For lawns, the preferred depth is the soil between 3"-4". For garden soil, the area between 6"-7".

Check the Soil Management Article for reasons and a few additional free tests.

My suggestion will work, but will depend upon you having a fair amount of patience. My back yard had a similar problem - it had low spots after a 2001 regrading when they parking area was expanded. Since the whole backyard rises about two feet from the parking area and then is reasonable level, the ...

Cactus:

It is ridiculous to consider using a rototiller for such a task. Get a 225hp Yamaha outboard motor if you want to do the job right.

You are not a Wacko until your wife, relatives, friends and neighbors threaten to have you institutionalized and your only question is "what cultivars do they have at the institution?".

Don't get me started on vehicles either. I'll start talking about the care and feeding of my RX-8...

Everyone is going to laugh at me, but if the weeds in the back really bother you, here is a trick that I do to make myself feel in control of the weeds that seem to laugh at me. I get an ounce or two of Roundup and a little "artist's paintbrush" and spend 30 minutes painting the leaves of the offend...

I have. It is excellent - good for the lawn owner that wants to explore a little deeper, but not trite to the person that knows the chemistry and biology. Warning: you will put your rototiller on Craigslist for $10 before you are halfway done with the book.

Does anyone have any experience with soil inoculants like M-Root? Do they have any significant advantage over regular compost tea applications?

Skyline:

When you get the Brush-B-Gon Poison Ivy Killer, get application instructions here - don't use what is on the bottle. We'll help you to do it right.

OK - Skyline's situation boiled down from 4 pages on another forum: He and his wife bought a home last summer in the middle of Tennessee (Hermitage, TN). Lawn is 4000-5000 sq ft and very weedy - both broadleafs and grassy weeds. He'd done a lot of research, most of it just served to confuse him more...

I'm picturing soil microbes the size of a Buick. :shock: Does that make them soil macrobes? Well, we're certainly going to get a lesson in the effects of larger amounts of sugar. Did Morph tell you about the fungi that he developed the LAST time he did this? http://i663.photobucket.com/albums/uu351/...

How long is the avg time to wait for soil analysis results? Cornell and UMASS have been running just under two weeks. If you don't have a favorite lab or a nearby cooperative extension I'd send it to UMASS right now, second place goes to Cornell. I use Cornell because it has advantages if you are a...

Andy, it sounds like that will throw my soil analysis out of whack huh? I can get some soil from under my deck that is just bare.. would that be adequate? No. What we're trying to do is get a snapshot of the end results of everything you've done in the past couple of years. Since I'm sure that you ...

I guess I'm somewhere between David's ideas and TT's. Yes, you need to hustle if you're going to get the fertilizing done, but PLEASE get the soil samples for the soil test out of the lawn before adding any fertilizers - one grain of fertilizer in the soil test sample and the results would be bizarr...

Oops! I forgot a detail. I always recommend that the lawn owner put the product down at a 50% rate in one direction, and then at 50% in the perpendicular pattern. That tends to smooth out coverage mistakes too.

Leave it to David to remind me of my own tricks. Skyline, can you find Ortho Brush-B-Gon Poison Ivy Killer? It (believe it or not) is the identical product for Ortho Chickweed/Clover/Oxalis Killer - its just the instructions on the bottle are slightly different. Both have 8% Triclopyr as the only ac...

No offense taken. Listen - I don't care what method you pick (hose-end sprayers, mixing products with Milorganite, etc), I (or you!) will be able to punch 100 holes in it when it is executed by the average (or even newbie) lawn owner. The practice of mixing micronutrients into Milorganite (sprinkle,...

You may have knocked them out using the other weed killer, but they can be a bit hard to get rid of at times. No such luck, BP - Skyline has the Triple Crown: Clover, Oxalis and Ground Ivy. They're not going down without a fight. He's also got a bunch of grassy weeds. The point in doing this early ...

Most years I make it to around June 1, but with overseeded seedlings down, any conversation with my wife since April 26th from NYC to home goes like this:

Her: Its cloudy and damp - should I sprinkle the seed?
Me: Is it raining?
Her: No.
Me: Then we need to sprinkle them.

Does it need to be watered >1 time, i.e. should I water it sooner than the once per week watering? Yeah, water it in right away. Maybe a quarter inch of water. I don't want it laying on top for too long. About 10 days ago I put down Bayer Advanced and Ortho Chickweed/Clover/Oxalis. What is an appro...

I'm sorry - I didn't mean it to seem like I felt attacked. I just wanted to make it clear that my answer was limited to C:N and not meant to discuss the particular grasses. We're cool...