The Grass Project II : Backyard Edition

Last year I gave a shot at growing some grass in the front yard (full story), but I didn't have enough time to tend to the backyard even though it was arguably even worse off. I decided that I'd deal with it this spring instead, so here I am. This past weekend, I planted some seed.

Before I get too far, here is what it looked like before:

The leaves on the right side are covering a completely bare spot there.

Another bare spot in the upper right.

Generally very thin and patchy.

And the third bare spot with the brighter green color being moss, not grass.

When we moved in in 2009, the grass was actually quite lush in the back as is somewhat visible in the photos in my "Before" post. I think the sellers planted it that year as I remember noticing it when we first looked at the house earlier in the year. So what happened? I don't know, but I have some theories:

1. Over fertilization (by me). Grass in the shade needs less fertilizer than grass in full sun. When I fertilized the backyard (and I can't remember exactly when or how much, except that I did it each time I also fertilized the front yard which is full sun), I do remember that it appeared to actually make the grass worse.
2. Non-shade tolerant grass. I don't know what kind was grown, but it's possible it wasn't good in shade. It may have grown well at first before the trees had their leaves, but once the trees filled in, the grass received less sunlight leading to unhappiness.

I tend to think it is #1 since I actually noticed it getting worse after fertilizing. It is also the most thin over the most shady parts. Lesson learned. The Purdue Turfgrass Science Program suggests applying 1.0 lb of Nitrogen per 1000 sq. ft. in September and again in November and that should be sufficient for the entire year. I'll try that this year.

This weekend, I generally followed the instructions in the Seeding a Turf Area in the Spring publication using the "Dormant Seeding" approach, although, it's about as late as possible to be able to call it that. Looking at the long-term weather forecasts, it appears that winter may not yet be over, so I think the seed will likely sit dormant for at least a few more weeks (at least I hope so!).

I didn't go as crazy as I did in the front yard last year tearing up the whole yard, thank goodness. Instead, since much of the yard was already grass-free, I first thoroughly raked the whole yard to better expose the soil using a fine-tooth leaf rake. Last fall, I mulched all of the leaves that fell on the grass and left them there as a natural fertilizer. Sure enough, it was all still there this year, so I had to rake it away. Once I had raked away as much as I possibly could, I used a hard-tooth rake to loosen up the soil, particularly in the completely bare spots. In the thin spots with some grass present, this removed some of the clumps of existing grass, however, I figured this to be acceptable since new grass will soon take it's place (or so I hope!). This is what it looked like after I completed this step:

The bare spots are more clearly visible now.

Should I have just dug up the existing grass here? Hm...

I tried as best I could to rake away the moss.

Now I was ready to lay down the seed. But first let me talk about the seed that I purchased. After doing some online research, I determined that a fescue/bluegrass mix would probably be best. Surprisingly, some areas get a decent amount of sun and perhaps even full sun, while other areas probably struggle to get even an hour of direct sunlight a day. I considered trying Supina Bluegrass, but due to it's high cost, I decided against it. Most places were only selling it in a larger quantity than I needed.

Not knowing what to get, while at the store one day I decided to just purchase a bag there. So, I bought a bag of Scotts Dense Shade Mix:

Scotts Dense Shade Mix

11.75% Fenway Creeping Red Fescue
11.68% Crossbow Creeping Red Fescue
10.53% Ambrose Chewings Fescue
9.36% 04-2-LH Intermediate Ryegrass
2.53% Thermal Blue Kentucky Bluegrass
1.89% Abbey Kentucky Bluegrass

It had some Kentucky Bluegrass in it, but not much (about 8.8% - can't forget that 50% of the bag is the coating!). Maybe last year's experience with the coating throwing me off left a bad taste in my mouth, but when I bought this it was as if I was buying it as a fall back plan to save a trip to the store if I couldn't find anything better.

So I kept looking around and eventually found seedsuperstore.com. They have what appear to be all the latest and greatest varieties and are also quite informative. I used their "Seed Express" service and entered my zipcode and selected that my lawn was shady in the next step and it suggested a fescue/Kentucky bluegrass mix called SS6000, which is what I ended up ordering. They also offer Supina bluegrass which I considered, but it is expensive. I bought a 5 lb. bag of the SS6000 mix and this is what arrived a few days later:

5 lb. bag of SS6000 mix from seedsuperstore.com

19.55% Spartan II Hard Fescue
19.76% Zodiac Chewings Fescue
19.44% Garnet Creeping Red Fescue
19.77% Bewitched Kentucky Bluegrass
19.81% Intrigue Chewings Fescue

At this point, I'm a satisfied customer, assuming the grass grows, which I'm sure it will. I should note that I almost made a purchase from another online retailer called outsidepride.com, but in the nick of time I stumbled upon a review site that actually caught the owner fluffing up their rating with bogus positive reviews! I cancelled my order (actually hadn't submitted it yet) and started looking elsewhere. For the record, superseedstore.com has only one review at the same site at this time.

Anyway, on to planting. Seed Super Store suggested a seeding rate of 4 lbs. per 1000 sq. ft. I estimated (as best I could considering that the area is nowhere near rectangular) that I had roughly 1400 sq. ft. or so to cover, so 5. lbs is just about right, especially considering that I was overseeding probably 1/2 of the area.

The next day I went to the store and purchased a bale of straw to use as mulch, primarily for the bare areas to keep rain from possibly washing the seeds away. Interestingly, this wasn't in the publication mentioned above, but is in the Establishing Lawn Areas From Seed publication. I asked if the straw was weed-free, but they didn't know and said that they've been selling it for 4 years without any complaints, so I figured it would be fine. I only ended up using about 1/4 of the bale, and was careful to put it down lightly, following the suggestion to make it so that you can see approximately 50% of the soil through the mulch later - it was difficult to gauge. This is what it looked like after mulching:

I put up a little fence to keep the dog off of it.

The last thing I need to do fairly soon is fertilize. I haven't done it yet, although I have purchased some starter fertilizer that is high in Phosphorous. I figure I'll do it sometime before it starts germinating. I'm also somewhat scared to do it knowing that it may have been what caused the grass to die in the first place. Perhaps I should get a soil test done. I need to research this as I haven't found out how to do that yet, but it would certainly be nice to know. I'm going to look into this.

Once the weather warms back up and the grass in the front yard starts growing, I'll know that the soil is probably warm enough for germination (55 degrees) and will start watering. Hopefully by then our irrigation system will be back up and running (I'm so spoiled by that!), then I'll anxiously wait for the first seedlings to start growing.

I'll have more posts on the status of this project soon!