I was finally able to get the lawn seeded the weekend of May 17-18. It was a little later in the season that I had hoped for, but the weather gave us no choice.

The first step was the have the soil loosened up since the rough grading left many bulldozer tracks in the yard. With 2 acres, this would take forever by hand so I was looking to hire it out. Quotes by a couple landscape companies were in the $1500 range which was more than I wanted to spend. I ended up finding a local farmer in the classifieds who does grading on the side. He was able to go over the entire area with a Gill for about $400. This pulverized the clumps and dozer tracks and loosened the soil 1-2" deep. The yard looked very nice and smooth when he was done.

I got an early start on the 17th because I knew this was going to be a big job. I loaded up my walk-behind broadcast spreader with fertilizer and started walkin'! I spread seven, 32lb bags of starter fertilizer and then started on the seed. I had about 200lb of seed to spread as well. The wind held off nicely during the seeding although it was sunny and pretty hot. The seed and fertilizer was all done by about 2:30PM.

The next step, according in my original plan, was to lightly rake the seed into the soil and then lightly go over it with a roller to get the seed pushed into the dirt a little. I walked over the front yard while dragging my rakes behind which worked fairly well, but took a while. Then I tried pulling the roller over it. I only had a few gallons of water in it so it wasn't real heavy, but it didn't quite have the effect I thought it would. With the soil already dry, it didn't seem to be doing much of anything. I tried rolling again after watering the soil down a little, which seemed to work better, but still wasn't quite what I was expecting. After doing the front yard area with the rake and roller, we determined the result wasn't worth the extra work, so we skipped that for the rest of the yard.

I then moved on to covering the yard with straw for mulch. I had no idea how long it would take, but knew it wouldn't be quick. It ended up taking about a day and a half with two people working to shake out 58 bales of straw over 2 acres. We averaged about 20 minutes per bale. It was a huge pain, but I think it will be worth it. The straw definitely helps keep the moisture in and helps keeps the seeds protected. I calculated that I walked a MINIMUM of 20 miles during the seeding and strawing. It was definitely a lot of work. Especially with hills.

For the first four days, we didn't have any rain so we attempted to water the area ourselves. I tried using a moving "tractor" sprinkler that follows the hose, but didn't have very good luck. First, the max distance on those things is about 200 feet so we'd still have a lot of manual moving to do. Second, I think the wheels would work much better on established grass because they tended to "spin out" in the loosened soil. Third, even on high speed it laid down more water than is really necessary at this stage. Instead, I bought some cheap, plastic impact sprinklers for about $2 each. I tried to chain them together, but being on a well, we just didn't have enough pressure for it to make sense. With three in the chain, nothing happened. I could get it to work with two in a chain, but then the throw distance was halved so there was really no gain. Instead, we moved individual sprinklers around and ran them for about 15 min at a time. They pretty evenly distribute the water over about a 60ft diameter. However, with this method, it's basically impossible to water the entire yard 3-6 times daily as recommended. So we covered the areas near the house pretty well and then in the evenings, I would try to get some of the further away areas. We are getting some rain now, so that will help.

At this point, we are just hoping for frequent, but light rains and waiting anxiously to see the first signs of growth. Here's some pics of the yard (with the house blocked out).

Front yard after seeding and strawing:


Back yard after seeding and strawing (viewed from the side):



More updates to come!