How to Fix a Patchy, Weedy Lawn | This Old House

so tell me about your lawn well we have a mess yeah it is a little patchy i mean starting right here we have a real tall perennial rye grass over in this area we got look at this a fine bladed fescue in here see all this soil showing through i do this is a perfect opportunity for weed seeds to get in where the grass is thin in germinate and if you look right here see this big circle right here or thick blades these are weeds that did just that okay and what's going on down here by the walk well roger we had plant beds here and i decided to pull the plants out and spread some seed down what kind of seed did you use uh the dollar 99 bag from the garden center down the street well i think we can do a little better than that i hope so now what are you looking for out of this one roger i'd like a consistent natural looking lawn i don't need a golf course i just want a consistent lawn well i think using the results of our soil test and a few tools we can do that so let's grab some tools and get to work great all right mary the first thing we're going to do is cut your lawn to an inch and a half in height why an inch and a half roger well your lawn is predominantly rye grass and that's the height at which rye grass grows the best and also gets the densest okay so put the hearing protection on start it up and let's go to work wow here's some of that oregon rain you promised roger this isn't rain it's just misting okay now you notice i had you bag the lawn why is that if we didn't use the bagger the clippings would have dropped on the lawn and smothered it and interfere with what we have to do next and that next step is dethatching if you take a look at this machine you'll see the steel tines under there they're going to go around and go through the lawn and rip out all the dead grass the thatch layer and that won't hurt the lawn no it'll help it okay well mary we really took a lot of material out of the water it wasn't too much was it roger no take a look at that there's some grass in there but take a look at all this brown that's the thatch that's what we wanted to get out to open the lawn up okay now we want to open the lawn up even more okay and to do that we're going to use this core aerator this is a machine that drives these spikes down into the ground pulling out a plug about two or three inches long because those holes are going to allow water nutrients and air to get down into the lawn and make your grass stronger all set engage it drop it down that's good mary you did a great job i want you to take a look right over here see the hole you put in here i mean literally you can put my finger down in it and that's the core that comes out it's really opened up the lawn now on a dry day these cores would break up all by themselves over a period of time because it's so wet we're going to rake them up and remove them from the lawn all right mary we got the hard part done now it's time to start adding materials to the lawn and the first thing we're going to add is compost this stuff is the greatest thing you can put on the lawn it's going to add nutrients and it's going to help with drainage so what we're going to do we're going to add about a half an inch i want you to fill your shovel up then use your hand and we're just going to broadcast it all over the lawn all i want to do is rake this in lightly it'll send the compost down into the holes and level off any heavy areas we are going to add a balanced fertilizer and i have that over here if you take a look in the bag it says 934 that's nine parts nitrogen three parts phosphorus and four parts potassium okay we're gonna take and dump it into this broadcast spreader then i'm gonna have you just spread it evenly over the lawn the broadcast spreader has already been calibrated and you'll be all set to go all right why don't you get started with that mary okay okay now as you're going along you just want to notice where your outside limit of the spread is so when you come back you don't overlap too much okay all right so just turn around okay now when you're ready to start engage it and you see where you'll see where your overlap is going to be that's good you're following right along the edge of the last pass so do i have to put compost down before i use this no not at all most times you fertilize the lawn you're just going to fertilize over your existing lawn we were doing a lot of soil improvement here that's why we use the compost now for the last ingredient we are going to over seed your lawn using a blender seed i'm putting some in here for you yeah just hold that now if we look at the bag you can see the four different types of seed we have we have perennial rye grass fescue bluegrass and bent grass now why are we using a blend of seeds because that's what you already have existing and you want and this will fit right in with that okay now they recommend five pounds per thousand square feet but this is the last ingredient and the most important so i like to go a little heavy so i've set that for about seven pounds per thousand square feet just pull the trigger and turn now for the last step we're going to lightly rake the seed into the compost using the back side of the rake like this yeah that's good we just want to cover that seed up okay so how long before i'm gonna have a new lawn well in five to seven days the perennial rye grass will germinate and it'll take a little longer for the other types of seed okay and you're gonna have to water it probably twice a day but just keep it damp i don't want you to soak it and wash all the seed out

Channel: This Old House

Views: 5,794,140

Rating: 4.6217103 out of 5

Keywords: This Old House, Ask This Old House, DIY, Home Improvement, DIY Ideas, Renovation, Renovation Ideas, How To Fix, How To Install, How To Build, Lawn, grass, yard, Landscaping, Landscape Architecture, Garden, Home Repair, Do It Yourself, lawn repair, yard repair, roger cook, landscaping ideas, landscaping for beginners, how to landscape around house, landscaping how to guide

Id: ui2qnOUj6Ec

Length: 6min 43sec (403 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 03 2014