Question
Hello, I also live on Long Island.  I recently bought a home with a very neglected (dead)lawn. The lawn was originally sod and a working  underground sprinkler system is in place.  I believe the best time to seed etc. is in the fall.
How should I go about this. Should I rent equipment or try to rake it myself.  I do not want to disturbe the sprinklers.

Thank you  

Answer
My favorite questions - the ones from Long Island.  Hello neighbor!

There's nothing like beginning with a clean slate of grass, Laura.  You get to select the grass, determine maintenance and watch your work unfold.  Plus you have a sprinkler system up and running, which is a very wonderful thing to have when you are sowing new grass.

You can pick out some excellent varieties at Hicks Nurseries on Jericho Turnpike.  I recommend Hicks because they have one of the broadest selections of related amendments in the Northeast, everything from Ladybugs in the summer to Greensand, and a real Organics expert.  They do soil testing on site which you can drop off at your own convenience.  And that is where we should begin.  Soil testing.

If Hicks is out of your way, you can drop your soil test in the mail.  Send it to Cornell Cooperative Extension, which posts instructions and services (www.css.cornell.edu/soiltest/soil_testing/test_types/home_gardens.asp) at its website.  This is the first step and it is the one the few gardeners bother with because it seems to be so unimportant.  This is after all grass we are growing here.  Grass grows no matter what you do to it.

But if you want the best lawn money can buy, you have to know what is down there.  And you are just moving into this house.  Who knows what's underfoot?  Find out, Laura.  It won't take long and the results determine your next step, amendments.  They may also clue you in on any ugly surprises you would not otherwise be aware of with that soil.

In the meantime, select your grass.  You can pick that up at Hicks, or you can buy it online and have it delivered.  The best grass you can buy is at Seedland (www.seedland.com).

You are correct when you worry about damaging your sprinkler system.  Rototilling in your case would be like playing Russian roulette with your lawn.  There are new schools of thought that recommend against Rototilling except in extreme cases, anyway.  You don't want to mess up the soil structure with all that mixing and sifting.  If you are careful, you won't have to put down chemicals and you can count on Nature to put your grass on autopilot every summer with minimal work on your part, and minimal $$$ as well.

The next few weeks are the best time of the year in our area to put down grass seed so don't waste any time on this.  Once you pick your grass, and have a soil diagnosis from Cornell, write back and we'll translate anything you don't understand.  You can mulch and gently hand rake your amendments into the top layers of soil.  In the meantime, any weeds there should absolutely, positively be mowed to make sure they do not set seed - ever.  You will avoid years of headaches by being diligent with this.

You will probably have to add lime.  Don't under any circumstances buy anything that says SCOTTS or ORTHO on the bag/box/carton/container.  These are products designed to give you instant results with lots of long term damage in ways you don't even want to think about.

Now I have to get on my soapbox for a minute for a few words about Long Island and Chemicals.

Ever hear people talking about the "breast cancer epidemic on Long Island"?  I heard about this years ago.  Odd thing is, although I have spent nearly all of my 53 years as a resident of Long Island, NY, I had never met a single person who had lived, or died, with breast cancer.  Not 1.

There were people who died of lung cancer.  Pancreatic cancer.  Heart disease.  Bladder cancer.  Colon cancer.  Non Hodgkins Lymphoma.  Hodgkins Disease.  I knew several people who died of brain tumors, and they were not very old.  Next door, a woman died of cirrhosis of the liver.  Suicide.  One kid died in a motorcycle accident at 18.  A teenager died in a car accident.  Not one case of breast cancer.

So I looked up the stats.

What I saw was clusters of cancer.  Breast cancer, leukemia and brain tumors in very specific neighborhoods.

And the analyses I came across pointed out that these cancer clusters had one thing in common:  They were near Brookhaven Laboratory (which has its own nuclear facility), or they were adjacent to golf greens at country clubs, or they were developments that used to be potato fields.

It's very obvious to me that no one should be putting WEED B GONE or WEED N FEED or ROUNDUP or Grub Killers on their own grass.  When the man across the street with the perfect lawn died last year of Pancreatic Cancer, that just sealed the deal for me.  His wife, a retired nurse, brought it up.  But I believed all along that his heavily chemicalled grass, and probably his casual use without gloves or face masks, gave him the health problems that farm laborers and farmers face routinely.

You don't have to use chemicals to get a beautiful lawn.  You have to use great seed, and you have make intelligent decisions about what you're doing to that grass.  You don't need grub killer because grubs are bird food and birds will eat all your grubs every morning.  You don't need fungus killer because fungus does not grow in healthy grass, any more than mildew grows on wet towels if you hang them up.

That's enough of that.  I hope some of this is sinking in and in the meantime you can get the show on the road and start your new life with your new grass.

With the best lawn on the block, people will be asking YOU for advice.

I'd love to hear that you can tell them you don't believe in turning your lawn into a Superfund Site.

Happy Grass Shopping, Laura.  Any questions?  I'm here.