If You Build a Wall Against It

[digitS']

the ground will sink beneath your feet!

My backyard gets a lot of traffic and it is on a slight slope. There aren't any retaining walls really ... In fact, the "walls" I am referring to are only inches high.

I built a little brick deck in one of those traffic areas. It is level and level with the lawn, or - once was. On that very slight uphill side, the ground has sunk.

Another "wall" is the concrete under the little deck outside the greenhouse. I don't think there is any danger of shifting soil undermining anything but it is sinking.

Each year, a little more - I've got the "trails" going this way and that. Now, I've got little depressions. Step there after running the lawn sprinklers and I crush the lawn grass right down into the mud!

Man! My soil couldn't drain any better or quicker but without care, I'm gonna make tiny ponds ... with those "creekbed" trails wandering around amongst them!

Okay, can I fill over the existing lawn grass and not kill it? An inch of good soil every year should keep up with this. Would doing this during the winter be the right or wrong time of the year?

Steve

 

[Ridgerunner]

Steve, I'd do it when the grass is growing. Spread it lout, rake it level, and rake it so the grass is poking through. The grass should keep growing.

I used to live in the New Orleans Metro area. That swamp muck everything was built on kept subsiding and holes were often created. Every two or so years I'd get a load of 8 yards of dirt, usually river sand dredged from the Mississippi River bank, and fill up those holes and level the yard. That was a different climate and a different kind of grass (St. Augustine) but if you rake it so the grass tips were showing through, it did not take long before the grass recovered. For a little while though you would track mud in the house if you were not careful.

 

[digitS']

Eight yards!

That would probably do it - to smooth the entire backyard.

The worse location doesn't have a wall. Not surprisingly, it is the drain area for the roof gutter. It wasn't a 6sqft depression, 2" deep before I had that gutter put in 3years ago. However, about the only time I walk there is while mowing the lawn.

The idea occurs to me that I could fill that with river rock but there is only so much gravel that I'm willing to bring into my yard. Isn't it surprising that such hard scrabble soil would shift and move?

Steve

 

[thistlebloom]

What Ridge said. You could use sand as a filler or compost. I would use sand and save the compost for the garden.

We have dog trails in the lawn. Funny how they use the same paths exclusively. Sometimes we set empty nursery pots along the trails to give the grass a chance to grow back, makes the dogs do a kind of slalom course, but it's not real attractive to have pots lined up all over, so we just kind of give in and live with the dog ditches.

 

[Nyboy]

My dog trails are along the fence line. It is almost like they are looking to make a prison breakout. Makes me feel real loved by them!!

 

[so lucky]

I find it reassuring, somehow, that animals (Humans included) are such creatures of habit that they use the same route over and over, making paths that last through generations, for centuries. Some things are constant.
Maybe I wouldn't be so philosophic if I had dog paths through my yard, though.

 

[thistlebloom]

My dog trails are along the fence line. It is almost like they are looking to make a prison breakout. Makes me feel real loved by them!!

That's funny!

Our two cats make trails on the lawn too, but their's don't have a continuous smooth appearance. They're blotchy trails, as though they step every time into the same paw print. You only notice theirs in the early spring before the lawn gets going.

 

[digitS']

Garbanzo the dog isn't heavy enuf to make a path, a discernible one anyway.

I was concerned that she would make "spots" by living here thru the winter. She didn't but I read about something organic that is also in peat moss, humic acid. It can treat dog spots. Peat may be beneficial to our soil.

I've got bags of peat that I am afraid to reuse for dahlia root winter storage. There is also a bag of sand - I think I'll put them together and give them a try!

Steve

 

[lesa]

We put top soil over existing grass, all the time. The grass will grow right up through it- won't take long either. I have a path worn to the chicken coop- and the dogs follow me- so we have a trail. During the summer, it doesn't show much- but in the winter and early spring, it sticks out like a sore thumb.

 

[lesa]

We put top soil over existing grass, all the time. The grass will grow right up through it- won't take long either. I have a path worn to the chicken coop- and the dogs follow me- so we have a trail. During the summer, it doesn't show much- but in the winter and early spring, it sticks out like a sore thumb.