How To Build A Leveling Drag (Step by Step Guide)

When your lawn needs leveling and you are short of cash, you can take charge of matters and build your own leveling drag. There is no need to spend hundreds of dollars on a harrow or thousands of dollars on a garden tractor. In fact, you easily build a leveling drag that you’ll be able to pull yourself.

The easiest way to build a leveling drag is to modify a section of chain link fence and attach it to a rope to be pulled by hand or by a tractor. Other inexpensive materials that are easy to find may also work. We’ll discuss the steps for turning the materials you already have into a leveling drag with just an hour’s effort. But first, let’s do a refresher on why you may need a leveling drag for your lawn or yard.

In general, leveling drags can help smooth out minor bumps and make your lawn more even. By doing this, you can make it significantly easier to mow without cutting too high, too low, or hitting a bad spot and injuring yourself.

For low spots or holes in your lawn, you will need to fill them before using a leveling drag. This can be done by adding soil or compost to the affected areas. Dragging a mat or a mesh (or other materials we will discuss below) can also press seeds into the ground to help them stay in place and encourage germination. However, the same result can be achieved by raking the soil first and covering seeds with more soil.

Leveling drags can be pulled by hand or attached to a rider mower or garden tractor. Pulling a drag mat over loose soil pulls up rocks and organic debris, too. When you make your own leveling drag from a piece of chain link fence, storage is easy. All you have to do is to roll it up for some convenient corner of your garage or storage shed.

And the great thing about building your own leveling drag is that you can customize it for any leveling tasks, not just leveling your lawn, but also leveling gravel for parking lots and topsoil for gardening.

Tie one end of the rope to the left side of the 4-foot side of the section of fence. Tie the other end of the rope to the right side of the 4-foot side of the section of fence. Pull on the center of the rope to make a V shape.

Quick Tip: If you are dragging the level by hand, you can make it easier to hold by making a loop in the free end of the rope. Also, chain link fencing tends to roll up. To prevent this, you can place heavy objects on the drag when you use it to level your yard. Bricks, blocks, and boards work. Because of this, it is often best to use a garden tractor or rider mower to pull your leveling drag.

If you don’t have easy access to lumber or chain link fence, you can use old bed springs, wooden pallets, or even scrap rails once used for railroad maintenance. At this point, you’ve likely gotten the idea. Simply attach one end of a 10-foot segment of ⅜” rope to the wooden pallet or old box springs that you will use as your leveling drag.

The other end of the rope attaches to your tractor or is what you grip onto to pull the leveling drag by hand.

It is possible to level a lawn with sand, but there are several precautions you need to take first. Some varieties of sand are very acidic and even grass won’t grow on extremely acidic soil. The problem with acidic sand is that it liberates toxic heavy metals that can interfere with plant growth, and, in rare cases, even pose a danger to pets and people.

When you level your yard with sand, you need to take the pH of your soil first. There are test strips and pH meters at most of the larger yard and garden supply centers. If the addition of soil makes your lawn too acidic for growing turf, you can add lime to make it more alkaline. Ask your garden center about how much lime to use after you have measured pH.