How do I fix my lawn disaster?

Question

My lawn is a small backyard. It has been neglected for many years. I live in the Seattle area, so there is little rain and lots of sun during the summer and heavy rain for the other half of the year. The lawn has been infested with moss and has many dandelions. There are also several clover clusters through it. Finally, there are many hard dirt bare patches. I have started to water and have applied fertilizer with "moss killer" and "weed killer". Moss is there, but dead. Now what? I've applied two doses of fertilizer in order to do those and am concerned about adding more. What should I do to fix my lawn?

Answer 1

You live in a beautiful part of the country.  I can already "Smell" your little patch!

If you have lots of moss you either have too wet of a grass and or too much shade.  Can you cut back on trees/plants to allow more sun in?  Or provide for better soil drainage by adding sand to the soil?

Remove the dead moss.  Let the soil dry out.  Add compost and organic matter, then fertilizer and then whatever grass grows best in the Emerald City.

But please call the county extension office first for more detailed, regional advice more specific to Seattle.

Answer 2

Hey, What I would do is get several bags of earth and spread it everywhere around your lawn, then get lot's of grass seed and sprinkle the seeds all around your lawn. But before you do this, I would continue to put the fertelizer over top of the weeds and moss to ensure that your new lawn is not infested with weeds. once all this is done and your seeds are on make sure you water alot to get the seeds growing, I would say every night just turn on the sprinkler and let it run for an hour. In a few weeks you should have a nice lawn to cut. Good luck.

Answer 3

For your hard patch of soil you will have to till.  I don't see any other way.  You have been completely taken over by weeds, and it is a small area, so I would suggest you till it all and treat it all with weed killer.  Kill everything and start over.  Level the dirt and roll it with something heavy to compact it and plant grass seed.  A little hard work can go a long way.  I would also suggest that you not use any type of fertilizer until the killing is done.  After all, you're feeding the weeds along with the little bit of grass that you do have.  I use "Round-up" in the spring to kill everything in my vegetable garden patch.  People still think that you have to spray the leaves of a plant with Round-up to kill it.  But that's no longer true.  It has improved immensely so that now you can put it in the soil and kill the seeds too.

Answer 4

after you apply the moss killer, you have to rake up the dead moss.  Then re-seed any huge bare spots, small bare spots will fill in over time.  This fall but down winterizer and next spring be sure to put down a pre emergent weed control product such as Scotts with halts which will take care of many weeds before they germinate.  Then kill any remaining weeds with Ortho Weed B Gone Max.

Companies such as True Green, and Perennial Green can do it all for you and its not much more expensive to have them do it.   Plus they have access to better chemicals which will work even better.  Call one of them and get an estimate, it can't hurt just to call as there are no obligations and you may find it worth your time to have them do it.

Answer 5

You have too many problems dude- you need to rent a sod cutter (set it at 1") and cut that c**p out of there.  Get a rototiller in ther and rototill that compacted "earth" so that it'll drain well.  Add some 'starter' fertilizer and lay down new sod.