One year can I just have a nice lawn without the battle?

I must admit, the front lawn is my nemesis. When it’s looking good, our front of house is stunning and gets so many complimentary comments from passers-by, but… it is so much work. When we moved to Ar Bruadair all those years ago, there was no lawn at all. It basically doubled as a car park.

So one of the very first jobs I did was to lay a lawn. I actually did this while Kate was at work in the hope that she walks into the street and see a beautiful lawn in front of our new house (she really wanted a lovely, perfect, front lawn). I didn’t quite manage to finish it though and she came home and saw the half I had done and was chuffed. She then helped me finish it off so it became a joint project.

The thing was though, previously, because it had been mono-blocked, there was no soil, just sand. Which is excellent for drainage, so I had to manually add soil and it felt like I added heaps. HEAPS! But still, there is only a couple of inches at most and this means the lawn dries out really fast, so we have to water it every day in summer – proper soak it. It also means the soil that is there doesn’t hold onto nutrients and we have to feed the lawn a lot more than you would normally. A normal lawn gets fed about twice a year, we have to feed ours monthly.

Now all of this has been a very long bit of background info for me to talk about reseeding your lawn because when you have something as temperamental as we do, you will have to reseed the bald bits at least once.

Sigh!

So 2019, started well. I was prepared. I got out there early and put down fertiliser and gave it a really good water in. The fertiliser promised a greener lawn in just two weeks, I was super hopeful cause you know, the packaging never lies, right?

Well to be fair, the grass I didn’t kill, looks lush and green! (Always check the settings on your spreader haven’t been nudged by your leg as you walk… just saying).

So bald patches…. we need to reseed and that means a few things need done.

How to get your lawn lovely again

It’s not a difficult or arduous task…

• Before you put down any seed, rake up all the dead grass. You want the seed to have 100% contact with the soil, so any dead grass that’s in the way is a no no.
• Then rough up the soil. Either with the rake or a small trowel. Get it nice and fluffed up again and then
• Soak it. Proper soak it.
• Sprinkle your seed onto the affected patches. Now you don’t need to put down loads. Think of it like growing individual grass plants, you wouldn’t put 40 in the same pot, would you? So sprinkle don’t deluge.

Be patient, it can take a couple of weeks for the seed to take, so keep it watered (don’t let it dry out) and be patient. Do not mow the lawn.

I’ve just done this yesterday so let’s check back in a couple of weeks and see how it’s looking. Or follow us on twitter or instagram and I’ll hashtag updates: #isthelawngreenyet 🙂

So how did we get on?

Check out our update post below.