How to Plant Grass to Fix a Bare Spot

hi I'm Travis Larson I'm an editor for Family Handyman magazine and today I'm going to tell you how to fix bear spots in your lawn everybody has them I don't care how nice your lawn looks I'm going to show you the right way to do it I'm kind of a lone nut I've done this a lot of times so pay attention and you can fix these there's only one thing to keep in mind this takes two to three weeks of complete dedication not a lot of work just dedication I'll tell you about that later the first step is to prepare the soil that means getting rid of any weeds there isn't very many in this particular patch but the next step is to get rid of any dead grass because the most important thing is good soil to seed contact so that means we have to expose the soil I like to use a rake like this to get rid of the dead growth and I'll show you how that works first this is the dead growth that I took out so we're ready to abrade the soil once again we're going to talk about this soil to seed contact so we're going to rough up this soil it's kind of compacted and we're going to do that for two reasons one is that soil contact and the other one is so the starting roots those delicate little roots from the seedlings can penetrate into the soil to get the water and nutrients they need to grow let me tell you a little bit about grass seed it's actually a combination of several different types of seeds in most cases there's seed in here that sprouts really fast and dies really young and there's other seed in here that takes a long time to sprout but it lives a long time so if you over seed and get the seed too crowded not only they're going to crowd each other out the short lived grass is going to sprout and keep the long-lived grass from growing so if you do that if you over seed you're going to end up in a very thin lawn after a few years because that short lived grass is going to die off this is what I like to use to spread my seed if you just grab handfuls of it and just cast it all over the place you're going to have real uneven growth and the seeds most likely to be crowded in some areas and real thin in the other the whole key is to get about 15 seeds per square inch and this is what I like to use a coffee can with a bunch of quarter quarter inch holes drilled into it so you start seeding just a little bit small area and then to get a feel for how many seed you have actually count them you know pictures square inch of seed and countless seed and that way you'll be able to tell by looking if you're if you've got that formula nailed that looks like a nice distribution I think we're ready to put a quarter inch of soil on this now now a lot of people will just smush the seed into the soil with their fingers or a rake held upside down but I got a little different system I like to put a little topsoil on top of that I'll show you how I do that next so this is ordinary potting soil I'm going to sprinkle this on top of the seed but it's really crucial not to overdo it you don't want any more than a quarter inch and preferably an eighth inch of soil over the top of the seed these itty bitty seeds just don't have enough energy to shoot a blade of grass up through a lot of soil so don't overdo it with the topsoil the last step is to put a little starter fertilizer on it this is specially formulated for baby grass or seed do not make the mistake of using adult fertilizer or the type of fertilizer you put on your lawn all the time that's like feeding up newborn babies steak and eggs and hash browns for breakfast you might kill the poor kid salt don't use it because this stuff cannot handle a gulp food so just sprinkle a little bit of this starter don't get Ramy on it because it's real easy to burn it very little and actually in most cases I don't even do this step and I get along just fine depends on your soil conditions this is where that dedication part comes in if you're not willing to do this for two to three weeks don't even bother trying to fix a bare spot and that's just keeping the soil damp every single day and if it's windy and hot go out there twice a day don't flood it just missed it for a few minutes and that's all it needs that's all it needs and this grass is going to come in just beautifully in a couple months you won't even to tell that you won't even be able to tell this bear patch was even here that's it this is going to look like a million bucks in two months that's if you keep watering it one more piece of advice choose your time carefully pick a time when the temperature doesn't drop below 45 or get over 75 in most areas in the country that's either mid spring or mid fall good luck with your lawn patch you

Channel: Family Handyman

Views: 292,208

Keywords: How-to, Grass, bare-spot

Id: hXc63ZWWqOQ

Length: 5min 23sec (323 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 22 2012