Question
Ronald,
Hopefully you can help me on the below lawn repair.
My location if needed is southwestern N.C. very close to S.C. We moved into a new home last Nov. (Had home built everything new) and the contractor seeded for a new lawn in late Nov. It has been coming up in early Spring and twice this spring I have also reseeded with tall vescue Kentucky 31. It has been coming up but not the greastest lawn but that takes time. I have contracted with a landscraoer to put in a retaining wall because my property is on a gradual incline from the front to the back. I have at least 1-1/2 areas of lawn. He also will be putting in plants, scrubs, mulch etc. On the back part (High point) of lot there was a considerable amount of trees that had fallen over the years and brush and I also cut down all small trees to really clean the area up. He rented a big chipper to put all the wood in to mulch it up last weekend. Did a great job but this past Sunday we had a slow rain most of the afternoon and he left the chipper on the back of our property on the hill when he was finished instead of pulling it down and put in the driveway and pick up Monday morning and return to rental company. Well Sunday night we had a lot of rain and Monday morning he tried to go up our lawn (1/4 ton truck)to where the chipper was and could never make it. He finally got stuck on the property after 2 or 3 attempts to climb the hill but got out latter when it dried enought. He called the rental co. and they came out in a 1/2 ton flatbed 4 wheel drive that had a back axle with dual tires both sides and make an attempt through my front lawn but after going about 60 feet the truck would go no further so they had to back out after much damage to the lawn. There is approx. 300 feet x 2 of tire ruts from 2" to 6" deep and on the sides of the rut the ground is mashed up 2" to 4". My landscape contractor has made one little attempt to repair approx. 20' of this and it looks like he destroyed all grass between the ruts also. Nothing has been done since then and we had 2 days of very strong wind and the ground and the pushed up mud on the sides of the ruts has dried at a very rapid pace. It's getting hard. My question after all this is what complete repair do you recomend being done? I was going to have my lawn reseeded, fertilized and aerated (Plug aerator) by a local guy that does this with a tractor etc. before it gets to late in the spring and the weather gets to warm to do this. I was going to have this done before this disaster took place. I have no sprinkler system. Now I am forced to delay this being done until the repair has been done and he is finished with all his work and he seems in no hurry to accomodate anyone. Hopefully you can give me some advice as to what to have done. Sorry I was so long winded but I had to tell the whole story. Dirt is pretty soft from grading etc. last fall.

I am not out to burn this contractor, I just want the correct repair done.

Thanks very much,
Tony

Answer
I have given this some thought and the best suggestion I can come up with is to level out the ruts. At the right moisture earth almost "flows". I have seen ruts on dirt roads filled in by dragging a length of I-beam behind a vehicle. Baseball fields are smoothed out by dragging a piece of chain link fencing behind an ATV. If the soil is too wet, it clogs up the works and if it is too dry, it requires a lot of horse power to get the job done.
But that is the best I can offer today.