Make Your Own Grass Patch
Before stores started selling grass patching products in a bag, groundskeepers at golf courses made up their own mixture and used it to fill in divots and bare spots. I do the same thing for my own yard and so do many landscapers. It is very quick and easy to make and use, and it allows you to put in exactly the type of seed that you want to use. Plus, it is way less expensive than the products sold in stores or on infomercials.
Here is all you need to do. Put in a bushel or two of garden soil into a wheel barrow. Thoroughly mix in an equivalent amount of sphagnum peat moss (the
brown peat that comes in bales). You want to end up with a spongy, crumbly, water-holding mixture, much like a potting soil. In fact, you could use bagged potting soil instead of this mixture if you don’t have the other ingredients at hand.
Next, mix enough grass seed so you get plenty of seed in every handful -15 to 20 per sq. inch is ideal. If you have some starter fertilizer around put a cup or two in the batch. This is not critical if your soil is fairly healthy and regular fertilized. You can always fertilize after the grass up. We recommend All-In-One for Lawns if you like using liquid fertilizers.
it would be helpful, but probably not critical, if before seeding you could scratch up any bare soil with a stiff rake, garden weasel or some other tool. If there is thickly matted dead grass or Thatch, you would have to remove that first.
Simply top the bare and thin spots on the lawn with this mixture and water. Keep it moist until the new seed is well established. Before the seed sprouts make sure you hit it with either our Aerify PLUS (especially if you have Clay soil) or Nature’s Magic. They both contain trace nutrients that will stimulate faster rooting and will generate beneficial root
fungi called mycorrhizae (my-core-rhy'-zee)
Note: If you are filling in deeper ruts or holes, don’t fill them with your home-made grass patch and waste it that way. Grass seeds deeper than 1/2 to 3/4 inches will have a hard time sprouting. Use regular soil to fill the holes or ruts, tamp it down lightly and only put your home-made grass patch on the
very top.
Stuart Franklin
President Nature's Lawn & Garden, Inc
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