This is the story of how our beautiful backyard lawn of lush grass painfully dwindled into patches of dirt. We had originally stopped lawn care services with Emerald Lawns in the backyard to be abundantly cautious of our free-ranging chickens. Couple that with severe drought and a broken irrigation system and grass-catastrophe ensued.
In case you missed it, here’s the original lushes to ruins lawn story…
Here is our 3 Month Lawn Care Update
Since the previous blog post we have done a few things to attempt to re-gain our backyard’s lawn potential.
March 2023 – We had Emeralds irrigation technicians come to our house to fix our sprinkler system so the ground could consistently get watered once again.
April 2023 – I applied Bermuda grass seed and starter feed across the lawn where there was and wasn’t already grass.
April 2023 – A week later I bought 27 bags of 40lb topdressing and threw it on top of the seeds (by the way, it wasn’t enough).
May 2023 – With excitement and expectancy we saw… nothing happen for a month. I figured I just failed to apply everything correctly and didn’t get enough topdressing down.
June 2023 – The grass seeds sprouted finally! But the lawn is a bit patchy.
Captain America
Only a few patches weren’t filled in, mostly by the porch where the most traffic was…and along the fence where Captain America (our German Shepherd mix) would faithfully protect us from squirrels, birds, and other intruders.
Bucky Barnes
July 2023 – A few holes that our puppy had dug in the lawn I filled in with sand and dirt but our chickens decided they were the ideal places for their afternoon dirt baths so the dirt was flung out of each hole in the yard once again. And while the grass is continuing to grow taller and spread out it is still quite patchy at this moment in time.
Tips from the Emerald Pros
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- Our VP of Customer Experience explained why germination took longer for us this year… “The soil needs to get warm enough, coupled with the right amount of moisture, to break down the hulls and allow seeds to begin sprouting. We have had a cooler spring than normal and it kept soil temperatures down, leading to a slower growth this year.”
- “Consider adding additional seed…and try to fence those areas off to divert traffic for germination.”
- “The lawn is looking better. I suggest regular mowing to help encourage lateral growth, versus just vertical growth. Density is key to healthy turf!”
Here’s a great pic that our VP of Production took showing the difference in density growth when mowing regularly…
October 2023 – So stay tuned for our final installment of this blog post series for the future funtastic results!
