It’s been a long wet winter and the sun is finally shining. Time to put away the kids soccer cleats and get out their baseball shoes and to start working on the lawn and garden in ernest. If you’re like me, you’ve probably been doing some work outside for the last month or so, but it feels like a chore if it’s miserable outside. Now with the sun shining and it’s light out after dinner, I feel great getting outside and working in the garden.
The one thing I want to do this year is get our lawn looking healthy and happy. The last few years I’ve neglected the lawn because I have been working on other projects, but not this year. I put down lime a few weeks ago to help control the moss. Pretty soon I’m going to hit the lawn with moss killer and then once it’s all dead I will thatch it. I could leave the moss there and let it break down, but I think it is better to remove it and give room for the grass to grow.
Yesterday, I replanted an area of lawn where we use to have the kids play fort. There was a few tuffs of grass, but for the most part it was bare dirt with a few batches of moss. So I started with going to the local garden store and getting a few bags of topsoil and good quality grass seed. It’s a good idea to not scrimp on grass seed. My neighbour purchase some cheap grass seed and it had a lot of weed seeds in it. He now has a nice big patch of clover in his front yard 
The area is nice and flat and since it use to have grass growing I didn’t have to do too much work, which was nice for a change. For an area of 400 square feet (4 feet by 10 feet) I did the following.
I removed any weeds or small rocks by hand from the area.- I raked the dirt and removed any patches of moss. The rake was very good at peeling back the large areas of moss.
- I used1 Kilogram of Shady grass seed (about 2 pounds).
- I sowed half the seed in one direction and the other half in the other direction. This provides a more uniform spreading.
- I covered the seed with a layer of top soil (2.5 – 30 litre bags). This is a good idea for a few reasons:
- The birds won’t be able to eat it
- The wind won’t blow it away
- It will help the seeds germinate
- I like the look of black soil
- I lightly raked the dirt with the back of the rake to level it.
- I lightly watered the seeds to keep it moist. It’s a good idea to this every day until the grass is green. You just want to keep the seeds moist.
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Today, I re-seeded an area in the front of the house where we removed a cotton wood tree a few years ago. I put down grass seed when we removed the tree but it’s looking a bit thin and patchy. I decided to re-seed this area at the same time. It’s about the same size as the area in the back but since I’m re-seeding I’m using about half of the seed and soil that I used in the area where the fort was. I also have an area in the front where an industrious mole is causing havoc and I replanted that area.
I pretty much followed the same steps above except I didn’t lightly rake the dirt in step six. This was because I found that raking seemed to move the seeds into clumps and expose areas with no seeds or dirt. I also made sure that I broke up any lumps of dirt by hand and spread it more evenly. I also had one bag with wet dirt and I didn’t use it. I found it really hard to spread.
In the picture above you can see where I have sowed the seed and where I have added the top soil already. I really should have put down fertilizer before putting down the grass seed, but I didn’t have any handy. I plan on adding fertilizer tomorrow.