Dirt for the Central Backyard

With the irrigation system installed, we can now get dirt to fill in the backyard, replacing the rock that has been removed.

As before, we are getting Professional Mix from Whittlesey Landscape Supplies in Round Rock.  We had been bringing in 8 cubic yards, but in this case we ordered 12 cubic yards.  With an $80 delivery charge, this comes to $568.12.  It was delivered at about 1:00 PM on Monday.

After about 10 hours (5 hours on Monday and 5 hours on Tuesday) of shoveling the dirt into the wheelbarrow and carting it around back, spreading it in the central backyard, this is done.

The backyard starts with the combination of leaves, grass and dirt that was there in the beginning.

After the first 5 hours, we have a strip closest to the established lawn, and along the back fence partially filled.

And after the next 5 hours, we have a strip that goes all along the sidewalk over to the irrigation valves for Zone 6 and Zone 7, extending about halfway across the yard to the fence.

Clearly, we need more dirt.

We spread 3 full bags (3 cubic feet each) of Peat Moss across the central backyard.

And then another 12 cubic yards of dirt.

This fills in the back yard pretty well.  But the dirt is dry, light and fluffy.  While we have compressed it some by walking around on it, we thought it might need a bit more.  So we rented a "lawn roller" from Home Depot ($13.10 for 4 hours).  It's just a plastic cylinder on a handle, but you can fill it with water to make it 250 pounds heavy, and then roll it around on the lawn.

I did one pass horizontally and one pass vertically.

As a measure of the amount of dirt (other than 24 cubic yards), at the stick (where the tree is to be planted), we have 11 inches of new dirt (professional mix) to get the backyard leveled.