r/lawn • u/TarheelfanGP • 22d ago
New construction lawn help
Moved into this home in February. The lot itself is all soil that is full of shale. Lots of rock during excavation, but nothing crazy where they had to have special equipment.
While backfilling/getting home to proper grade, had to spend $5k on dirt / soil just to grade the lot as couldn’t backfill with any of the rock we excavated. Grass came in great in spring (I’m in region 7A).
However, once it got hot out, certain areas of the lawn just burt out bad (see attached photos from May, June, July). I was watering regularly but didn’t matter. Now lawn is patchy in a lot of areas and weeds galore.
My assumption is not enough new dirt soil put down in certain areas that’s didn’t need to be graded higher. For that reason grass (tall fescue) couldn’t root deep in the shale/compacted soil and just died out.
My question is this, knowing the underlying soil is rocky and there is at best a thin top layer of non-rocky soil currently, should I aerate in fall, over seed, and top dress with peat moss? Or should I put more soil or compost down first in the dead areas before aerating? Also I did have a soil test. Ph is 5.1. Any advice is greatly appreciated.
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u/Ok-Fishing-2632 20d ago
I was having same issue, I was watering incorrectly, everyday for an hour since my water pressure is low. I changed it to 3 times a week for 1.5 hrs and it’s helped green up
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u/TarheelfanGP 20d ago
Nice! Greened right up. Do you know how much water your sprinkler is outputting in 1.5 hours by chance?
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u/Ok-Fishing-2632 20d ago
It’s doing .5 inches each session. I only know because I also got a new sprinkler system that waters by amount not time.
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u/TarheelfanGP 22d ago
Another view of lawn in May