# What the hell happened to my lawn? (also: reseeding when weeds are present. N.Y.)



## pjordan4477 (Mar 15, 2011)

Deck said:


> Hi,
> 
> My front yard lawn is very patchy this year, and there are violets and crabgrass and some weird flutey type grass look-a-like. It now looks like my back yard lawn has for years (we don't maintain the back yard lawn). I'd really like some input on what could have happened to cause this.
> 
> ...


 
Was there anything sitting in that area? Christmas decorations or something? It could be too early for the lawn to repair it's self from that.

I'd wait till september and till the yard and plant new seed or don't rack the leaves and do the same thing next spring. I just did that in a shady area and the leaves being tilled in have really spurted the grass growth.


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## Deck (Apr 25, 2008)

Thanks for your reply. No, no Christmas decorations. The lawn just looks pretty bad this year. I would like to get it looking good for the summer so I am going to buy seed. I still don't know how I can put herbicide down or something to kill the weeds while I am planting the grass seed. Marigolds are taking over the lawn right now.


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## user1007 (Sep 23, 2009)

You have an awful lot of what looks to be bare, compacted soil. You are going to have to till that or something or the seed will never take.

I would also feed what you have to see where you stand in the more established areas. You can treat the weeds when you give the turfgrasses more of a fighting chance.


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## Deck (Apr 25, 2008)

I bought some seed and two small bags of starter fertilizer. I don't know of any way to kill the weeds while I am overseeding the lawn without preventing the seed from germinating. So I will put this stuff down and then in a month I'll kill the weeds I guess. I bought a spray bottle of ortho? and I sprayed that on each dandelion.


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## user1007 (Sep 23, 2009)

A post emergent weed killer or even something universal like Roundup shouldn't keep seeds from germinating but I would still wait until you have fed everything and plant new seed.

And folks, there is a lot of talk about "grass seed" as if it were all the same. The less expensive, "contractor special" stuff is going to have mostly if not all annual ryegrass in it. It will germinate in 3-5 days but it is coarse and will only last one season. 

What you probably want, depending on where you live and sun/shade conditions is some nice blend of perennial ryes, bluegrass, fescue and so forth. It will not be that much more expensive if you buy it in bulk from a feed store, nursery, etc. The Tru Value hardware store in my old hood used to sell seeds by type you could blend yourself. 

And be patient. The bluegrasses and fescues will take longer to germinate than the annual or perennial ryegrasses.


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## Leah Frances (Jan 13, 2008)

sdsester said:


> And be patient. The bluegrasses and fescues will take longer to germinate than the annual or perennial ryegrasses.


:yes::yes::yes: I seeded more than three weeks ago with bluegrass/fescue mix, we've have had consistent rain/moisture, and just today starting to see teeny tiny little grass seedlings.


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## user1007 (Sep 23, 2009)

Leah Frances said:


> :yes::yes::yes: I seeded more than three weeks ago with bluegrass/fescue mix, we've have had consistent rain/moisture, and just today starting to see teeny tiny little grass seedlings.


You will see more soon and they will grow quickly. It sounds like you had near perfect conditions for keeping the seed moist without irrigation! 

Mow high when it is time and your mower blade should be especially sharp for newly planted lawns.


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## Breakthecycle2 (Apr 28, 2011)

To the OP..we just bought a house and moved in this pas October. Being the inside needed to flooring and painting, I had no time for the outside. Well over the past month - month and half, that's all I've been doing. We just had about 10 bushes removed front and back. I fertilized it and overseeded twice. I had many spots that looked liked what you posted. I seeded way too early, so what I did was, cut the grass and rented a thatcher. Thatched (as best I could) and raked everything up. Afterwards, I over seeded using a sun/shade mix and also Scotts EZ seed in other spots. This past Sunday grass started sprouting up. Some of the spots even started greening up and regrowing on their own. That's my suggestion to fix that up.

BTW, what are those small purple weed's called? I just noticed a few on my front lawn as well.


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## Deck (Apr 25, 2008)

sdsester said:


> A post emergent weed killer or even something universal like Roundup shouldn't keep seeds from germinating but I would still wait until you have fed everything and plant new seed.


