When I ordered the Geo Grid, I also ordered some gravel from Home Depot for less than $5 for a .5 cubic foot bag. I ordered 70 bags, knowing I would have order more before the job was done, but I don’t want my yard to look like a department store parking lot.
The first day was the toughest. I waited until after the gravel arrived to start digging. Home depot is excellent about delivering the home improvement supplies the next day, so I got my timbers and the gravel right away. I had just put together my wheelbarrow a couple weeks ago, so I was prepared for the task at hand, digging. First, I measured and staked out the area to be dug up. The Geo Grid I ordered is 4 inches deep, so I want to make sure I dig an extra inch and then level it out as needed.
The pitchfork was pretty useless, the only thing that worked good was my rounded end spade. I would cut two spade widths in each direction and then pry it up. I cut the sod from the dirt blocks that came up so I could use the grass in other areas in my yard.
After doing a couple rows, I ran into another issue: where do I go with all this dirt? My yard is small. The backyard is smaller than the front yard. The sod raised the backyard by a couple inches, so I didn’t really want to add more dirt to the backyard. So after filling in and ruts around the house and along the side of the street where water eroded the dirt away when we had some heavy rain, I ran out of places to put the dirt. So, I decided to call it a day – to give me some time to figure out where I would take the dirt, because 65 cubic feet of dirt is pretty big when it isn’t under your lawn.
Hopefully this will be solved tomorrow. The temperatures are supposed to be manageable for the next few days, and no rain in the forecast, unless you ask Google Home… she kept telling it would rain the next day and then in the morning would change her tune.