I used a SunJoe scarifier to first remove most of the dead material, and raked it up. Next, I used a SunJoe Tiller (not sure of the brand actually). The tiller helped me turn up and aerate the current soil.

I then raked up and smoothed out the freshly tilled dirt and made sure to painstakingly walk around and pull any remaining weeds. Remember, this is a 4000sqft area, so it's not small! All this was done by hand.

Soil Delivery:

I had 15 yards of soil delivered, calculating roughly 1/4" of topsoil around the entire area. I used a wheel cart to shovel the soil and spread out small piles of soil evenly throughout the lawn. Then I spread everything out evenly and tried to identify most of the dips and holes and fill them in. This whole process took a few days.

Seed and Fertilizer:

I ordered TTTF/Bluegrass mix from Ryan Knorr. I had used some of his seed for another project and was happy with it, so even though it's quite pricey, I decided to go with it. I ordered 2 25lb bags.

Before seeding I threw down some Milorganite and starter fertilizer the same day as seeding.

After spreading all the seed evenly, I started the watering process.

It's a bit of a pain in the ass watering my front because I don't have built-in sprinklers, so I have do the good ol' hose drag a few times a day. What makes things complicated is my one sprinkler can't cover the whole 4000sqft so I have to water one side and then move it.

We are in Day 10 now and the growth is looking like it's doing well.

I am not a pro and not even sure if everything I did was correct, basically relying on this sub and youtube videos to figure shit out. It was a lot of work but looking like it was well worth it when I look out and see that beautiful green growth 🙂

Feel free to ask questions if you're interested, thanks for reading.