I looked at several weed killers that did not also kill grass. The ones that can be attached to a hose said or inferred something about not applying to an area where new grass seed will be germinating until after some period. What I ended up buying was a small Ortho Weed-B-Gon 24oz sprayer for $6 from Home Depot. It says wait 4 weeks after application to reseed barespots. This is more of a spot shot type application rather than apply to the whole lawn, and I went this route because I want to put seed down. So I will be forced to treat the weeds selectively. Here's a picture of what I purchased:













sdsester said:


> What you probably want, depending on where you live and sun/shade conditions is some nice blend of perennial ryes, bluegrass, fescue and so forth. It will not be that much more expensive if you buy it in bulk from a feed store, nursery, etc. The Tru Value hardware store in my old hood used to sell seeds by type you could blend yourself.


I bought a 7lb bag of Scotts Sun & Shade mix with the special "watersmart" coating. It cost $25 from Home Depot. Here's a picture:









Here's a picture of the ingredients:












Breakthecycle2 said:


> BTW, what are those small purple weed's called? I just noticed a few on my front lawn as well.


They're called violets. There are many different varieties. Check the wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viola_(plant)


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## Hunter25 (Jan 19, 2011)

What are you my neighbor? I too live in Upstate NY and my lawn looked like that as well. I used the same Scotts seed with their fertilizer and overseeded. I also put straw over the top of all areas that Iseeded. Although it did come back totally, it is starting to fill in. I have 1 spot in my front yard that just will not grow. I've never had an issue witht he front either. Some grew and just turned brown after a week. I'm kinda lost on this one.


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## Deck (Apr 25, 2008)

Hunter25 said:


> What are you my neighbor? I too live in Upstate NY and my lawn looked like that as well. I used the same Scotts seed with their fertilizer and overseeded.


I live in Westchester County, N.Y. (Southern New York). I did an overseeding application as well.



Hunter25 said:


> I also put straw over the top of all areas that Iseeded. Although it did come back totally, it is starting to fill in. I have 1 spot in my front yard that just will not grow. I've never had an issue witht he front either. Some grew and just turned brown after a week. I'm kinda lost on this one.


Well, I'll tell you, I did reseed but I probably should have used more seed. The problem is that seed is so f__king expensive. As you can see in my OP my lawn was pretty stingy a month ago, but it looks decent now. For the benefit of you and the forum I'll explain what I ended up doing. This is also for my own benefit should I have this problem years from now. Hello future me!

I split each of the four peat moss packages into four pieces and then mixed in a 40lb bag of dirt with each .75cuft piece. I mixed standing up without bending over by using a bow rake to constantly move the material until it was mixed together. I did this right on the lawn so I didn't have to move the material far. Basically I ended up with a big mound of peat moss mixed with dirt. The consistency was pretty light -- if anything I could have used more dirt. One thing that is important is some of the bags of dirt were wet and they were much harder to deal with. Their weight wasn't the big issue, the fact that the dirt was so clumped together and was harder to break up was. The dry dirt broke up much easier with the bow rake and the clumping was minimal.

I loosened up all the bare spots using my bow rake. I then spread the dirt/moss mix over the lawn by using a big aluminum scoop to spread it over the lawn the same way one might spread road salt. When I was done everything was good and orangey/red. That used about 75% of the mound.

That Scotts seed is so expensive. I bought a Scotts EdgeGuard Mini seed dispenser for less than $40 from Home Depot and I set it properly but there is no way I got even close to the amount of seed coverage I should have. I think it had something to do with the dispenser because when applying the fertilizer I got the coverage I expected. I had had an AccuGreen 1000 but the axle rusted over cracking the plastic on the wheels, which is a shame because that thing was really accurate. Unfortunately it's predecessors are expensive so I just went with the mini.

Anyway I ended up using the edgeguard to spread the seed. I ran out of seed and had to go back to Home Depot to buy another bag. In hindsight I probably should have just brought an extra bag and returned it if I didn't need to open it. Then I put down the scotts starter fertilizer. That went down properly.

