Help me reseed my lawn

In My Humble Opinion
1

Due to various factors, we need to reseed our back yard and neither of us know anything about deliberately trying to grow grass. Cutting the stuff down and keeping it out of the flowerbeds we’re good at, but when it comes to growing it on purpose, we’re more than a bit hazy. We don’t know what’s best to plant, or how best to plant it, or how to keep the @%@#^# dogs off it while it’s taking root.

We’re in North Carolina, so it’s fairly hot and moderately humid, but our yard is almost always in shade. We’ve got red clay soil, so soil quality and drainage are hideous. Most of the area that needs to be replanted is simply dead, where the dogs flop all over the place napping. Other areas, however, are bare dirt where the dogs have beaten paths through and around the yard. Essentially, we need something that grows quickly, is heat tolerant but doesn’t require tons of sun, and can stand up to incredibly heavy traffic.

What do the Dopers recommend we plant? When should we plant it? How long do we have to keep the dogs off it? How do we keep the dogs off it, short of keeping them indoors all the time and only letting them out for leash walks?

2

I don’t think a northern grass would be your answer. Those would be bluegrass, rye and the fescues. I am more of a northern grass expert.

However, you might be an excellent candidate for Zoysia grass. Brutaly thick, dense and wear resistant and tolerant of low maintenace. It grows from ‘sprigs’…little plantings you drop into little evenly spaced holes, rather than seed (although I’d bet someone has a seed that will grow Zoysia)

Search on zoysia.

You need to freshen the soil with some organic matter, by adding top soil or compost.

Honestly, while you can do this, it might be cost effective (condsiring the cost/waste of screwing up) to hire profesionals.

They might recommend another grass, cultivate the soil for you and hydroseed it with another variety.

IMPORTANT: this is not a great time to establish grass. It’s so-so. Just as it gets going, the heat will test it before it is really established

FALL is best.

3

Your situation sounds familiar. I’m in North Alabama, so let’s compare:

Around here it’s fairly hot, my yard had a lot of shade, I had a lot of bare dirt, the yard has red clay soil, I have a dog who runs around the yard, and a fair amount of foot traffic.

I spent YEARS trying to grow grass from seed. Spring planting, fall planting, it never survived. Also, EVERY time I put seed down, within days there would be torrential thunderstorms. Not even straw helped. And how to keep the dog off the new grass?

I’ll tell you that the easiest and best solution, though not the cheapest, is sod.

No matter what you do, you’ll need to prune some branches to increase sunlight. I love my wooded lot, but I quickly realized that I wasn’t getting enough sun for even weeds to grow to keep the dirt in place, let alone shade-tolerant fescue. I had to give in and take out 3 trees. Pines are especially bad for grass (they lower pH, and have a lot of near-surface roots that suck up water). If you have clay soil in the South, you just might have pines.

I also pruned all the lower branches on the existing trees to get as much sunlight as possible. No grass is going to grow, certainly not seed, without an adequate amount of sun (at least a few hours a day). If you have trees, about the only grass I know of that will do reasonably well is fescue, and it’s too late to seed now. Anything else like bermuda or zoysia needs a lot of sun. So you have a toss-up: do you get enough sun for something like bermuda or zoysia, or can you keep fescue watered in the summer? I already had fescue on one side of my house, and it does fine down here.

It would also help if you have a sprinkler system, or a yard small enough that you can leave portable sprinklers hooked up. You can get a battery-operated timer for your hose faucet for around $30. Seed or sod, you need to keep it wet until it’s established.

Like I said, I was tired of wasting…lets’ see…about $1500 in the past 8 years on seed that never developed into a lawn. I just spent $1050 on 6300 sq. ft (14 pallets) of sod. Put it down last weekend (I have never been so dirty, or so sore, in my life), but I have a nice THICK green lawn. I’ve had to keep my dog from running around the yard until the roots establish, but they’re already anchoring to the soil. I’m definitely happy with the decision.

If you want to seed because money’s tight, wait until the fall and try fescue, or check with your county co-op or farm extension and see what they recommend. A tiller will help, and test your soil’s pH and amend as necessary. If you want to sod, do it quick, because they’ll probably stop cutting fescue soon. No matter what you do, seed or sod, if it’s fescue you’ll need to overseed every fall, but that’s easy on an established lawn.

