So you built your dream house. It is the nicest house, in the nicest area, and you are all moved in and happy until you look out that front window. All you see is dirt, black ugly dirt. Your smile just turned up side down. If you are like a majority of people in the world, you think it is too hard to build a beautiful landscape. Well I am going to show you the steps to establishing the first phase in that landscape, a beautiful new lawn.
The first and often the most important stage in planting a new lawn is deciding when to plant your grass. Most times you would want to plant the grass as soon as the house is finished. If time is not an issue, the best time it plant is the fall, around September, the second best would be spring, around April.
After deciding when to plant, the next steps to take involve the soil before planting any seed. Start early and get a soil sent in for testing. Your local extension service is a good place to do this at, such as NDSU. After testing the soil is tested you would want to apply the appropriate chemicals and fertilizers to accommodate your soil. A good combination would be 50 pounds of lime, and 10 pounds of 10-30-10 N-P-K starter fertilizer.
Next you want to take a good look at your grading. The slope of the ground should be sloped away from the house and about an inch lower than surrounding sidewalks to allow for grass growth and to prevent it from growing over the top of the sidewalk. Also have the lawn as level as possible to prevent puddles from forming. Another important aspect of grading is to have your finish grade as close to the same grade as your topsoil.
After the soil testing and grading, you would want to then decide if you are going to use seed or sod. It depends on time, effort, and with most people, money! I will give you some advantages and disadvantages of both seed and sod.
First the advantages of seed, first it is very easy to seed a lawn, comes in many different varieties, and most importantly it is cheap. The disadvantages would be the time it takes for the seed to grow, unevenness of the grass, and it easily loses out to competition with weed seed. Now for the advantages of sod, it makes an instant yard by basically carpeting your lawn. It is always even and uniform, it also isn't restricted to seasonal planting. Now for the disadvantages, sod is very heavy and can be hard for the do it yourselfer to handle. It also isn't always available in varieties you might be interested in using. The biggest advantage in using sod is the cost. For example, the average cost to sod a yard in buffalo grass is $390 per 1,000 square feet, while the same seed is about $18 for a 2 pound bag that will cover the same 1,000 square feet.
Now, it is time to decide what type of watering system you want to use. There are many types of irrigation practices, and the choice is up to you. Whether or not you want to drag yards and yards of heavy hose, then stand there and make sure you got your sprinkler set up right, and then do it all over again in a few hours. I personally suggest installing an underground watering system. It is more money in the beginning, but well worth it in the end. Only having to do work with the sprinklers at the beginning and the end of the watering season makes these almost a maintenance free system.
Now that you have a beautiful green lawn that is watered by your high-tech irrigation system, let me tell you a little about mowing. The best way to mow your lawn is to make sure you are mowing it in different directions every time you mow. Also the mowing height is very important. Take about 35% of the grass blade off, more than this can stop root growth, also the higher the mowing height the more favorable the root and rhizome growth, but that's another website. When it comes to removing clippings, or bagging the grass, people often think that clippings produce thatch, but that isn't true. Clippings are in fact a good source nitrogen, and only need to be mowed when the grass is long and being mowed when wet.
The last and most important thing to your new lawn is to sit back and enjoy your new beautiful green grass, and the best thing is, you did it yourself.
http://la.essortment.com/landscapeirriga_rxjc.h
http://www.donnan.com/plantlawns.htm
http://www.bamertseed.com/brochure.htm