# Growing Grass after removing an above ground pool



## mhp8982

My husband and I had the this huge above ground pool removed as apart of our deal when we bought this house.. and now we have a huge 24' circle of sand.. and a huge rectangle next to that where the deck was... that is covered in little tiny pebbles. How do we get rid of all of this and plant grass? 

The ground is pretty level where the pool was.. I just wasn't sure if or how we could plant grass over the sand... I know we need to remove the rocks from the other area.. I was also wondering if it's ok to start the grass seed process in the fall with temps up and down? Or should we wait until Spring to do it? Any help would be wonderful!!

Thanks so much!


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## dominicpresutti

I have the same situation. Have you resolved yours regarding planting/growing a lawn in the above ground pool area?


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## mhp8982

dominicpresutti said:


> I have the same situation. Have you resolved yours regarding planting/growing a lawn in the above ground pool area?


We've got the rocks up... no idea on planting over the sand yet. We are really wanting to not spend too much money.. I'm hoping we can get it figured out.


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## dominicpresutti

*Growing grass after removing above ground pool*

Thank you for your response. I removed the surrounding stones as well. What a job. My pool was 24' as also. There was so much sand I decided to cover it with soil. I got 1 yard of top soil ($50) and it provided about 2" of cover plus I had to keep it somewhat level with the rest of my yard. If you had rain I am sure you had a major puddle of water. I planted seed and grass did grow in various areas. We had a very hot summer and water restrictions were in place. As a result what little grass did grow died. My plan is to manually aerate the area, seed, and cover with a soil - compost mix ($50). Hopefully autumn will provided the conditions to grow grass. Keep me posted of your progress.I don't want to spend a lot of money.


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## kredman

Just guessing here, but it seems like you'd want to remove all that sand and fill with dirt. 2" of topsoil won't give your grass much root growth. But, I could totally be wrong!


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## mhp8982

dominicpresutti said:


> Thank you for your response. I removed the surrounding stones as well. What a job. My pool was 24' as also. There was so much sand I decided to cover it with soil. I got 1 yard of top soil ($50) and it provided about 2" of cover plus I had to keep it somewhat level with the rest of my yard. If you had rain I am sure you had a major puddle of water. I planted seed and grass did grow in various areas. We had a very hot summer and water restrictions were in place. As a result what little grass did grow died. My plan is to manually aerate the area, seed, and cover with a soil - compost mix ($50). Hopefully autumn will provided the conditions to grow grass. Keep me posted of your progress.I don't want to spend a lot of money.


Well.. I was talking to some people at work.. and I think I'm gonna try their suggestions. I've had a few people tell me to take the shovel and try to kind of dig down to the real soil under the sand and kinda mix it up.. and just do this all over... and mix the sand with the soil.. smooth it out.. then add a layer of fresh topsoil... and some compost then put the grass seed out.. cover with straw and use a sprinkler and water it often. 

I'm not sure where you live.. but I live in Indiana and I've been told by several this is the perfect time to do it... just have to get it done before the end of October. It's been really dry here.. so I will have to water it a lot. One girl here said she had to do that and it worked well.. mixing the soil with the sand.


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## dominicpresutti

*Growing grass in area after removing above ground pool*

Thanks for your message. Removing the sand was my original plan even though there is a lot of sand. I'd say there was 2 plus tons. I have a neighbor who owns a fairly large landscape business. His recommendation was to cover the sand with soil. I also had a few other landscapers take a look to give me an estimate. They were going to remove the stones that were around the pool area and deck and cover the sand. Estimates were around $1,100. I could add more soil to the area.


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## dominicpresutti

Thanks for the recommendation. Autumn is the "best" time to plant grass. I live in South Jersey.


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## mhp8982

where the rocks were.. we just use a wheel barrel and we dumped them behind our shed temporarily. It's good dirt under where those were... so it shouldn't take much. The circle is my biggest concern. I think there is about 4" of sand.. from when we looked.


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## Scuba_Dave

I had sand left from a prior pool at my last house
I dug some of the sand out to re-use under the hot tub pad
Then more under a walkway/patio
Then I dumped a few inches of soil over what was left & planted grass

I also planted in the fall, reseeded the back yard
Grass grew great


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## dominicpresutti

Looks great!


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## mhp8982

Scuba_Dave said:


> I had sand left from a prior pool at my last house
> I dug some of the sand out to re-use under the hot tub pad
> Then more under a walkway/patio
> Then I dumped a few inches of sand over what was left & planted grass
> 
> I also planted in the fall, reseeded the back yard
> Grass grew great


wow.. that looks great... You just planted grass directly over the sand?? What kind of grass seed did you use?