After the seed and fertilizer was down I covered it with a very very light coating of the peat moss and dirt mixture (the last 25%). Beforehand I made a real attempt at raking the seed in first (as Scotts suggests) using a fan rake but I had a lot trouble doing it without totally moving the seed away from where it should be. Maybe I didn't have the right type of rake to do that? I needed a thin tine rake maybe? Anyway when I finished I couldn't see the seed/fertilizer as it was covered/mixed in.

I watered every night for two weeks using a hose sprayer. There is no one position for a sprinkler on this lawn so I just used a manual sprayer. It took me about 15-30 minutes every night. One thing I had trouble with was making sure the waterflow didn't blow away the seed. I had to stand away and use more of a misty type to moisten the soil each night without disturbing the seed. Another thing to keep in mind is it was dry for like two weeks after I put down the seed and that's why I watered every night. The third week we had rain so I skipped a lot.

After two weeks I saw sprouts. The next two weeks the lawn has started coming in. It is still weak and this is my own fault. For the entire lawn I used the overseeding application which was not enough for the bare spots. In hindsight I should have gone over the bare spots twice on the overseeding setting or once with the new seeding setting.

Of course during this all time I encountered weeds once in a while and I spayed them selectively. That weed spray worked pretty well.

Pictures!
Here's a picture of what the lawn looked like with the dirt/moss mixture before any sprouting:








Here's a link to picture if it doesn't display above: peatmoss.jpg

Here's one of the worst areas four weeks later. This is the area that was so bare I should have just gone over twice with seed. Most of the grass in this area is new. You'll notice it's darker green. From the walkways though it doesn't look bad just thin. Here's the picture:








Here's a link to picture if it doesn't display above: thingrass.jpg

Here's typically what the rest of the lawn looks like now four weeks later:








Here's a link to picture if it doesn't display above: fullgrass.jpg

And that's it!


As to your question about the spot that won't grow, that did happen to us because we have a dog and he had a favorite spot and his urine would always would end up burning the lawn in spots in a 10 ft radius. Otherwise I wonder if maybe you've considered peat moss? Every landscaper around here uses peat moss. And many years ago when I found that out I had called Scotts because they didn't say anything about that (still don't). And the guy I spoke to was like, yeah, you could. And I was like, great now that I'm done and the seed didn't grow I know that.

On a more technical note soil ph is important. The right ph basically means more nutrients can be taken easily from the soil by whatever is growing. Maybe you don't have the right ph to grow grass in that particular area. I do know with enough peat moss you can change ph to be more acidic but I don't think just a coating on top of the grass can change the ph. Although maybe someone who does landscaping for a living knows.


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## Hunter25 (Jan 19, 2011)

i'm in Schenectady which is pretty close to Albany. I am going tot ry the peat moss this weekend. I also have a dog but she doesn't go in the front yard. I thought of that too because of the brown spots I have in back. this 1 spot is very strange though. I have always have my front yard very green and thick. Have you ever used the Scotts Patchmaster? I have never really had good luck with that but my neighbor used a ton of it in his back yard and now he has a nicer lawn than me. Amazing in only about 3-4 weeks he is mowning every week now and it does actually look great.


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## biggles (Jan 1, 2008)

grubs ate your lawn roots:wink: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWKqR349MlM


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## Deck (Apr 25, 2008)

Hunter25 said:


> Have you ever used the Scotts Patchmaster? I have never really had good luck with that but my neighbor used a ton of it in his back yard and now he has a nicer lawn than me.


I did. You mean the blue stuff? There are two types of scotts' patch now I think. That type in the jug you can shake and the blue stuff. If you mean the light foamy blue stuff that comes in a white bag the same way as seed and fertilizer does then yes. And yes, it did work. I used it a few years ago on a small area, maybe 3sqft. There was no need for peat moss with that stuff because it's mostly some type of material mix that can retain moisture already (the blue). For very small areas I was happy with it. To do 30+ sq ft (my front lawn) I don't think so. And yes grubs can eat your lawn. From what I understand that's usually a summer issue though. Correct me if I'm wrong please.


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