Growing Grass - Seeding A Lawn In Fall + Fertilizer with Results || No Machines Required

[Music] what's up y'all i'm alan hayne the lawn care nut thanks for coming back for yet another week so today i'm actually going to take you through a step-by-step program or step-by-step regimen strategy on how to take your lawn from this to this in just about two weeks and yes you can do this starting right now you see my ultimate goal here is to give you the confidence to step out and take action it's actually not that complicated to take a lawn and rejuvenate it and rehab it and get it looking really good especially in the fall time so here's our lawn this is in fargo north dakota and this is actually a friend of mine's lawn anthony who also happens to work for us here at yard mastery now in case you're not aware that area of the upper midwest they've had a really tough summer super dry conditions no rain help a lot of heat you can see this is what all the lawns in the area look like and anthony actually has an in-ground irrigation system but when it's that hot and that dry and you're getting no rain help two things happen number one is municipalities enact watering restrictions so you can't really keep up anyway and then number two the watering bill just gets so high that you have to make a decision and let it go so we are taking this lawn that's been brown and dormant in the summer and rehabbing it okay now there are two key factors that are contributing to our success here number one is the timing everything you do in nature requires the right timing in order to get things to turn out especially as good as what you see here and the timing for cool season lawns the best time to grow a cool season lawn kentucky bluegrass perennial rye or turf type tall fescue is spring and fall with the fall being the very best of those two especially if you're going to add in some grass seed which we're going to do the other thing that happens in the fall is temperatures are more mild which is what cool season grass likes there's more rain help and because of that it stimulates the grass naturally to grow top and roots and that is the second key factor here is that you have some existing lawn this is not a strategy that's going to show you how to burn your lawn down with a bunch of chemicals and do it all over again this is a strategy that takes a terrible looking lawn that has some grass existing even if it's only a small amount and blows it up and makes it look beautiful in just a couple weeks so that's the second key factor is you have to have some existing grass there even if it's brown and dormant all right now before you begin any work outside which we're going to take you through here in a minute you need to develop a watering plan because one of the reasons that seeding jobs fail is lack of water in fact it's the number one reason why seeding jobs fail is lack of water so you want to get a watering plan together you're going to need to water at least three times a day for a couple two or three weeks you want to be able to lay your sprinklers out so that when you push your finger down into the soil after a watering it's wet in the top one half to one inch of the soil that's it so whatever that takes some of you might have to leave a sprinkler out for an hour to get that others of you might have to only leave the sprinkler out for 20 minutes to get that it just depends but you want to be able to get the soil wet at least an inch down and with that the night before you go to do all the work that we're about to do here the night before that go ahead and water the lawn we want to go ahead and get some moisture into the soil before we begin any of this process because that's just going to help everything to start flowing and working better from the get-go so that's the first thing we did is the night before we ran the zones and we ran the irrigation so that we got the top one half inch of water wet and look at it the next morning so i had them water last night and you can see now the soil is soft that's just from one watering so it just shows you think your soil is terrible and oh it's dry and cracked well just water it it's not so bad just water it all right welcome to seed down day let's get to work here's all the materials or here's all the things that you're going to need in order to get this strategy accomplished as far as equipment goes you need a lawn mower a spreader and a two or four gallon backpack sprayer you also need your grass seed starter fertilizer liquid aeration which is called aerate hydrotane mesotrione which is a weed control we're going to use as a pre-emergent and then you need a seed covering i'll give you a complete list of all of these products below as well as a guide that gives you step-by-step instructions and a pdf that you can read to follow along with this video all right so step one go out and give the lawn a fresh cut number one that's gonna make it look better it's gonna make you feel better but number two is you got to realize we're going to be throwing down some fertilizer here and that's going to make your existing grass grow really fast so we want to go ahead and give the lawn a cut so we can put off that first cut as long as possible here into the future and go ahead and cut it one or two notches lower than normal it's not going to hurt it to scalp it now don't don't take it down to the ground but just one or two notches lower not going to hurt it you want to do that again to hedge your bets give you a little bit more time before you have to mow again the other thing that that does is it allows your seed to get down into the canopy a lot quicker because there's less stuff there because you cut it all off so that's the two reasons why you cut first next we're going to apply our grass seed and we used an 80 20 20 kentucky bluegrass 80 perennial rye this is actually all sold out right now but i'll give you links to some other great seed below and as far as the spreader settings go let me give you some information on that this is a 50 pound bag and if we're gonna go with the rate and the overseeding rate is five to eight pounds so actually if we do the lower rate of five pounds per thousand we can do the entire lawn with just this one bag so i think that's what we'll do no need to go too crazy and actually i'd rather go lighter on the seed because we're going to show people just how fast and good we can make the lawn look with the existing grass too all right so i think what we should do you know there isn't really a spreader setting for seed so usually i just recommend you start fairly low and just kind of see how it goes take a look here yeah that's not going to let very much out at all so we'll start yeah you go up a little bit yeah that'll work okay okay bro let's dump in half the bag to start okay you're gonna need a knot oh he's got man hands oh yeah well that's good for you yeah oh yeah come on come on it's like those guys that used to come to your church and rip phone books in half and stuff you know those guys yeah all right how are you doing yeah keep trying i mean you can keep trying if you want oh finesse now posable thumbs all right okay half the bag half the bag oh beauteous maximus got his edge guard on because