Question
Hi Charlotte, I hope you can help me.  I just recently bought my first home.  After being here only a month, my fiance had someone come in to cut down several tall, thin pine trees.  He was afraid they would fall on my new house if we were to have a hurricane or severe storm.  Then he hired a man to come and grind the stumps that were left over.  (We had been in a drought here in South Alabama for a couple of months or more.)  The next day he was at work and I had gone to the grocery store with my son.  I came home to find 3 fire trucks and half my neighborhood in my back yard.  We're not sure how it started, but a fire had burned our whole yard and took out the storage shed and his enclosed motorcycle trailer too.  A neighbor saw it and tried to put it out with a water hose as his wife called 911, but it was too late.  I'm just fortunate that it didn't get to my house.  Anyway, to make a long story short, now I have this black, ashy dirt for a back yard.  What should I do to get a beautiful green, lush lawn to grow.  There hasn't been one in this yard before.  It was a tree covered lot with lots of under-brush before the fire.  Now I have scorced oaks and dogwoods and lots of black dirt. Please help if you can.  I want to have a lawn I can be proud of, but the under-brush seems to be the only thing wanting to grow back there.  
Thank you in advance,
~Robin~  

Answer
Hi Robin;
The name of a very large nursery chain in Texas is Calloways. I am a regular ciustomer as tey have great plants, and carry a lot of organic products. I LOVE my Calloways nursery.
Burning usually does burn off the underbrush, and then things can grow better.
You don't say how long ago the fire was.
If it has been only a few days, you may see gras startint to grow soon.
Wood ashes are good for the lawn and garden.
Have you had a nurseryman look at the trees that are left to assess if they can be saved or if they are too far gone?
I would do that, and if they cannot be rescued, then have them cut down too.
If you don't have grass, you might want to till everything up and sod in some new grass.
That underbrush is growing so well because of the ashes, and probably because there is more sunlight on the ground after the trees were cut down. You will need to dig those out, because organics enrich the soil, and tree saplings love the rich soil, and will grow well in it. They are not weeds. Weeds like poor soil, and won't thrive in rich soil.
so make rich soil, and you will not have weeds, but you will get the tree seedlings, and have to dig them out as soon as you see them, before their root system gets healthy enough to be hard to dig out.
If your soil is nice and loose, watering should settle some of the ashes.
You could get some topsoil and add about an inch. that would put the ashes under the soil so they will benefit the soil, and not look sop desolate.
Since there hadn't been a lawn there before, I would see this as an oportunity to get a good start on a really nice one.
If you still have too much shade, maybe you need to look into some of the shade loving ground covers.
You need to determine if you have good loose soil or hard clay.
If you have clay, I would till in some soil amendments to start it loosening up. Bark mulch, humus, peat moss etc.
If you decide to go that way, and need more help, write me right back, and I will try to help as much as i can with information of ground covers etc.
Charlotte