Leveling Your Yard Makes For A Better Yard
You may hear the terms grading and leveling when talking about your yard. You may even hear them used interchangeably. However, they are not the same thing, although you may have them done at the same time. So, what are they?
Grading
While your lawn may look like it is totally flat, in reality, it should be sitting at the top of a slight incline. It's a very slight incline, one that you wouldn't notice most of the time. But even though you don't notice it, the grade is important. It helps to keep water from pooling around your house and getting into your foundation. If the soil right around your house is graded away from your house, then the water that falls off your roof will just run down the grade into your yard.
Leveling
Leveling is something else completely different. When you are leveling your yard, you aren't making sure that your yard is completely level, as measured by a tool. You are making sure that your yard is flat. You are knocking down the high spots and filling in the low spots. It isn't necessarily a quick process, because there are several steps that you are going to have to do, and you will need a tractor, like a riding mower, to do it, because you will need to have a level drag pulled across your yard.
Leveling Process
The first thing that you need to do is mow your lawn. When you mow it, you want to mow it pretty short, but not short enough that you are exposing the base of the grass. Doing that will leave the grass at risk for damage. But you do need to be able to see what is going on with the thatch and to see the lumps and bumps earlier. The thatch is all the cut grass and other organic material that collects around the roots. If there is a lot of it, loosen it up by using a thatching rake to break it apart. Create a soil mix using topsoil and compost. Then you need to find the low spots, dig under the sod and put that soil mix where you just dug up to bring the low spots up higher. Then you can sprinkle the rest of the mix all over your yard. This is when you need to have a drag level and a riding tractor. Put the drag level on the mower and pull it behind the mower to flatten out the ground.
Leveling your yard will make your yard look better and be safer. You can do it yourself, or you can hire a landscaping company to do it for you.
For more information contact a company that sells leveling drags.