Fact: You are fully capable of making the yard you love!
This week begins the “Grass Seeding Series” here on Liv Evon Designs, where I cover my husband and I's journey to renovating our lawn with newly seeded grass!
A little background, when we bought our house the sloped lawn was covered in wintergreen ivy and other weeds instead of grass, which at first was a bit of a dream come true as it seemed low maintenance, but as the seasons passed and spring/summer arrived the growth happened and it became a headache to maintain as it grew out of control, harbored mosquitos and other bugs *yuck!*, and housed leaves that would make Fall leaf clean-up difficult, as the leaves would get trapped under the ivy just making an even greater hiding space for bugs and critters.
(Befores)
**Peep the Leprachaun house at the top of the hill lol...I don't know whose kids were playing up there! The hubs and I considered leaving it there as a conversation piece...it ALWAYS starts a conversation lol.
For those of you who’ve been following our journey since the beginning, seeding our backyard with grass was the first project we shared. We worked our butts off to prepare the yard for grass and had so much emotion invested in its fruition that when the baby grass finally popped up ya’ll I couldn’t help but share and pre-maturely (I was excited!) start this blog before I had all the logistics figured out about how I’d do it. But everything happens for a reason, right?! So in a sense, I owe my current blogging/vlogging life to this little grass that has changed a small piece of my life!
Again, we were so overjoyed it worked, that it reminded me, we as people are truly capable of making the yard we'd love to have – now it’s not easy, but it is absolutely possible and uber rewarding to say, “She did that!” and still have spare change in your pocket saved by not contracting the work out. Let’s get into it!!! (Video provided below)
Part 1 of Grass Seeding: Prepare Soil
Why Prep?
With any grass seeding for a new lawn, you have to prepare your soil – Prepareeeee ya’ll, you can’t skip this! You have been warned…. You wouldn’t try to paint over a canvas that is already covered in artwork and expect to see only your painting on the canvas, would you? Grass seeding is the same way, your lawn (a.k.a your canvas) has to be cleared out from vegetation (including weeds and other plants) in order for your grass to have a chance to present itself – to grow and create a beautiful grass canvas that doesn’t have to compete with other vegetation. If you don’t, you could risk having a lawn with patches where grass did not grow and/or weeds such as crabgrass that could crowd out your new lawn.
When to Prep?
It’s best to prepare your soil in either the Spring or Fall, as soil temperatures are usually best for grass to grow and thrive (check back of grass seed bag for exact temperatures). If you don’t seed during the right temperature, you could end up wasting all of your money buying and preparing for seeding for nothing to grow. Please note, it's not so much the season of the year that's important to seed your lawn, it's really the temperature that's the pivotal part - Spring and Fall are just the most reliable times for the temperatures needed for seed.
How We Prepped
Step 1: Figure out the Best Way to Clear Soil
As I mentioned earlier, our backyard was largely covered in ivy – a mess. So, we had to kind of go in blindly and figure out how best to remove it. We weren’t sure if the ivy was laying above the ground – sitting on top of it (with minimal rooting into the ground); or if the ivy was heavily rooted in the ground. It happened to be the latter – lucky us! With that, we decided to Google and YouTube the best way to remove it for replacing it with grass soon after. The replacing grass part of this question matters because there are chemicals you can use to kill off unwanted vegetation, but some of those chemicals can kill off grass too, which would be counterproductive – most are also not great for the environment which nagged at us as well. Outside of using chemicals, the only other option our searches provided was to remove the ivy manually….which was a bit intimidating at first. I only found 2 videos on YouTube that had a similar situation as ours (removing ivy from a yard), which I thought was crazy only 2 existed, but neither was completely our situation, meaning we were going to have to improvise a bit here by feeling out what was best for our yard.
Step 2: Clear Vegetation (Manually)
Your hands are a great tool you guys – but they’re best assisted with some really great machines and gadgets lol. To start with removing the ivy from our yard, my husband sacrificed his body, particularly his ankles, by volunteering to mow over the ivy in our yard, which happens to be on a slope that when mowed by this ivy can be slippery – thanks, hubs 😊💗. Mowing the lawn seemed to make the most sense for us so that we could have complete access to pull the ivy vines out of the ground.
Luckily mowing didn’t take long, but there were area’s around our fence the lawnmower couldn’t get to, so we decided to go in with our edge trimmer to help cut off the tops of the ivy. That didn’t work as well, it just didn’t seem like it was able to get everything as some of the ivy vine branching was a bit too thick for the edge string. So, I swapped in my 10-inch hedge shears - they're like big scissors that handle outdoor work well, they really helped finish the job. Note: Every now and again I needed to use a shovel to chop out some rather large main ivy roots (I'd pretty much just stab the ground until I could get the large bits out).
(Slide through for progress)
Once all the ivy tops were removed, my husband and I then pulled-up our sleeves and got down and dirty by pulling out the ivy roots. No, it wasn’t fun, I wish it were lol, but it was such a RELIEF to get the job done! To make sure we pulled out as much ivy roots as we could, we went over the lawn with a rototiller (a.k.a tiller) to turn over the top part of the dirt to expose any residual ivy branching we didn’t catch when pulling the ivy out. Every now and again I would have to pull out ivy vines that wrapped around the blades too much and cut them out (pic below), but that was expected given the job it was doing.
Slide through:
And Tada! After 2 weekends and all that work, we FINALLY were able to get the soil completely prepped and ready for grass seed! Note: We didn’t clear out the far right corner of the yard because we didn’t want to place grass there as it is too steep for us to feel comfortable mowing regularly. We plan to do something else with that area at a later time.
(Slide through for Afters)
Stay tuned for Grass Seeding: Pt 2 - Planting Grass Seed to see how we planted our seed, leading to growth of grass in our yard!
✨Shop Materials Used✨
Firm Grip Leather-Palm Large Gloves - https://amzn.to/2XfdCvJ
- Used to protect my hands while doing yard work.
ROYBI ONE+ 18-Volt Cordless String Edger/Trimmer - https://tinyurl.com/uwxrvv7
- Electric powered, so no gas needed!
- Please read the user manual to know how to properly operate and maintain.
Fiskers 10 in. Power-Lever GripEase Hedge Shears - https://tinyurl.com/yxvmwqgh
Ames 48 in. Shovel - https://tinyurl.com/yy8pl4g5
Sun Joe TJ603E 16-Inch 12-Amp Electric Rototiller and Cultivator - https://amzn.to/3jZR5wy
- Electric powered, so no gas needed!
- Please read the user manual to know how to properly operate and maintain.
100 Ft 12 Gauge Lighted Outdoor Extension Cord - https://amzn.to/311mnuB
- Necessary to have either a:
100ft at least 14, 12, or 10 gauge outdoor extension cord, or a
50ft at least 16, 14, 12 or 10 gauge outdoor extension cord for this Sun Joe rototiller.
My electrician mother explained to me that it is important to have a cord that’s strong enough for the job as to not short circuit (or overwork and burn out) the cord/rototiller.
*These links may be affiliate links to products - I may receive a commission for purchases made through these links
See you in the next couple of weeks for "Grass Seed Pt 2 - Laying Grass Seed."
- Liv Evon
