Before winter had even started, my front lawn was already a total disaster.
But the trouble had started long before that point. We were having a brutally hot summer in the midwest, and the grass was barely hanging on. It was clear that the weeds were far more adept at surviving in these brutal conditions, and keeping them at bay had become a full-time job.
As summer moved into autumn, we ran into a different problem. Our front yard features a handful of very large trees that conspire together to keep as much sunlight as possible off of the grass. When these trees started to drop their leaves, they managed to cover the entire yard just about every single day. To try and keep the problem in check, my wife and I (and all of the kids) did some serious kung-fu raking day after day. In spite of this, the battle just seemed un-winnable.
By the time the trees ran out of leaves to drop, the entire yard was toast. The grassy spots were far outnumbered by the bald spots, and we found ourselves discussing potentially ripping out and re-sodding the entire yard. But before taking such drastic measures, we knew that it was time to start researching how to revive a lawn that had fallen off the cliff.
The soil in my area has a reputation for being rocky and acidic. Certainly not the best condition for growing well.. anything. In a situation like this, regularly aerating your yard become essential. Of course, I don’t own an aerator, so I have to rent one from the local Home Depot.
This is where it comes in handy to be friendly with your neighbors. Several of my neighbors needed to aerate their yards at the same time (early spring is best), and we were able to split the cost of renting the heavy roller aerator between us. It ended up costing us about $15 each, when all was said and done.
Aerating only takes about fifteen minutes for a normal-sized suburban yard, and has a low degree of difficulty. At the end of the process, you will have a yard full of little dirt turdlets and a bunch of holes. When you fertilize and add seed, these holes will be critical for preventing water from washing everything out of your yard.
There are many varying opinions on whether you should fertilize before or after you add grass seed. My take is, why not do both? This means, before getting started you should find a cheap starter fertilizer to get the soil ready (about $20/bag). You don’t need to lay it on especially thick, as your goal here is to create an environment with favorable growth conditions.
I recommend using an adjustable drop spreader to distribute fertilizer (and later grass seed) to make sure that you get even coverage. If your soil is hard and rocky like mine, you may also want to add some gypsum in with your fertilizer, which will help loosen everything up.
After getting the initial fertilizer down, you should wait a couple of days and do some light watering before adding the seed.
There are a variety of grass seeds out there, in a variety of price ranges. For the most part, most people will just want to find a big bag of tall fescue or bluegrass. Try to avoid the commercial “all-in-one” solutions that include fertilizer with the grass seed, because they will often contain far more filler than actual seed.
I have had great results with this seed mix from Pennington.
I recommend mixing the grass seed with another (smaller) bag of fertilizer to help push the new seed over the top.
Once your seed is down, it can take as long as fourteen days for the seed to germinate. During this time, you should aim to keep the growth conditions as friendly as possible. This means keeping the seeds wet as much as possible, but only a little bit wet.
Overwatering your lawn can drown the roots, making it impossible for the tiny grass plants to survive. This leads to an environment that is terrible for grass, but is actually a place where weeds can thrive. I recommend a brief watering session in the morning, followed by a second even shorter session in the evening.
For my yard, I also added a layer of straw on top of the grass seed. This is a good approach if you are trying to cover bare spots, but is unnecessary if you are only over-seeding. Straw should be added with only about 50% coverage, to make sure you leave room for the grass seeds to come through. The straw servers a few different purposes: it keeps the soil from washing away, it discourages birds from eating your seed, and it keeps moisture in.
A few weeks after laying your grass seed (if not sooner), your should start to see cute little blades starting to appear in patches. In another few weeks, these patches will thicken and start to spread. If you put down straw, at this point it should also be starting to disintegrate.
You should be on the lookout for weeds trying to sprout with your new seed, and try to pull them by hand before your lawn is well established. After about six weeks, you should have a pretty good idea if this seeding is going to be a successful one.
For us, things were looking dramatically better after a month. After two months, the entire yard is lush, thick and green. We saved ourselves hundreds of dollars and dozens of hours of hard manual labor by repairing the yard instead of re-sodding!
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