If the dogs have established paths, you should also consder making them permanent. Maybe use landscape timbers, or something else, for borders, and just leave it dirt, or put mulch down. Try adding flower beds instead of grass. It’ll cut down on your mowing too! Shade-loving plants like hostas and impatiens will do well.

Me? I’d go with the sod, even if you do a little at a time. Trust me. :slight_smile:

4

We had to put a temporary fence up around the area that was seeded to keep our dog off. Even so, we did not water it enough and it did not establish well, then when the dog was allowed back on she quickly uprooted it all just by running around on it. We are going to try again this year. Maybe sod would be better.

Your local nursery will be able to help pick out a seed that will work for your sun / shade / soil conditions, they usually carry all kinds. If neighbors have lawns that you like and share your conditions, ask what they have.

5

Hey Phil…

I agree with Philster here. (then again I rarely disagree with him when it comes to this stuff).

However, if you do decide to do-it-yourself you must do it right. Sometimes Hiring a professional can lead to hidden costs that can rack up…I just heard a horror story today about it as a matter of fact.

I would go to the local nursury and make absolutely sure your climate is best for Zoysia grass and then if it is, purchase the appropriate amount. I do not know the dimensions of your yard so I can not besure how much to get.

Preparing the lawn: - You can do several things here, put a layer of soil on top and go from there (least recommended). Rent a roto-tiller and till the entire yard into oblivian (then rent a roller and roll over it. (you will need the roller again later in the process so keep it around)

After the lawn is level and ready…Seed the lawn with a hand seeder or manual seeder. I have a manual seeder it’s nice. heavily seed the lawn in all areas, then roll lit again.
Put up a heavy mister, or regular oscilating sprinker and water the hell out of the lawn…just enough so you do not see pooling and run-off…

Personally: I would put down nematodes as a good biological of insects…especially grubs.

If you get grubs, you’ll get moles…if you get moles, you’ll get skunks…You don’t want that right?

Also, when done watering you can do one of three things to make sure the birds don’t get to the seed.

You can put massive amounts of hay on the grass…which I did for a little while and it was nice…but the birds can pick right through it.

Or you can put this new grass cover over it and the birds have amore difficult time getting to it, but they still can…and I hear it’s a bitch to get up when done…

Or you can use my current method. Which I really like a lot…at least for keeping birds away. Get some fishing line, and a broom handle. A tree will work in it’s stead. String up a tight few lines over the grass…high enough so you can walk under it. Make it look like a fan sort of…over your lawn.

I do not know the science behind it…But I know it works. The first year I did it. My 75 year old next door neighbor came over and said…Ha! thats not going to work buddy…That seed will be gone by the morning…

Two weeks later I have the most diverse grass coverage I have ever had. And not one bird flew in for a meal :slight_smile:

6

Ah Memories… When I was nine my dad wouldn’t let us leave on our trip to St. Louis until we had resodded the front yard. That’s resodded, not reseeded. Those pieces of sod are damn heavy when you’re nine, in case you’re wondering. But it looks marvelous, I must admit.
We’re in Tennessee and we’ve got Zoysia. It loves the heat and goes brown in the winter. Now apparently zoysia grows really slowly from seed so you’d wanna go for sod if you chose it. As far as shade, our grass grows even under the big 100 year old oak trees. They say Zoysia only needs 3 hours of sunlight a day.

Off to post in the “What sort of family did you grow up in” thread"
-Lil

7

Hmmm. It would probably work to pave or put stepping stones on the path from the pation to the back gate, but most of their paths are places no sane human being would want a path, you know? (Unless sane human beings run the very perimeter of the fence barking at stuff.)

Unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot we can do about the shade, really. We’ve got some trees, but most of the ones causing problems aren’t on our property. People tend to get a bit snippy about you climbing the fence and pruning their trees, for some reason. Most of the yard gets at least 3-4 hours of sun, this time of year at least, so that shouldn’t be too much of a problem. I don’t know about that one spot by the patio, though. It’s shaded by the house in the morning, and the neighbor’s trees in the afternoon, and there’s really nothing to be done about either. It’s a high-traffic spot, too, so we can’t put a flower-bed or dog pool or sandbox there.

