On Tuesday, June 3, 2014 2:00:11 PM UTC-4, DerbyDad03 wrote:
Higgs Boson wrote:

On Monday, June 2, 2014 6:49:36 PM UTC-7, DerbyDad03 wrote:

Last fall they dug up a section of our front lawn to replace the gas

service. This winter the town plow did its usual fine job of tearing up the

front 6 feet of our lawn near the road. A contractor for the utility came

by a few weeks ago, raked it all out, added some top soil and hydroseeded

the area. We're talking about roughly 1000 sq ft. Everything was done to my

satisfaction - other than the hydroseeding.



Having read through the responses, I'm wondering why -- given the

barbaric 6" plow damage every year -- you don't just fill those 6 inches

with pebbles or low fence or something else to create a kind of border to

your lawn. Could look nice.



HB



[...]



Re-read the post. The town tears up 6 _feet_ of the lawn, not 6 inches.

However, even though I'll address your suggestions, my post was not a

complaint about what the town does to my lawn.



I call that 6' of lawn along the road "my lawn" but in reality it is a town

right of way. I live on a curve on a narrow street. As the plow comes

around the curve, the side plow takes out the front of "my lawn". My

neighbor has it even worse. He'll end up with a 3' mound of dirt every year

while I typically get about a foot, a lot of which is his dirt that gets

dragged by the plow onto my property.



Due to town ordinances a fence is out of the question, even 6' feet back

from the road. I simply can not put a fence across the front of my

property. Besides, the push back from the pile of plowed snow would wipe it

out.



Pebbles would be a real bear come winter when the plow would drag them from

the lawn area onto my driveway where my snow blower would send them flying.

Not a good idea. Besides it's cheaper and easier to rake and reseed every

year than to reapply pebbles. I can state with 100% certainty that the town

would not pay me to replace the pebbles nor would they rake smooth whatever

is left. It's town property and they would simple say that they are not

responsible for landscaping it other than reseeding.



There are trade offs. For the trouble of reseeding that area each year, I

get to live on a very quiet, tree lined street. I can sit at my kitchen

table and look out of the living room picture window and only see woods,

except when the occasional deer, fox or turkey strolls by. I can drag my

leaves over to the woods and dump them down the hill over looking a bay. I

haven't bagged my leaves in 25 years. I also get kindling and sometimes

larger pieces of wood for our backyard fires from those woods. All in all,

I'm OK with dealing with the plow damage each spring.



So, my complaint isn't about the lawn getting torn up, it's about the

application of the hydro seed, which was done by someone other than the

town this year, and not done very well. Many of the areas in my

neighborhood that the plow annually tears up were previously dug up when

the gas main and house service pipes were replaced last fall, with the

promise from the utility that they would fix our lawns in the spring. I

don't know if there was an agreement between the utility and the town that

the utility would be responsible for repairing _all_ damaged lawns, but

that was who did all of the work. I know for a fact that some of the

damaged sections of my own property were gas service related and others

were strictly plow related, but the same contractor repaired it all.



So, all I need now is suggestions for the best way to overseed the bad

hydro seeded areas.

Simplest thing you could do would seem to be to just apply
seed on top of the hydroseeded areas that failed. Your seed will be on top of the hydraulic mulch. Then lightly
cover it with either peat moss, top soil, hydraulic mulch.
The choice depends on what you have available, how big those
areas are and how much it costs. Given that you have the hydraulic
mulch from the hyrdoseeding, that will help hold water and get it
established. Apply some starter fertilizer and keep it wet.