Garden Tractor

[flyboyx]

hmmmm.....without being there to look at it, its a bit hard to say. does the tractor make ruts in the ground when the soil is dry or only when its wet? it sounds like the ground needs to be smoothed out and then mowed with a much lighter machine such as a zero turn.

in the mean time, it sounds to me like the po spent years mowing the grass the same way every time building up those ruts. if you cut the lawn in the same direction he did, i am guessing it would go a lot smoother rather than driving over the top of his ruts diagonally or transversely.

it sounds so silly to me that a builder would suggest a garden over building you a house.

there are ways around all of this. soil samples can be taken. they run a core drill into the ground to see how deep the soft dirt goes. the loam can be dug out where you want your house and replaced with something that can be compacted. all of that can probably be done for less than 6 grand depending on how deep they would have to go.

also, your house could be built on a pier foundation where they drive poles into the ground and set the house on top of them.

[mrsleeve]

How deep are these ruts we are talking about.... What are you planing on doing the remainder of the property after you get your structures up and lawn areas established?

My advice as would be (if you have neighbor that has a operational farm this will be easier) approach them to bring a large farm tractor and a disk over and turn the land over many will do this for a small fee when not busy. Then drag it out with a york rake behind your rig a couple of times, then a pasture drag, to get it more uniform, reseed with an appropriate cover crop/grass and be done with it....


You could also likey get your builders dirt work contractor to regrade your property, but this would likely be far most costly than the above method,

[gwb72tii]

How deep are these ruts we are talking about.... What are you planing on doing the remainder of the property after you get your structures up and lawn areas established?

My advice as would be (if you have neighbor that has a operational farm this will be easier) approach them to bring a large farm tractor and a disk over and turn the land over many will do this for a small fee when not busy. Then drag it out with a york rake behind your rig a couple of times, then a pasture drag, to get it more uniform, reseed with an appropriate cover crop/grass and be done with it....


You could also likey get your builders dirt work contractor to regrade your property, but this would likely be far most costly than the above method,

ruts are 6-8" deep and 10-12" wide from a Kubota L2500 4WD tractor towing a bush master (?) mower.

The aim is to keep the majority of the property natural grass as it is now. the 8 acres are level without trees (yes! I am done with fir needles in everything). I hesitate to just roll it because of compacting the soil??

[mrsleeve]

Yeah a good discing and rake out will do everything everything your wanting and not cause unneeded compaction and help with getting a cover grass started

[gwb72tii]

this is the dirt (no rocks) and land. the pile of dirt is where the house is going.

IMG_0535 by , on Flickr
IMG_0537 by , on Flickr

[M-technik-3]

Appears to be a nice quiet area.