Tilling the Compost

Spent the day in the patch of dirt where the new lawn will be, spreading the compost all around the yard. At first, the four yards of compost were set into one long pile toward the back of the patch.<br />n<br />nI had to till up the ground to soften things up first. It’s the biggest job my little 5.5 horsepower front tine tiller has ever seen. It performed pretty well, and I learned that this is a dusty job. I also went around the yard pulling roots (we have plenty of redwoods that border two sides of the patch), picking up rocks and pieces of old lawn, and generally cleaning up the area.<br />n<br />nAfter the entire patch was loosened and relatively clean, I used a shovel and wheel barrow to spread the compost around the yard. It was a lot of manual work, but finally it got mostly evenly spread around. Then, it was time to fire up the tiller again and do a mixing of the nutrients into the soil.<br />n<br />nOnce that was done, I had to manually rake the area to level it out. One thousand one hundred square feet (335 square meters) is a lot to rake, but I got it as level as it was going to get for now. There is no time left this weekend to finish the job, so it will need to wait until next weekend, and I will spend some time during the week researching different grass types, how to lay down the seed, nutrient needs, etc.<br />n<br />nAt the end of today, the patch, now a much darker, richer color, definitely looks much more ready to be planted than it did just the other day. We’re making progress!