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## Scuba_Dave

No I put down soil
That's when I knew I was a homeowner....I bought dirt
It was ~14 years ago....not sure what seed I bought
I kept it watered


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## mhp8982

ok.. so you said sand.. you meant soil. How much would that cost us? Can you even attempt to plant it over the sand. I don't think my idea to mix it is going to work. We went out there this evening and were trying to dig it up to get down to the soil.. and the sand is about 4 inches, then we thought we ran into soil.. but nooo it looks more like clay!! And we dug and dug and never found the end of it. Probably about another foot we dug.. this is only in the circle where the pool was.... the area with the rocks was fine... it's all soil.. however we did dig up a few stones in that area. Not sure why stones were buried in the ground. My husband thought for sure it was soil and not clay.. and I dug up a little in the area where the regular soil was and showed him the difference.. but I don't know. There's no way we are gonna get this done right.. if that's clay and you can't plant grass there because It is probably more than 2 feet deep... that would take way too much dirt to fill it in.


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## Scuba_Dave

Oops...no I meant dirt
I think it was maybe $100 for the dirt
I had another area I needed to fill in too
Truck backed up & dumped it & I spread it out
I'd say maybe 3-4" of dirt
I have grass grow in very rocky soil
As long as water will not sit long term & rot the roots you should be OK
Digging one hole down thru the clay to soil would allow water to drain


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## mhp8982

Here's a picture of the area.. I went out and took some pics tonight. I don't know if it'll help anything or not....

I have the areas marked... As you can see everything is very level with the ground so I hate to dig much. Where would you suggest me making that hole? Will the grass grown on top of all of that clay and sand? With having one or two holes for water to drain into? We should have no problem with the other area.

Then the electrical wire I was talking about in another post. There is an outlet on it.. we would use it.. only it's in the middle of the yard.. But anyway... we haven't been able to test if it's live or not yet, but they did try to plug something into it.. and it did not work.. so I don't know if that proves that it's dead or not. We'll still test it before we do anything with it.

We are still waiting on the people to finish putting our fence in.. it's driving me crazy.. they are so close to done.. but they still aren't finished.. He came over for like 20 minutes today did a few little things and then left.. with more still to do. sigh!! But anyway, with the fence up no one could really pull in and dump any dirt into the spot.


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## Scuba_Dave

That's a tough situation
My area was slightly lower
So adding soil was OK
If its pretty level there then you need to dig out some of whats there
Or you will have a raised area


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## mhp8982

The circle where the pool was is very slightly but not very noticeably lower than the rest of the ground.. but not much at all. 

I was talking to my mom tonight.. and she told informed me that the yard at the house I grew up in... was all clay.. and grass grew in the clay fine.... soooo... I don't know

What do you mean when you mentioned making the hole in the clay? Could I do it without any new dirt? Maybe just take some from the area that's slightly raised where the deck was and mix it into the sand?


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## Scuba_Dave

If there is a drainage problem digging thru the clay will allow water to drain
If you don't have any long term standing water then you are fine
If grass will grow in the clay then I'd either mix in dirt if you have extra
Or bring in some dirt & add it on top


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## mhp8982

only thing is... it's very hard to break up the clay.. it's very rubbery.. I can definitely mix some of the extra dirt with the sand.. DH and I are both taking half days tomorrow.. we have an appointment but then after that we will probably run to lowes and see about getting some grass seed and maybe some dirt.. I don't know where on earth we buy dirt from? lol I know that may be a very stupid question..... But can you get it at places like Lowes or do I need to go somewhere else? I thought maybe I could get a little soil to mix in with it... ?


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## Scuba_Dave

I bought mine from a local garden center
Near my house here there is a sand/gravel/mulch company that carries just about everything


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## mhp8982

in the area where the dirt is.. and rocks.. we got most of them up.. but if there are still some there will the grass still grow?


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## Scuba_Dave

Yes...I have grass growing in very rocky soil
Just make sure the lawnmower won't hit a rock


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## mhp8982

Ok.. thanks!


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## mhp8982

Well, it's spring now and I want to update and bring this back up. So we added soil to the circle where the pool was and planted grass.. we thought we had all the rocks up in the other areas and planted seed there too.. we did this in the fall. In the circle there is a ton of grass on top of the clay/sand/soil.. but it's very patchy.. the areas where the rocks were.. almost none grew and LOTS more rocks have appeared from under the ground and it seems like everytime we shovel up the rocks.. and then it rains millions of more little pea gravel rocks appear. We are breaking our backs trying to get all of those tiny rocks up. But anyway.. we plan to till up the soil in that area really well once we finally get most of the rocks up.. and plant again. And plant more again over the circle..

Then we have the rest of our yard.. it has several patchy spots where there isn't much grass for some reason and full of weeds.. especially those sticky things. And we really don't like the kids playing out there with all of those. Do we need to seed this area? the whole yard or just the patches? Or do we just need to fertilize it? Should we wait until the grass is in where the pool was before fertilizing? What is the best type of fertilizer to use? We want to use it all over the yard everywhere... so which is the best to get rid of those sticky weeds and is there any kind that is safe for kids and dogs?

Sorry for all of the questions.... I need help! lol Thanks so much!


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