A few things to keep in mind:
- It's been a dry spring. The grass is fairly dry, since we've been spending most of our time keeping the back yard's new sod watered. But the lawn looks like this even when well watered.
- We fertilized about 2 months ago with a basic 10-10-10 fertilizer.
- It looks to my amateur eyes that the dead grass underneath is inhibiting the growth of the new grass.
- We don't really know what we're doing and will take any advice. :)
This is our side yard. What's up with some of it being really green and other parts not? (Even though we water is all the same?)
I raked up a bunch of dead grass from the lawn. Does that mean it's built up thatch? If so should I water it right after I rake it?
7 comments:
I would recommend installing Astro-Turf.
I hope he posts the answer on here for those of us who have similar problems.
Astro turf might be the easier and cheaper option at this point!
To those who are interested, this is what Kyle had to say:
After looking at it I'd say you should go ahead and rake up the dead stuff. You also need to fertilize again, but not with that wimpy 10-10-10 stuff. You shouldn't need any more potasium or phosphorus, but you definitely need more nitrogen. Try something like a 20-0-0 or even a 30-0-0 or thereabouts. Pure urea is 36-0-0 so look to make sure that that's your fertilizer source on the label. The next thing you could do is overseed. Just mix some sand and grass seed together and spread it as you would the fertilizer. You probably just have some sod die off, and it needs some new help. The last suggestion to you rednecks is to stop parking the car on it. The brown patch looks just like a car has been driving on it. :)
Here was my response:
Hahaha. No cars on it - yet. (The homeowners association might not like that!) Thanks for the suggestions. I guess I'll get started raking it. Not that we have a huge yard, but it'll take a while with the kids, our schedule, etc. We'll probably fertilize next month (when we have to do the sod; might as well do it all at once, right? Don't worry, we'll give the sod a different fertilizer.)
I think we'll hold off on the reseeding until the fall. (It's getting hot here.) What ratio of sand to seed? And why sand, I've never heard of that before. (Just curious.)
We are getting the book by one of my profs at Michigan State "Lawn Geek: Tips and Tricks for the Ultimate Turf From the Guru of Grass". It's by Trey Rogers and he is one of the most well known turf grass people out there. He has done many sports turf fields (Olympic stadiums, World Cup stadiums, US football stadiums), returning them to actual grass instead of artificial turf.
You can borrow it if you want once we get it, as our grass is brown and splotchy in areas too...
I had to see what he said so I can fix ours too. We tried the over-seeding last fall and this spring and it didn't fix it. (Maybe it all ran down the hill part.) I'm thinking we might need to get it aerated.
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