How to Patch a Lawn With Grass Seed | Ask This Old House

[Music] I'm mowing the lawn fairly short so the homeowners won't have to mow it again for a few [Music] weeks Kevin that's great the key to using the grub ho in this circumstance is we want to go shallow get rid of all the weeds and leave all the good top soil [Music] behind [Music] now what I want to do is cut a nice clean Edge between the healthy lawn and the Damage lawn to do that I'm going to use this steel Eder now if I came and just did a straight line all the way down it would really draw your attention to the old and the new you'd notice the difference so what we're going to do we got a little damage image grass here is we're just going to come around and make a curve just a slight curve and that'll be enough to keep your eye from recognizing that this is new lawn okay so I'm going to come all the way down here and you can start up there when I get down here I'm just going to sweep it right out to [Music] here [Music] now the last step in our preparation is to loosen the soil so that those new Roots can go down into it okay we're not going to take and flip the soil over with these Forks we're just going to take and loosen it by sticking them in and turning okay and how is the soil Roger do we have to add anything any amendments soil is great Kevin not too heavy not too light it's perfect for growing grass in okay the only thing I am going to add is some lime the soil in this area is notoriously acidic so we're going to add the lime to lower that acidity okay now we're ready for seed and when it comes to seed there are a lot of options you go to the Guiden Center and it just rows and rows of seed what I usually do is I buy bulk seed I buy 2550 lb bags of a straight seed now this is a blend of different types of seed and anytime you buy grass seed you can look on the back of the bag and it'll tell you exactly what's in there and this case is Bluegrass red Fescue and Ry grass this is a good all-around seed okay now one thing when you go and you see anything that says quick or fast you better check the contents of the bag in this case it's 90% annual Ry grass that means it comes up really quick but it only lives for one year so you have to actually Reed that area why would anyone do that in a construction site where you might want to get a quick cover on and you know you're going to turn it over again and do the lawn later that would be where you would use that okay what have you got here Roger that is seed that's been coated with a corn stotch polymer and that's going to hold moisture against the seed and help it to germinate quickly now these two adjust seed when you use them you have to add some other things you have to add St of fertilizer and you have to add a mulch on top to help hold water in the ground all right and what about this one what you have there comes is a block and if you look closely you see it's made made up of fertilizer and seed and a paper cellulose mulch all right and the idea is that if you've got all three ingredients in one it's always going to have favorable growing conditions for the seed that's right now here's another combination of mulch seed and fertilizer only this time it's a coconut fiber mulch okay so the combo options are going to be more expensive than straight seed though right right but in a small area like this the extra cost is going to be very very small all right well which one you want to use I'm going to use the coconut Fiber One nice and we're going to put down about an e/ inch covering which is what the manufacturer [Music] recommends so Roger what can you tell me about watering the most important step Kevin without the proper watering all our good work could be undone MH so that means you want to keep the top layer A4 to a/ in deep moist for that seed to germinate so we're going to be out here watering at least once a day you could be out here two or three times a day if it was a real Sunny hot day and if we do all of that how long until we have a in about a week the Ry grass will germinate two weeks the Blue Grass 3 weeks you'll have a pretty good stand of grass here awesome well Kevin what do you think I think it looks great Roger complete excess I mean look how green and thick this new lawn is yeah it's actually grown up high enough we're ready for our first cut now there's a couple of rules that go along with that first cut the first is the oneir rule I only want to take off oneir of the blade at a time on this new lawn so this is about 3 in tall so I'm going to cut it at 2 in which is the height I have my MOA set at all right the other thing is I want to bag those clippings so we don't uh rake them off or even leave the clippings on sometimes you do that for the nutrients no we're going to collect them all on the bag because two reasons first if I leave the clippings on they could actually smother the plant and kill it and if the clippings are left on and you go to rake them this grass is so newly rooted see how shallow that is that if you rake it you could pull all those out all right so it gets them mowing right so we're going to start down here on a newly seated lawn I want to be really careful where I make my turns I try to make them on the hardscaping like the driveway of the walk if I turn on a newly seated lawn I can rip some of those seedlings right out of the ground now there's a little bit of brown in the front lawn but that's the old lawn that was here it was so long that when it cut it it's showing a little bit of brown but that'll green up in a couple days one more important step I want this on fertilized again in a couple of weeks so it'll get strong all right well you know what it already looks great Roger nice job thanks so until next time I'm Kevin oconor I'm Roger cook for ask This Old House hey don't put that away we got one more lawn Theo yours you got it baby let's [Music] go

Channel: This Old House

Views: 877,773

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, Grass, Do It Yourself, grass seed, Seed, Season, Lawn, Garden, Home Repair How-to, Lifestyle (TV Genre), ask roger cook, Tom Silva, Norm Abram, Kevin o’connor, kevin o'connor house, kevin o'connor this old house, kevin o'connor ask this old house, kevin o'connor interview

Id: Yjp0a-5dIDo

Length: 7min 21sec (441 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 14 2016