Near the bottom of this page are two examples of New Lawn installations.

Equation for Success

= Healthy Lawn

There are many factors that may cause your lawn to become unhealthy:

Shallow Roots cause a lawn to turn brown in the summer, or to require extensive watering to keep it green. Shallow roots can be caused by soil type (clay or rocky soil) in combination with surface feeding with a fertilizer having an abundance of phosphorous in it.

When a fertilizer with a relatively high percentage of phosphorous is applied to the surface, it promotes root growth...near the surface. I've seen lawns which have been fed repeatedly with 16-16-16 and the roots are dense in the top 1/2 inch of soil. Those lawns begin to turn brown after only a brief hot/dry spell.

Clay soil can also cause shallow roots in lawns because clay particles are flat, and flat particles lie like sheets of stacked paper, which is difficult to penetrate by delicate lawn roots. I have seen lawns which were installed with a compost/soil/sand mixture over the clay or rocky soil and the new sod (or seed) planted on that. Then what happens is the lawn roots grow easily into the compost mixture, but when they hit the clay or rocks underneath, they turn around and grow sideways or even back up.

For a lawn to be healthy, it needs to be deep rooted. If the problem is shallow roots, I plug aerate the lawn before feeding it, getting the fertilizer into the holes my aerator makes. Then, as the fertilizer leaches down, the roots tend to follow it. I can also turn clay into silt with another soil amendment added into the aerator holes. Silt particles allow drainage and is easier for roots to penetrate.

New lawn installation proceedures:

Example #1
Here I have stripped off the old, lumpy turf.	A soil amendment mixture is being applied.	The compost has been tilled into the nutrient-poor soil. Notice the depth of my footprints on the right side, made when I came up to take this picture.

The soil has been graded and rolled (compacted) 6 times, and is ready for seed or sod.

The finished lawn, with a little bark around the edges.

The following 3 columns are of one back yard.

Example #2 I killed the existing wild grasses 2 weeks before beginning work.		Example #2a		Example #2b
It's been tilled, the root clumps removed, and compost mixture is being applied.		A soil amendment mix is spread beyond the perimeter of the new lawn, and then tilled in.		After first tilling.
It's been tilled and leveled, and it's ready for the second tilling.		After the second tilling, it's rolled six times in preparation for sod or seed.
New sod is down. I also repaired the old, broken sprinkler system.		A little bark with weed control is the finishing touch...
...and the sprinkler system is now working properly.

About the banner:

This is me with some of my equipment. I'm holding my Stihl HS-81R hedge trimmer. From left to right are my BCS 716 Gardener Plus rototiller with Briggs & Stratton 6.5 hp Intek 206 IC engine, Toro Commercial mower with 5.5 hp 2 cycle Suzuki engine, Stihl MS 390 chain saw with 24" bar, Landa PG4-3500 pressure washer with 13 hp Honda GX 390 engine, Power Trim lawn edger with 4 hp Honda GX 120 engine, Stihl 009L chain saw with 16" bar, Husqvarna DT-22 Commercial thatcher with 5.5 hp Intek 206 engine, and Billy Goat AE 550H plug aerator with 5.5 hp Honda GX 160 engine.

"With a little information and the right tools, a man can do anything."

"Healthy yards through knowledge and experience"

STEVE MILLER Owner / Laborer Licensed, Bonded, Insured 360-258-6383

The best choice to call when you want: Hand thinned & shaped shrubs, hedges & trees Lawn maintenance including cut new edges; bark; aerate; dethatch; feed; treat pH & clay; insect, disease, & weed control Roof, concrete, deck & fence cleaning and treatment Retaining walls, fences, sheds & decks built Over-seeding and lawns installed Sprinkler systems designed, installed and maintained