Lawn Care: How to Repair a Lawn

Don't surrender on your lawn until you try these remedies

Time

Multiple Days

Complexity

Beginner

Cost

$101–250

Introduction

With a combination of soil additives, fertilizers, and tender, loving care, yous can change your lawn from scraggly to golf game-grade greenish in i flavor.

Tools Required

Materials Required

  • Chicken manure
  • Crabgrass preventer
  • Grass seed
  • Gypsum
  • Herbicide
  • Slow-release fertilizer
  • Soil activator
  • Winterizer fertilizer

Achieving a lush grass lawn doesn't have to be a constant struggle. And you don't have to pay big bucks for a lawn service to douse your g with chemicals either. Growing healthy, greenish grass is mainly just a affair of knowing what to give your lawn, and when to give information technology.

In this story, we'll show you what to practice in the spring, summertime and autumn to get a grass lawn so nice you could cut it up and sell information technology every bit sod. These steps volition work for any grand, regardless of climate or soil blazon. The products shown in this article are bachelor at lawn and garden centers and some home centers.

We worked with lawn care expert George Dege, improve known every bit Mr. Lawn. He has been teaching lawn intendance classes since the 1970s and has helped thousands of homeowners improve their lawns.

Plus: Is lawn aeration necessary? Find out here.

Following Mr. Lawn'due south communication, nosotros worked on the lawn shown hither from bound to summertime. In March, information technology had dead patches of grass acquired by voles. By August, the grass over the unabridged lawn was so thick we felt like we were walking on a shag carpet. And the grass lawn looked nifty too (see lead photo). Information technology was noticeably greener than the neighboring yards. Nosotros spent near $250 on supplies.

Project footstep-by-step (14)

Step 1

Jump Intendance: Vacuum the Pebbles

    • Annotation: Gravel and sand hinder grass growth, and then vacuum them up.
  • Start along the street and vacuum into the grand until you no longer hear stones getting sucked up.
  • Then exercise the same thing along the driveway.

Pace two

Cheque the Spreader's "Throw"

  • To utilize the right amount of fertilizer, measure from the wheel to the edge of the dispersal blueprint.
  • Space your passes across the lawn so the coverage overlaps by 6 to eight inches.
  • Do this test every time you spread a new product.

Footstep 3

Don't Spill on the Grass

  • Park your spreader over a tarp or your driveway when filling the hopper.
    • Note: Spills and leaks tin saturate one spot of your lawn and kill your grass.

Pace 4

Apply Fertilizer Between Mowings

  • Between your second and 3rd spring mowings, apply lawn fertilizer.
    • Pro tip: Use a fertilizer with slow-release (time release) nitrogen.
  • Follow the spread rate listed on the fertilizer bag and spread it on the entire lawn.
    • Pro tip: For your spring and summertime mowings, cutting merely the top third of the grass. So if your grass is 3 inches high, take 1 inch off the top. Mowing more than one-3rd stresses the grass. Yous can mow the grass shorter in the fall.

Pace 5

Use Soil Activator

  • Fifteen days afterwards applying the fertilizer, spread soil activator on the backyard to assist retain water, loosen clay soils, aerate the soil, decompose grass clippings and reduce erosion.
    • Note: A forty-lb. handbag covers 4,000 square feet.
    • Note: Soil activator helps retain water in sandy soils and loosens dirt soils. It also helps aerate the soil, decompose grass clippings and reduce erosion.

Vacuuming the Lawn?

"Your neighbors will recall you lot've lost your mind when they see you vacuuming your lawn. Just by the end of the summertime, they'll be asking you for backyard intendance communication." — Mr. Lawn

Luscious blades

Step 6

Late Jump, Early on summer: Measure out the Correct Amount of Water

  • Fix a cake pan halfway between your sprinkler and the edge of the spray blueprint.
  • Watch your clock to come across how long it takes the sprinkler to fill up the pan with three/8 inches of water.
  • Water for that corporeality of time three times a week, unless it rains.
  • Increase from three/8 inch to one/ii inch when the daytime temperatures are above 80 degrees F.

Step 7

Water with a Timer

  • If you don't have an automatic sprinkler, an inexpensive timer frees you from watching the clock every time yous water. The timer controls the sprinkler, so you'll be sure the lawn gets the proper amount of h2o.
    • Pro tip: The best time to water is early on morning, when the sun starts to rise. Watering at night leaves the grass wet besides long, which can crusade mucus and other diseases in the summer.

Pace 8

Neutralize Dog Spots

  • Wearing gloves, sprinkle a scattering of gypsum over any dog spots.
  • Saturate the spot with h2o.
  • Institute new grass seed in the bare spots and go on it watered.
    • Note: Gypsum and h2o are the antidotes for canis familiaris spots in your thou. Gypsum neutralizes the dog urine, and the water soaks the area for new grass seed. If you treat the chocolate-brown spots early, your grass won't die.

Footstep 9

Stop Crabgrass Earlier It Starts

  • Use crabgrass preventer to any areas where crabgrass previously grew, which is typically along the street, driveway and sidewalk.
    • Pro tip: A hand spreader is perfect for small-scale areas, like along the pavement where crabgrass tends to grow.
    • Notation: Crabgrass will grow when the soil warms upwardly to 55 degrees F. If you use the preventer as well early, information technology will be ineffective. And once the seeds germinate, it's too late. In northern states, late April is the all-time fourth dimension. Mid-March is recommended for southern states.

Stride 10

Fertilize in Belatedly Spring

  • In mid-May, give your lawn its second application of lawn fertilizer.

Step 11

Mid- to Belatedly Summer: Spot-Spray Private Weeds

  • If yous have just a few weeds, apply herbicide to affected areas with a pump sprayer.
    • Pro tip: Exist sure at that place's no pelting in the forecast for 24 hours.

Step 12

Apply Your Hose for Large Areas of Weeds

  • Pour full-bodied herbicide into a dial sprayer and hook information technology up to your garden hose.
  • Turn the dial on the peak of the sprayer to the setting recommended on the herbicide container (such as 2 tablespoons per gallon of water).
  • Spray the weeds.
    • Pro tip: Spray the herbicide on a calm day so the weed killer won't drift onto your plants and flowers.

Step 13

Apply Chicken Manure

  • In mid-Baronial, spread chicken manure to the lawn.
    • Pro tip: A 40-lb. bag covers 4,000 square feet.
    • Notation: Yous could give your lawn a tertiary application of fertilizer, only craven manure works even better because information technology contains more nitrogen, which gives the grass a healthy, green look (there's hardly any odor). Inside 2 or three days of applying the manure, you'll come across the lawn really green up.

Step 14

Autumn Backyard Care: Prep for Winter

  • In early to mid-September, apply soil activator over your yard, simply as you did in the spring.
  • Two weeks after that, requite your lawn its concluding awarding of fertilizer for the year.
    • Pro tip: Use a winterizer fertilizer (a 40-lb. bag covers x,000 foursquare feet). This specialized fertilizer has more potassium to help the roots abound deeper, which lets the roots absorb and shop nutrients until the basis freezes. When the footing warms up in the leap, the grass uses those nutrients to bound-start its growth.
  • Go on mowing your backyard until the grass stops growing.
  • On your final mowing of the yr, cut the grass to i to one-1/2 inches loftier.
    • Note: This reduces the take a chance that your lawn will get snow mold and vole damage.
  • Now you're done caring for your lawn until spring!

Originally Published: December 26, 2022