Eh, we can’t have flowerbeds back there anyway. Claudia the Vunderhund feels it’s her duty to protect us from the evil plants and promptly digs them all up. There’s one spot in Dr.J’s herb garden that looks like she’s trying to smuggle us all to China, actually. Maybe it’s supposed to be our escape route when the Nazis come for us. :confused: The dog-turd trick works fairly well in their excavations around the yard, but I don’t really want to put a bunch of feces in a bed I’ve got to weed.

Sod or plugs certainly sounds like the way to go, though. Right now, we’re not talking about huge areas–a 10x10 dead patch in mostly sun, a 14x20 dead patch in almost full sun, and an area that’s maybe 40x50, patchy/bare and in mostly shade (including that patch by the patio.) The big spot has been pretty patcy since we bought the house, most likely because of the light conditions, so it didn’t take a lot of traffic to wear it down to the bare dirt.

Unfortunately, most of the stuff I’ve found so far indicates that Zoysia is most decidedly not shade-tolerant. Traffic, yeah. Heat, sure. Shade, no. One of the sites I found suggested a mixture of fescues, or of fescues and bluegrasses. Apparently, we’re in the transition zone and cool-season grasses do fairly well here, provided you keep them in the shade. It’s a smidge too cold here in the winter for us to get by with something like bermuda grass, even if we did have enough sun.

Off to the garden center at some point, I suppose. Maybe Monday. It’s one of the first truly warm, sunny weekends, and we’re about past the danger of frost, so it’s going to be asshole to elbow in there all weekend with the staff running like chickens with their heads cut off.

8

I have to reseed my lawn, too. I live in Michigan, I have lots of sun, except in the shady spot. The soil is a mix of black dirt, sandy and clay, kind of jumbled around. All members of the garlic/onion family, as well as hyacinths, adore my yard. I am thinking of bluegrass from seed. I have no dogs. Right now I have a sea of dirt with about 15 blades of grass. I tell everybody its a zen garden.

9

St augustine is the most shade tolorant of the “southern turf” grassses that I know of. The “El Toro” and “Emerald” zoisia varieties are fairly shade resistant.

The most shade resistant grass we use around here is the “temple” zoisia it is a very fine bladed grass that looks like a velvet carpet and will grow under a banyon tree. It does however, have some major drawbacks. It likes to form mounds, is a pain to mow and takes over a year to “knit” into an unbroken carpet.

Lessee, St Augustine, fairly shade tolorant drought resistant though suspect to insect attack and consumes fertiliser like no ones business.

El toro, tough, slow growing, need a lot of water but is fairly fungus and insect resistant.

Emerald fine bladed, shade tolorant, tends to mound if not cut weekly, requires a reel type mower as a rotary just pulls it up at the roots. Good looking but a pain to maintain.

If it’s available Z-3 zoisia cultivar, all the pluses or the el toro and emerald and few of the drawbacks. Requires a reel mower (about 500 bucks minimum)

Bermuda is right out, wont grow in shade. My experience with the northern grasses is that they grow too damn fast in hot weather and in shady spots get too thin and look “lanky” for lack of a better term.

My expertise is in topical turf grasses but I hope this helps some.

10

We have kids, a dog and a water ban. We also had huge dead patches in our lawn when we moved in.

I called the nice lawn people and for $200 bucks I had the whole place power seeded. They come 5 times a season and fertilize and I have them do various other things as needed - I especially like the flea and tick spraying they do.

Last fall I had them lime, aerate, and overseed.

We do zero lawn maintenance beyond what I pay the nice lawn people to do and the weekly summer mowing. After 2 seasons we have gone from the worst lawn in the neighborhood to one of the nicer lawns!

I’ll advocate having someone else do the work. We got a guarantee that if the spring seeding did not take they would reseed in the fall for free. Knowing me I’d have spent the same renting equipment and buying seed and then the time to learn the equipment and seed the lawn and I would have screwed it all up!

11

When we lived in North carolina, our lawn was Centipede grass - a grass almost like an ivy - to cover bald spots we would just take some clippings (strands about a foot long), plant both ends in the bare spot, and let -em go. Water/fertilize as necessary.
Moved in in 1979, by 1987 our centipede had covered the whole lawn, plus the frontage of the empty lot next door (an area about 12X75, with NO tending at all).

Here’s a NC Gov page about centipede requirements (problems encountered w/centipede).