To Till Or Not To Till

   I have a city lot in Milwaukee.

  I purchased the house last July, and posted here about what to do with
the unkempt lawn...  Thanks to the suggestions I got here, I got rid of
most of the weeds without killing the grass.

  Now I'm on a new mission.  With all the rain we've been having lately,
the poor topography of my lawn is making itself apparent.  Basically, my
entire lawn is sitting in 1-3" of water, with the deepest parts in the
center of the lawn.  Once the depression is filled, all the excess water
flows into the driveway and down to the street properly.  But I am left
with standing water in the lawn for a day or two after the rain stops.

  My thought was to get 15-18 yards of dirt (its roughly a 35' x 56'
back yard), drop it on top of the existing lawn, landscape the
depressions out and grade the entire lawn towards the driveway, reseed,
and have a properly drained yard.

  If I drop 3" of loose soil on top of the existing lawn, would I have
to bother with tilling the base soil first, or will 3" be enough for a
strong root system to establish itself and deal with the tighter soil
beneath?

  Thanks for any advice!

 On Thu, 10 Apr 2008 23:47:17 -0500, "Ryan P."


I had an issue once similar to this one and brought in the equivalent
to 3"-6" of soil. It worked great.
I'm sure that technically I should have tilled or at least broken up
the subsoil, but I din't and my lawn doesn't suffer any of the
symptoms of a shallow root system; it doesn't stress during drought
any more than the other turf in the area.

 

What I'd do:

Dig a trench.  It only has to be about a foot to eighteen inches deep from
where you want to drain to a lower spot.  Put some weed cloth in the bottom.
An inch of pea gravel.  Add a piece of perforated drain pipe, available in
100' lengths.  Add pea gravel until about three inches from the surface.
Put another layer of weed cloth.  Put your grass plugs you've saved on top
of that to bring it flush.  Works beautifully for draining.  Called a French
Drain.  The quickest simplest easiest cheapest way to go unless you just
want to landscape all that anyway, which you can do later, and the drain
will still function.

Steve

 SteveB wrote:


  Would I need an exit point for the drain, or does the pea gravel
trench cause excess water to drain down into the "loose" soil underneath?

 Ryan P. said:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_drain

--

Eggs

-Every snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty.