Fixing Your Lawn...a tutorial

 Our lawn is 17 years old and as such, needed some sprucing up.  It was covered with patches of weeds and then some patches where the grass has thinned due to all the trees and shade that our lawn gets.  Patches of thin grass really let the weeds in, so this past weekend, McG and I worked on giving our lawn a boost.

(this picture shows the portion we finished on Saturday being watered with the sprinkler)

First McG put a thatching blade on our lawnmower and dropped the height as low as it would go.  This gave us a great starting point for adding seed to our lawn.  It didn't get rid of all the grass, but it did pull out all the dead grass that was in there.  If you don't have a thatching blade, you can purchase one at your local hardware or lawnmower dealer.  There are relatively inexpensive.  We have had ours for several years.

We purchased 50 bags of top soil from our local WalMart (it was 99 cents per bag).  We also bought 6 bags of peat moss.  I'm not sure how big they were, but I think they were 6 litre bags.  Costco had Scott's grass seed a couple of weeks ago $20 for a 6 pound bag.  Our lawn gets a mix of shade and sun so we made sure that the bag said that it was good for that type of growing area.

Once the grass was cut down low and thatched, we spread the top soil over the whole lawn in a light layer.  Next we added the seed to our fertilizer drop spreader and used the spreader to evenly distribute it over the entire lawn.  The final step was to add the layer of peat moss over the whole lawn.  This will help to keep the moisture on the lawn and allow the seed to germinate faster.  It will also keep the birds from eating all the seed like it's their own personal buffet!! We raked the whole area lightly with a leaf rake to make sure the seed/soil/peat moss was combined.  

It took us the better part of Saturday afternoon and then another couple of hours on Sunday morning.  We finished just in time, because soon after it started to rain, which really worked to our advantage because we didn't need to run the sprinkler all day.

(here's a close-up of all the layers completed)

(this picture shows the lawn half done - this was Saturday before the rain came)

(this was Sunday morning after we finished the last part of the lawn)

(here's a photo of the completed lawn, waiting for the rain to start!)

This project cost us just a little over $100 to complete.  Really a good investment. However not as instant as if we replaced the sod.  It will take a good couple of weeks before we really see if our efforts paid off.

The weather here is forecasted to be in the 70's everyday this week with some sunshine and the nights will be cool but not freezing.  Perfect weather for growing some grass!

I will keep you posted on its progress!

Are you working on projects in your yard?  I would love to hear from you!

Next up - sprucing up the patio in the backyard!

Cheryl

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