The Sod Project a.k.a. "Hell Week" - Part 3

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I detailed in part 1 the purpose behind this project and in part 2 the amount of prep work needed to prepare for it.  Finally after doing all the prep work I was ready to lay the sod.  Laying sod has to be one of the most back breaking jobs I have done.  The up and down, up and down, up and down makes it hard work.  This is the second time I have laid sod, the first was my front yard 10 years ago.  I can say that 10 years makes a difference on your body.

I had a total of four pallets of grass to lay down, and each pallet covers 500 sq. ft.  I also had the challenge of matching up the new grass to the existing grass.  I must have measured pretty well because I ran out of grass with just a little left to do.  I picked up 20 more squares at my local nursery to finish the job.  

Well I survived my own hell week.  It was so much work to get done in just a week, but I am happy that I did it.  My back held up pretty well, but my right knee has been sore for over a week.  I have been watering the grass every day for the last week and it is starting to green up nicely.  Hopefully over the next few weeks it will take root.

I started laying in the far end of my yard it was nice and cool that morning. 

I used a small hatchet to trim the sod nice and tight to the rock wall.  

It worked well.

Working my way up the hill.

I left two areas unsodded, this is one of them.  

I am going to plant some knockout roses and flowers here.

 

Here is what it looked like after all the pallets were laid. You can see the small area I had left.  You can also see the grass is yellow because this was laid last and was at the bottom of the pallet.

Here is that same area after a week of watering, much greener.

The hill is still there, but so much better than before.

I used black garden soil to blend the old grass to the new.

This should grow together and disappear.

Same area after a week of watering.

A view from the garden looking out.

Opposite side, looking towards the garden.

The Sod Project a.k.a. "Hell Week" - Part 2

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I detailed in part 1 of this project the purpose behind this huge undertaking.  The main reason of attempting something so labor intensive was the cost savings.  In this post I am going to detail what all I had to do before I could lay the sod.

As I mentioned in part 1, the first task was to scrape and dig the entire yard by hand.  When I first started I was just using a simple garden hoe and it worked great because it was just dead grass roots on top of dirt.  I had to eventually get on my hands and knees and use a shovel to undercut the remaining St. Augustine grass and live weeds.  This is a picture of the mess.  That little patch of green near the tree was live St. Augustine and that was the worst part to dig by hand.

The next step after digging the majority of the yard was to tackle the mountain leading up to my shed.  This involved two steps.  Step one was I had 5 yards of fill dirt delivered and dumped on the hill.  The truck made huge ruts in my yard but I didn't care because it saved me a lot of work by dumping it where I needed it.  This fill dirt was primarily clay which packed well and I raked and shoveled it around until I got a pretty decent slope.  Step two was I had 5 yards of "top soil" delivered and dumped in my driveway.  I then used about a yard of top soil to top dress the fill dirt and prep the sod.  The rest of the top soil would be used as I laid sod to fill in any dips.  I wish I would have taken more pics of this process, but this was what it looked like after I was done.

I then realized after my first attempt that the grade was still too steep so I worked the hill some more and used a 10 ft 2x4 to screed the hill and smooth it out.  This was the final product.  It is really hard to appreciate how much better this looked from the picture, but it did.

Now it is time for me to rant about the quality of my "top soil" that they delivered.  I specifically told the guy that I was using this to lay sod and I wanted the top soil to be good quality and not loaded with a bunch of debris.  "Oh yeah, sir you will love this stuff."  The stuff they call top soil today makes me laugh, it is basically fill dirt but without the huge clay clods.  I had all kinds of rocks, wire, wood, sticks, etc.

This is just of little bit of what I found in the "top soil".   How come when I watch Yard Crashers and they bring in a truck load of top soil it is always dark black and looks like a truck load of Miracle Gro garden soil?  Because it is TV that is why and not reality. 

So here is what it looked like when the sod arrived.  As you can see I still had a good bit of weeds to dig up near the house.  I just decided to do it as I went because I ran out of time.

This part of the back yard looked a lot better and I had it pretty much ready to go.  The company that delivered the sod dropped the pallets exactly where I wanted them.  That saved me some work.  The lighter dirt in the picture is the top soil I used to smooth out the grade. 

In part 3 I will detail the task of laying the sod and bringing it all together

The Sod Project a.k.a. "Hell Week" - Part 1

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I am going to detail this project in several posts because there is a lot of history with me and my back yard grass.  It has been 12 years of a love hate relationship.  My backyard has St. Augustine grass and I have never quite been able to figure out how to properly care for it.  It seems like I always have issues with dead spots and it is just finicky grass.

I don't know what happened within the last year but it is completely dead and gone.  The weeds have taken over and I have a mess.  I decided that I have had enough and I am going to resod the whole backyard in Bermuda grass, Tifton 419 to be exact.

I also have this huge hill leading up to my small tool shed.  This hill is like 60 to 75 degrees steep.  It has always been a pain to mow and just to climb up it is a chore much less push my mower into the shed.  In addition to resodding the yard, I want to make this hill less prominent.

I resodded my front yard exactly 10 years ago and I had a guy who did some grading for me.  I gave him a call to see what he would charge to level out the hill, scrape everything smooth and prep it for me to lay sod.  His quote was that it would cost me between $2500 to $3000 dollars by the time I paid his fee, paid for the amount of dirt to level off the hill, and pay for the sod.  That was probably a fair estimate, but I didn't want to pay near that amount of money.

So with that, I have decided to tackle the whole project myself.  The plan is to dig up the entire yard by hand, haul in dirt to level out the hill, and lay the sod.  The wife was not happy about this new project given the fact that we have a newborn but I reasoned that now is the time before the weather gets really hot.  I also promised her I could do the whole thing in 7 days.  And so Hell Week begins....

Here is my yard in 2010, look how nice the St. Augustine looks.  

It isn't perfect, but it looked pretty dang good.

Now this is last year, you can see it isn't quite as lush and green.

Now it is almost 85% dirt and weeds, most of the green is weeds.
You can see steepness of hill in top right leading to the shed.