we obviously don't want to throw up into the into the beds there all right go for it we'll keep an eye on it that's a nice heavy rate i like it oh yeah that looks good people tend to get really hung up on the spreader setting for the seat but you're rarely going to find a spreader setting actually on the seed bag what i recommend you do is only start with half the bag this way that's all you're risking how's it looking are you running out okay start at a lower spreader setting like we do and cover the whole lawn and then see how you did if you came up short then you know you need to close it down a little if you had some left over then you know you can open it up and that's what we did we put the second half of the seat in and we opened it up a little more and then went out and had a little fun we also put down some extra in the thin spots because that just makes you feel better plus it's fun to sling seed in those bare spots and then come back and see how they did later on oh yeah thin spots right here here get down here so what you do seriously though you see we got a thin spot here now you don't want to go too bad but you do put a little bit see i just just supplement slightly in the thinnest areas like this that'll make you feel better too and really that's part of this is we want to care about your feelings and when you put more seed down you just feel good when you feel good you get better results i love your philosophy yeah i'm definitely going to gotta work on the windage it's at north dakota yeah let's build houses in the middle of a wind tunnel that's a great idea [Music] step three is starter fertilizer now starter fertilizer is kind of a marketing term but essentially what it means is that you're going to get a little bit of everything nitrogen phosphorus potassium it's going to have all three of those in greater quantities which is what the baby grass is going to need to get off to a good start and get going the yard mastery starter fertilizer also has micronutrients in it and is also spiked with bionite which is just like malorganized just the florida version so that gives the soil a little bit of a kick we put this down at three pounds per 1000 square feet [Music] the next step is to get your backpack's prayer and get ready to start spraying and praying do you have any gloves for those of us with man no sunscreen for me ppe for the head all right i like it and this is nine ounces per thousand and this is uh since we have ten thousand square feet so we're gonna do two and a half fills on this so for each fill it's gonna be 36 ounces [Music] okay there it's really best to pour these from the side like this that's the proper way to do it see that much cleaner [Music] so really because we have herbicide in here we're not supposed to be spraying in the wind i don't have a choice i'm here for one day so we're gonna do that you probably should not spray when it's windy you should pick now if it's just the the airaid and stuff like that you know it gets on on your pants and on your shoes but that doesn't hurt anything but this does have the herbicide in there so i should not be spraying in the wind but again i'm here one day i gotta do what i gotta do [Music] last step is to get your seed covering now you'll see here that we had some peat moss we actually took that back didn't end up using it but peat moss works fine as a covering but i actually prefer this stuff it actually looks like hydro seed pellets now we found the one that you're seeing in the video here we found that at ace but it's the same thing as this which you can get online green view seating success and these little pellets what they do is they spread out when they get wet and it looks like the lawn was hydro seeded it just looks like that but they spread out and i think they're great because they keep things stuck in so when you get a lot of rainstorms it doesn't wash your seed away we ended up spreading this over the entire lawn but then i also put a little bit extra in those same thin spots where i put the extra seed just to help hold things in you do not want these any thicker than that these things spread out a lot and they will 100 percent block your seed so definitely you can see we supplemented this bare spot with a little extra seed probably a little more than recommended and we just have a few of these in here and all i'm really doing when i see a bare spot is i'm just pitching it out there all the rest of this is just kind of here to give a general just put just add some more general stuff in there to stop the seed from moving if we get a bad downpour [Music] so from there it was really down to just water water water and again after your first couple of waterings you want to test a lot of spots in the area in your lawn just stick your finger down and make sure the top half to one inch of soil is wet that will be enough and you're going to keep this watering up three times a day morning noon and evening and you're gonna do that for a good three weeks or so people will always ask when can i mow the lawn the first time and the answer is just wait as long as you can and when you can't stand it anymore get out and mow we actually had this lawn mowed one week later you're not gonna kill all your new grass seed i mean don't stomp on it on purpose don't look for the new grass and go in and hammer on it try to avoid it but you know your lawnmower wheels are only that that thick and you have tiny feet so you'll be fine you're not gonna kill anything now we were also fortunate as many of you will be with the timing here we started watering for a couple days and then they started getting rainstorms in north dakota which is their normal fall pattern and that has really helped so with that i'm going to go ahead and give you some more after shots you can see the lawn turned out beautiful here you can do this exact same thing all this is is a little bit of seed to fill in thin spots but mostly what it is is a lot of water it's fertilizer to get the existing grass growing and all taking advantage of nature's normal push that you're gonna get in the fall you can see how fast a cool season lawn responds again i've got everything down down below for you and a pdf that you can download and read this as well as a bunch more frequently asked questions and please leave me comments below happy to talk to you through that answer your questions down there so you can execute this strategy and then i'd also appreciate if you'd leave a like and share this video i'm alan hayne the lawn care nut hope this video has been helpful to you make sure you subscribe and i'll see you in the lawn [Music] [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: The Lawn Care Nut

Views: 611,739

Keywords: grass seeding a lawn, grass seed, grass seeds before and after, seed a lawn in fall, lawn restoration, lawn restoration time lapse, lawn restoration steps, full lawn restoration, seeding lawn in fall time, when to seed a lawn in fall, allyn hane, lawn care nut, the lawn care nut, lawn renovation, how to plant grass seed, fall lawn care, overseeding grass, easy way to seed grass, how to grow grass seed

Id: O7tvcBhRm-U

Length: 14min 41sec (881 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 05 2021