final leveling of lawn - drag harrow, landscape rake, other?

[WranglerX]

I personally use a drag harrow for leveling driveway and gopher mounds and what ever need to be leveled/smoothed....

 

[Williy]

Here a land plane works to level the drive way.
Why not use a land plane to level the ground??

willy

 

[ruffdog]

When I did the final dirt work for our new lawn seed bed I dragged around a big old pallet with a rock box on it so I could adjust the weight. For the beach clean up it would be a pine straw rake for me.

gg

I have had very good results using a LARGE pallet to level the high/low spots.

 

[orangetree]

Here a land plane works to level the drive way.
Why not use a land plane to level the ground??

willy

I have a 72" (Edit: BLADE, not plane, sorry i misspoke) from EA, with side wings. essentially a box blade, sans scarifiers). So not quirmte the same function as a plane.

The problem here is that a stump or unseen rock will HALT the tractor. I grind most of the stumps, so they are not always visible either. Besides being startling, I mean stop in it's tracks ... that can't be good for the machine.

I'm very tempted to try ratchet-rake on front to remove anything larger than the landscape rake would get, with the landscape rake on back to mostly take off the organic matter on top.

If that doesn't work, next season I'll try the flail mower or disc-harrow (I've since read they will sort of "bounce over" hard obstacles - I"m still concerned about my 5000lb (ck2610 + weights and beet-juice) 25hp unit being able to pull it deep enough to do much more good than a rake, though.

 

[leonz]

You should mark al the hidden known obstacles to enable you to remove them or
hire a backhoe for an hour as frost heaving will only bring them closer to the surface.

 

[jhuey]

You are on the right track. I’ve done my yard (about the same as yours) with bucket and box blade to get it close. I then used a landscape rake (Without wheels)to smooth everything out, I then flip it backwards and continue smoothing. To finish I employ my yard tractor with a scrap piece of chainlink fence as a drag (about 5’ or so) with a couple of cinder blocks and finish smoothing. My method works pretty good.

 

[Deanes]

For leveling and covering grass seed, I have a 4x4' square tubing frame with a cyclone fence piece mounted inside. It probably weighs 50 pounds. It does a great job with a short chain hooked to a 4-wheeler or zero-turn mower. The zero-turn is a lot more maneuverable in tight areas around trees or buildings. The secret is to drive random patterns again and again.
I have done some yards for builder's new homes. Using only a box blade, FEL. If the job site is nearby, I have driven the tractor with the 4-wheeler, a bag of turf fescue seed, hand rake and the drag transported in the front bucket.

 

[orangetree]

Here a land plane works to level the drive way.
Why not use a land plane to level the ground??

willy

I have a 60" plane from EA, with side wings (sorta like a box blade, sans scarifiers).

The problem here is that a stump or unseen rock will HALT the tractor. I grind most of the stumps, so they are not always visible either. Besides being startling, I mean stop in it's tracks ... that can't be good for the machine.

I should add to my reply about the plane/blade/box-blade:

• The "other uses" I mentioned in the OP are in the woods to make some rudimentary fire breaks. In my situation my blade won't be that useful due to buried obstacles.
  • I'm surrounded by high-risk wildfire country. There are certain trigger points nearby that would cause me to assume it's coming for our street, and I would clear some of these lines in adjacent land - ie I really don't have the ability to go in there an clean up the soil ahead of time. So a plane/blade is out, but a rake would be quite useful there in addition to some other tools (flail &/or disc harrow - but that's a different topic than this thread)
• in _soft_ soil, ie topsoil for a yard vs say 3/4-minus for a road - I'll use my blade in "box" configuration to spread the bulk material, but it's not going to be the best to smooth it. Maybe with electronic 3point leveling (ha, that would be nice, but my experience doing similar is it's just too sensitive to tractor angle, and "bites" too hard/easily. Minor movements beget it digging in, never really achieving "smooth"

 

[airbiscuit]

I have a 60" plane from EA, with side wings (sorta like a box blade, sans scarifiers).

The problem here is that a stump or unseen rock will HALT the tractor.....

At this point, I think a picture of the property would help.

 

[orangetree]

At this point, I think a picture of the property would help.

Unfortunately it's under 4ft of snow for the foreseeable future (although it is getting HOT this week) - I didn't mean to muddy the water, just describe that I had some other uses where the blade definitely won't work, and I haven't purchased a solution yet, which slightly increases the ROI on buying a rake now