Lawn Care: How to Repair a Backyard

Don't requite up on your lawn until you try these remedies

Time

Multiple Days

Complication

Beginner

Cost

$101–250

Introduction

With a combination of soil additives, fertilizers, and tender, loving intendance, yous can change your lawn from scraggly to golf game-grade green in ane flavour.

Tools Required

Materials Required

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

Achieving a lush grass backyard doesn't have to exist a constant struggle. And yous don't take to pay big bucks for a lawn service to douse your yard with chemicals either. Growing good for you, green grass is mainly just a matter of knowing what to give your backyard, and when to requite information technology.

In this story, nosotros'll show you lot what to do in the spring, summer and fall to go a grass lawn so nice you could cut information technology up and sell it as sod. These steps will work for whatsoever yard, regardless of climate or soil type. The products shown in this commodity are available at backyard and garden centers and some home centers.

We worked with backyard intendance expert George Dege, better known every bit Mr. Backyard. 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's advice, we worked on the backyard shown here from bound to summer. In March, information technology had dead patches of grass acquired by voles. Past August, the grass over the unabridged lawn was and so thick we felt like we were walking on a shag carpet. And the grass lawn looked great likewise (see lead photograph). It was noticeably greener than the neighboring yards. We spent near $250 on supplies.

Project stride-by-step (xiv)

Step i

Spring Care: Vacuum the Pebbles

    • Note: Gravel and sand hinder grass growth, so vacuum them up.
  • Starting time along the street and vacuum into the yard until yous no longer hear stones getting sucked upwards.
  • Then do the same thing along the driveway.

Pace 2

Cheque the Spreader's "Throw"

  • To employ the right amount of fertilizer, measure from the wheel to the edge of the dispersal design.
  • Space your passes across the backyard so the coverage overlaps by vi to 8 inches.
  • Do this exam every time you spread a new product.

Step 3

Don't Spill on the Grass

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

Step four

Employ Fertilizer Between Mowings

  • Between your second and third spring mowings, utilise lawn fertilizer.
    • Pro tip: Use a fertilizer with slow-release (time release) nitrogen.
  • Follow the spread rate listed on the fertilizer pocketbook and spread it on the entire backyard.
    • Pro tip: For your spring and summer mowings, cut merely the top tertiary of the grass. And then if your grass is 3 inches loftier, take one inch off the tiptop. Mowing more than one-tertiary stresses the grass. You can mow the grass shorter in the fall.

Step 5

Apply Soil Activator

  • Fifteen days afterward applying the fertilizer, spread soil activator on the lawn to assistance retain water, loosen clay soils, aerate the soil, decompose grass clippings and reduce erosion.
    • Annotation: A 40-lb. bag covers 4,000 square feet.
    • Note: Soil activator helps retain h2o in sandy soils and loosens clay soils. It also helps aerate the soil, decompose grass clippings and reduce erosion.

Vacuuming the Backyard?

"Your neighbors will recollect you've lost your mind when they meet you vacuuming your lawn. Simply by the terminate of the summer, they'll be request y'all for lawn care advice." — Mr. Backyard

Luscious blades

Step half dozen

Tardily Spring, Early summertime: Measure the Right Amount of Water

  • Set a cake pan halfway between your sprinkler and the border of the spray pattern.
  • Watch your clock to see how long it takes the sprinkler to fill the pan with 3/viii inches of water.
  • Water for that amount of time 3 times a week, unless information technology rains.
  • Increase from 3/8 inch to 1/2 inch when the daytime temperatures are above 80 degrees F.

Step 7

Water with a Timer

  • If y'all don't have an automated sprinkler, an cheap timer frees yous from watching the clock every fourth dimension you water. The timer controls the sprinkler, then y'all'll be sure the lawn gets the proper amount of h2o.
    • Pro tip: The best time to water is early morning time, when the sun starts to rising. Watering at night leaves the grass wet also long, which tin cause fungus and other diseases in the summer.

Stride viii

Neutralize Dog Spots

  • Wearing gloves, sprinkle a scattering of gypsum over any dog spots.
  • Saturate the spot with water.
  • Institute new grass seed in the bare spots and keep it watered.
    • Note: Gypsum and h2o are the antidotes for dog spots in your yard. Gypsum neutralizes the domestic dog urine, and the water soaks the expanse for new grass seed. If you care for the brown spots early, your grass won't die.

Step nine

Stop Crabgrass Before It Starts

  • Apply 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 pocket-size areas, like along the pavement where crabgrass tends to grow.
    • Note: Crabgrass will grow when the soil warms upward to 55 degrees F. If you lot apply the preventer likewise early, it will exist ineffective. And once the seeds germinate, it's too tardily. In northern states, belatedly Apr is the best time. Mid-March is recommended for southern states.

Step 10

Fertilize in Late Spring

  • In mid-May, give your lawn its 2nd application of lawn fertilizer.

Step 11

Mid- to Late Summer: Spot-Spray Individual Weeds

  • If you have just a few weeds, utilize herbicide to afflicted areas with a pump sprayer.
    • Pro tip: Exist certain in that location'southward no rain in the forecast for 24 hours.

Footstep 12

Use Your Hose for Large Areas of Weeds

  • Cascade concentrated herbicide into a punch sprayer and hook information technology upward to your garden hose.
  • Turn the punch on the top of the sprayer to the setting recommended on the herbicide container (such equally 2 tablespoons per gallon of water).
  • Spray the weeds.
    • Pro tip: Spray the herbicide on a at-home day and then the weed killer won't drift onto your plants and flowers.

Footstep 13

Use Craven Manure

  • In mid-August, spread chicken manure to the lawn.
    • Pro tip: A 40-lb. bag covers iv,000 square feet.
    • Annotation: You lot could give your backyard a tertiary application of fertilizer, only chicken manure works even amend considering it contains more nitrogen, which gives the grass a salubrious, dark-green look (there's hardly any odor). Inside two or iii days of applying the manure, you'll see the lawn really light-green upwards.

Step 14

Fall Backyard Care: Prep for Winter

  • In early to mid-September, use soil activator over your one thousand, just as you did in the spring.
  • Ii weeks after that, give your backyard its final application of fertilizer for the twelvemonth.
    • Pro tip: Use a winterizer fertilizer (a twoscore-lb. bag covers 10,000 square anxiety). This specialized fertilizer has more potassium to help the roots abound deeper, which lets the roots blot and store nutrients until the ground freezes. When the ground warms upward in the spring, the grass uses those nutrients to jump-showtime its growth.
  • Keep mowing your lawn until the grass stops growing.
  • On your final mowing of the year, cut the grass to 1 to 1-1/2 inches high.
    • Note: This reduces the chance that your lawn will go snowfall mold and vole harm.
  • Now you're done caring for your lawn until leap!

Originally Published: December 26, 2022