A lot of reading? How did you miss the suggestions to get your soil test at Logan Labs? How did you miss the suggestions to level in the summer and specifically not in the spring? How do you not already have the Bermuda Bible?

Where are you in Texas?
What is your watering regimen (frequency and duration)?

You can get started fixing your soil by applying alfalfa pellets at 20 pounds per 1000 square feet. Do that monthly along with the regular fertilizer as recommended in the Bible.

If your soil is hard and not absorbing water, search this forum for shampoo.

Well hello there dchall. Guess I should add that I work 80 hours/week and have a busy family when I get home late at night. So when I say a lot of reading, it probably means something different to me than others as I have little time to myself.

I tested my soil when I first moved in, far before I came across this website and saw the posts about Logan Labs.

I've read the forum's about sand leveling. The two that I've read were done in the spring, due to concerns about stressing the grass out too much. These were followed up with various opinions about when to perform. This is why I stated in my original post about opinions varying.

I've seen the post about the Bermuda Bible, but spare time is non-existent. That's why I'm here trying to figure out the right way to do things and stop waisting so much time laboring over the yard when there is an easier way to do things.

I live in the Temple/Belton area of Texas.

I have my sprinklers set to run every three days, first round waters everything for two hours, second round waters everything for 45 minutes. Been working on getting a deeper watering depth.

I'll start the alfalfa pellets this weekend, and then find what the bible recommends.

80 hours per week? Excuses excuses! ;-)

Temple/Belton. Good to know.

When to level?
The recommendation to do it in the summer comes from Texas Weed. He's been a grass farmer north of Dallas for years and now works as a grounds keeper for a golf course in AZ. He is the author of the Bermuda Bible. The point is to wait until the grass is growing strong so it does not accidentally go dormant under the sand.

I would wait until I mowed real grass at least 10 times. That way you know the entire lawn is growing well. If you are mowing 2x per week, then that's only 5 weeks after the growing season starts for YOU. You can't go by the calendar for this. This year with the lingering spring, it might have been July before you would have had the confidence in the grass to level it. Leveling the way it has been accepted is walking a relatively fine line between helping the lawn and smothering it. All the preparatory steps are needed to boost the grass up through the sand after it is buried. By waiting until deeper into the summer, you can be assured the bermuda is not still a little dormant.

This time of year you should be watering once per week, a full inch at a time. Measure an inch with tuna or cat food cans placed around the yard. Time how long it takes your sprinkler to fill them. That's your target watering time.

Dchall,
I've applied the alfalfa pellets and changed my watering to once a week. Another question, when I'm doing the leveling next year should I only use the sharp sand, or can I take this opportunity to mix in some compost or anything else that would help improve the soil? It has also be recommended to me to use red lava sand because it helps retain moisture so well. Are you familiar/used this kind of sand before? Just want to make sure I'm doing everything I can to boost the soils health when I can.

Where did you hear about red lava sand and what properties is it supposed to convey...aside from water retention? Sand does not retain water, so there must be something else about red lava that they are selling. Don't be afraid to mention weird properties that some of the radio talk show hosts mention.

If I had a preference for sand and had all the money I needed to spend on it, I might go with basalt followed by some sort of more traditional lava sand. Why? Because those sands are not usually found on a river bottom like silicon or calcium sands. River bottom sands are rounded from generations of being beat upon by boulders rolling down stream.

I have used zeolite successfully to level small parts of my yard. For very small areas, it works fine. You can get it in 20-pound bags at HEB under the brand name Hill Country Faire Kitty Litter. Read the label to ensure it is 100% zeolite. Blue bag. Zeolite is a filter medium mined from the ground and processed. It holds a lot of moisture - hence its use as kitty litter.

I'm going to level about 6,000 sf of my lawn, so I'm looking for inexpensive materials. If I got a load of masons sand and a load of compost, would mixing these together when leveling be acceptable? Or do these steps need to be separated? my soil as it is has little organic qualities, so I need to introduce some when possible.

The red lava sand was recommended to me by a family member who has applied it to his lawn and saw a substantial improvement. Below is a link from a page that briefy explains it ;

http://www.natures-guide.com/Reference/soilamendments.html

Okay perfect. That's exactly what I suspected. You said red lava sand. The red threw me off. There is nothing wrong with lava sand. Whether it conveys ANY of the features promoted on that website is conjecture in my opinion. Well, it is paramagnetic, but whether paramagnetism is of any value is not very well demonstrated. One of the old timer paramagnetism skeptics was K Chandler, the founder of the Texas Plant and Soil Lab. He eventually started testing soils for paramagnetism and reluctantly admitted to me that it seemed to be present in the Texas farm soils with higher productivity. That's not exactly a ringing endorsement, but it tells me there is something to it.

Quite often when someone tries one of the more esoteric "organic" materials and gets great results, those great results are more properly attributed to changes to proper watering, mowing, and regular feeding. Simply paying more attention to the lawn usually squares things away.

Mixing sand with compost may work. I'm not familiar with anyone who has tried it. Compost has the remarkable feature of adding exactly zero long term volume. But when it is used it definitely adds volume...until it disappears. I'm just trying to think it through what would happen if you had deep holes to fill. I'm thinking you would go back to bumpy but a lot less bumpy. So I'm thinking pure sand is better. Certainly sand is much less expensive than any mix.

Don't fret about getting the organic matter up in your soil. That will happen with deep roots and the occasional organic fertilizer. If you are going to fertilize monthly with chemicals, you can add Milorganite or any other organic fertilizer at least once per year to keep your soil tuned up. The concern with heavy chemical fertilizer use is exhausting the soil microbes. Feeding them some organic fertilizer occasionally will really help. The more often the better, but bermuda can really use all the chemical N you can throw at it.