S.D. wrote:

Hi all - I need some help here.

I just bought this rental house. There's a lawn in the back, and one of the
first things I did was the remove about half of it to make room for parking
2 vehicles.

When the contractor removed the sod, they piled it in the back area, not in
piles, kind of distributed, but definitely lumpy and bumpy. Much of the sod
is now growing and taking hold - which is ok.

I also have a rather large depression in one area where a truck was brought
in to remove and stump a tree. Plus a berm off the right that my neighbours
created.

I want to level this area out and have a lawn growing there. I'm thinking
of two possibilities:

1. Till up the back area where all the sod is and try to redistribute the
soil. My feeling is this would be a lot of work. The soil is clay.

2. Order up a truck of good quality soil and dump it in the back yard. Get
a bunch of friends and family to come over and help me distribute the soil
to fill in the depressions. This would involve putting soil right over the
growing grass - but then I would re-seed.

I'm favouring the last option. But my question is: would it work? Is this
just a crazy idea? would I have to roll the soil to compact it? What kind
of tools do I use to level the soil? Would this be more work than the first
option?

Any other ideas? All suggestions welcome.

There may be a problem with your expectations. Are you looking to
spend a weekend of heavy work with the result of a nice lawn a few weeks
later? That's not going to happen.

I have a continuous process. Every year I spend some time with a
mixture of potting soil, grass seed and starter fertilizer. I scrape
the bad spots with a 3-tine cultivator and apply my mixture. Keep it
wet. After a year or two it looks pretty good.