How to Smooth a Bumpy Lawn is one of those things people tend to ignore – But as your lawn gets worse – the bumps create puddling in heavy rains and also make the terrain difficult to mow. This unevenness significantly affects the usability and appearance of your yard.
So If you’ve noticed lately that your lawn is bumpy and uneven, rest assured – there’s a reasonably easy way to fix it.
“Knowing How to Smooth a Bumpy lawn without using a lawn roller – is a valuable skill for any Homeowner to know.”
Not only will our methods save you the trouble and hassle of renting or borrowing a lawn roller, but they will also provide a better, long-term solution for lawn depressions and bumps of all sizes.
“How to Level Your Lawn by Hand” – 6 Easy Steps:
Step 1: Find All The Uneven Areas Of Your Lawn
Before you can fix the bumpy areas in your lawn, you first need to find them. To do this, give your lawn a close cut, as long grass can obscure uneven spots. Go over your yard carefully since it’s best to fix all bumps and depressions at once, and “Flag” each low spot or bump in the lawn.
Step 2: Find and Correct All Underlying Problems
Before going further with lawn leveling solutions, Determine why your lawn is bumpy in the first place. In many cases, depression can result from water pooling or runoff in large amounts.
Where this is the case, you may consider looking into new drainage solutions, mainly where your gutters deposit water into your yard.
Actual “Bumps” are a bit less joint – usually caused by a large rock, root, or other object buried under your lawn – Like Bumps or tunnels caused by moles. By correcting the underlying problem, you can be sure that your yard will remain flat in this area once you have removed the projectile below the lawn.
The most likely issue with uneven lawns – is “Depressions” in the lawn. When a lawn is initially installed, the original installers rarely return to even out the “low spots.” The rest of this article focuses on fixing the low spots or the depressions in your bumpy lawn.
Step 3: Level the Problem Areas With Topsoil
Once you’ve figured out what was causing the problem, it’s time to fix it. Start by placing new topsoil in any depressions or the hole left from removing a raised bump. If there’s already grass underneath, try to keep the topsoil thin so it will grow through.
After the topsoil is in place, use a lawn leveling rake to go over it, break up any clumps, or remove chunks of rock. Try to get it as close to even as possible, employing a level if necessary to more minor spots.
Step 6: Reseed Lawn – As Necessary
Depending on how much topsoil you had to put in to make your lawn even, you may have some bare spots where grass doesn’t grow through. If this is the case, replant using grass seed in those areas, following the steps you usually would, to patch the bare spots.
Once the new grass grows, you’ll be amazed at how smooth, and even your lawn looks.
Step 6: Allow the Topsoil and Seed To “Settle”
Part of how to level a lawn with topsoil – that many people miss – is allowing the new soil to settle. To do this, thoroughly water the new soil, then leave it to settle for a couple of days.
Step 7: Final Lawn Inspection
After Watering the lawn for a few days, check whether it remains level and no settling or “water pooling” has occurred in unlevel or low areas.
If your sight check proves you have no pooling from water, you’re probably good to go.
If not, you can add a bit more topsoil to any remaining low spots – and level them out.
Allow the new grass seed to germinate and thicken. In no time, you will be on your way to growing healthy grass – and fortunately – or unfortunately 🙂 Mowing it very soon!
Here’s a Quick Video on “How to Reseed A Lawn” – The essential steps for fixing a bumpy lawn:
Frequently Asked Questions:
When it comes to how to smooth a bumpy lawn, there are always a few questions that come up. Here are some of the most common questions homeowners have when trying to figure out how to make yards level again.
Should I “Roll” a Bumpy Lawn?
Is Rolling Good or Bad For Your Lawn? For many people rolling a lawn is the apparent way to flatten it out. While rolling is a widely used traditional method, it has some definite drawbacks.
The first issue: Rolling a lawn will only smooth out small bumps and depressions rather than more significant areas that may be more uneven.
Secondly, Rolling a lawn compresses the soil, which may be bad for the health of your grass. Think of it as the “opposite” of aerating your lawn – to allow more oxygen and nutrients to feed grass.
In our opinion, and on the whole, Rolling is not a good or effective way to smooth a bumpy lawn.
Can you fix a Bumpy Lawn on a Sloping Yard?
Answer: The process of how to level (Regrade) a sloping lawn is a different and much more in-depth than the method for bumpy lawns described above.
If your lawn has a few bumps or dips, you’ll need to find your highest and lowest points and correct the bumps accordingly to our steps above.
Re-grading for steep slopes, however, is often a more extensive project than homeowners choose to tackle on a DIY basis. Calling a professional landscaping company may be worthwhile if you’re planning to change the slope of your entire yard.
When you’re finished, you won’t believe how much easier it is to mow your grass.
Will the Uneven Areas Remain Level?
Answer: Assuming you solved the problem that caused the unevenness to develop in the first place, there’s no reason your leveled lawn should not remain that way for many years to come.
That being said, unless your installing artificial turf, any type of natural grass is subject to erosion, drought, or disease, which, if left untreated, could kill the grass. In that event, you are likely to face rough lawn conditions in those areas.
Why Is My Lawn so Bumpy?
Answer: Uneven lawns can be caused by any number of things, from draining issues to infestations of insects. The only way to find out why your lawn is uneven is to investigate for yourself using the suggestions above.
Can I Level My Lawn With Sand?
Answer: While placing sand on your lawn can make it level the same way as topsoil, it’s a vastly inferior method for lawn health. Grass cannot draw nutrients from sand, so you’ll have very pronounced thin spots in your yard. Overall, it’s better to use topsoil.
Conclusion
With this basic topsoil dressing technique and basic knowledge of how to fix a bumpy lawn, you’ll be able to patch bumpy, uneven areas in your lawn with minimal difficulty.
Remember that it might take you two or three tries to get your yard altogether level, but it will be worth it once you have an even, beautiful yard for your family and friends to enjoy.
Now that you understand How to Smooth a Bumpy Lawn, protect it by knowing how to get rid of weeds in your yard.
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