Tiffany Bastian wrote:

Dwight we live in military housing so I have limits as to what I can
do, it is newly renovated and they left the lawn to us. I do have a
child and will be doing daycare from my home. I have sectioned off two
large areas I wll use as flower beds. Thanks for all the great ideas.
Tiffany B.

Where in New England Are You?

Massachusetts, east central about 30 miles from Boston, 20 miles from
Worcester, 20 miles from NH. Zone 6 or maybe 5 some years.

As you may have gathered from my post, I have a thing against lawns. I
consider them a useless waste of time and space. My lawn is about an
acre and it gets mowed four times a year whether it needs it or not. I
don't water, fertilize or weed. I drive and park on it. It would consume
me if I let it, but as you can see, I don't let it. (I try not to let
it. My wife has some input on the subject, frequently different from
mine.) There is a buffer between the lawn and the road, so unless you
look up close, it's generally nice and green. Up close it's somewhat
ragged, but it's still green. Since I don't mow in the summer, it stays
green. I don't recommend this regimen for anyone with an ordinary lawn
mower. It won't hack the tall stuff. I have a 6 foot flail mower to keep
it down.

However, if you have a bunch of kids running about, that changes the
equation drastically. With kids around, the lawn gets used, so all my
objections are irrelevant.

As soon as mud season is over, you can start. For a lawn, it's
sufficient to take out the surface rocks and anything sticking up. The
grass will hide a lot of stuff. This can be done for the most part with
a metal rake, a shovel and a wheelbarrow. If you have a really large
area you might want to rent a small tractor with a york rake or box
scraper, but you probably have 6-8 weeks to get it done, so most of it
can be done by hand up to a couple of acres. Do a little bit at a time
until you get back in shape after the winter. After that, seed, rake and
water, water and water. You will have to keep the area moist (no
standing water, but no dust either) for about 2-4 weeks until the grass
is established. A straw mulch helps to keep down evaporation from the
soil. It will decompose in place so you don't have to remove it later.
Let it grow fairly long before you start mowing it, and set the mower
high for the first few mowings.

Good luck, and don't let the curmudgeons get you down. There's a bit of
that in all of us anyway.