This is just a quick update on things. The Scott’s Patchmaster is now right at 28 days and is growing nicely. We’ve had a huge amount of rain here in the NE the last week so that certainly hasn’t hurt things by keeping the patch mulch wet. My only fear is that the weather will go from very wet to super hot and dry with no reasonable transition, which may keep the grass from developing deep roots and result in it getting burnt out in the heat. All you can do at that point is try to keep it wet.
I only got one picture of the patch, but it turned out blurry as it was late at night. I will try to update with a newer photo on Monday or Tuesday if you’re interested in seeing how 4 weeks looks (Update: Good photos at the bottom of this post!) . It looks a lot like the last photos in the 21 Day Scott’s Patchmaster post just a lot more dense than before. Also, it’s very green and makes the rest of the lawn look terrible (but it really is terrible so that’s kind of to be expected). Hopefully we will get to over-seed or cut out the ‘original’ lawn and get some new fresh grass going there, rather than clover, once summer breaks.
I’m a bit concerned about the peninsula lawn which was seeded from scratch with just plain grass seed, mulching material and starter fertilizer. The new grass there has not grown a lot, if at all, since last week and looks kind of odd and lighter colored. In fact now that we’ve gone a full year that section of the lawn is dying out. There’s simply not enough fertility in the soil as it’s mostly sand and keeps leaching out. I don’t have the willpower to fertilize the lawn every 3-4 weeks so I think Spring 2011 I am going to start over by tilling in some good quality soil to the junk that is there now. The new grass in other sections I planted from scratch has grown great, several inches a week and they received exactly the same treatments and similar exposure to rain and sunshine. The soil in those areas is of a much different quality, not sandy at all. The soil on the peninsula is very sandy, so much so we tilled in about 15 bales of peat moss to the 1800 square feet area to try and help it retain moisture and nutrients, and on top of that we’ve had huge amount of rain recently. It’s possible that the rain is just washing the nutrients out of the soil. We put a small amount of fertilizer on Saturday, about 1/4 the amount of a normal fertilizing, to see how the grass responded. The last two nights, though, we’ve gotten long(hours and hours) torrential downpours once again. I’m not sure what to do here but I will have to do some reading to find out whats going on.
I’m hoping it’s not that the soil is draining -too- well and letting the nutrients wash out. I’m not sure of a good solution to that other than ripping up the lawn again in fall, mixing in good quality soil with the sandy soil and then replanting the whole thing, which would be a major pain in the neck.
It’s going to be a busy week, but I’ll try to get some new posts in. I’m in the process of converting my Laser and High Voltage and Hobby websites over to word press and wordpressifying all the existing pages. I’m really happy with WordPress as it makes it so easy to update and modify pages and has a huge number of plugins to make life easy, doing so has given me the urge to get back into my other hobbies!
If you’re looking for Scott’s PatchMaster information please see all my PatchMaster Related Posts
Update:(September 9,2010) It’s been over a year since I posted this 28 day update and I must say that the areas of the lawn which were patched with the PatchMaster are looking pretty good and like they belong in the lawn. I will add in some additional photos so you can see the results, but basically it will just be ‘It looks like the rest of the lawn.’ which is what the goal was going into this whole lawn restoration project. My overall experience is that if you have the right weather conditions, or you are willing to make sure it stays watered and fed, it is a suitable product for this purpose. Remember, the end of August and early September is a great time of year to get some new grass started because it will have the Fall and Spring to become strong before having to endure the next Summer. Good luck and please share your success or failures with this product.
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- Scott’s PatchMaster After 28 Days – Wide View
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- Scott’s PatchMaster after 28 Days – Close view
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Tags: grass, grass seed, Lawn, patchmaster, rain, summer, till, Topsoil
5 responses to Weekend Update: Lawns and Scott’s Patchmaster (28 day report)
Weekend Update: Lawns and Scott’s Patchmaster | Jon’s Home Blog: This is just a quick update on things. .. http://tinyurl.com/l495hq
I’m using a lot of patchmaster on my small, townhouse front and back yard at the moment. Today is day 8, and I have to say your day 8 pics look a little more encouraging then mine. I am, however, just starting to see some new blades rise up…just not very concentrated yet. I’ve been afraid that I laid it too thick, so I’m hoping it pulls through. I’ve been extremely diligent with watering it, so we’ll see.
Josh in NJ
Hi Josh it sounds like you’re doing alright. As long as the seeds are in a wet medium they should grow nice. I put the patch down pretty thick in some areas and even if it’s thick the roots will grow down and eventually hit the soil but the shredded material should keep them going until then. We’ve had a lot of cloudy days in the NE lately so it may just be taking a bit longer for the grass to grow. The worst part is the waiting.
So it’s day 14 and most areas are really starting to come in. However there are some fairly large areas in my front yard that have yet to produce a single blade of grass, and I don’t have much hope for them. I’m thinking that the first week of October I’ll spread some seed over these parts. Do you think I should rake back the patchmaster that failed, spread some new seed, and then put the patchmaster mulch back on top of the area? My thought was the water retaining mulch would still be of some help.
Also – how many days did you keep up with constant watering? Just wondering when I can start backing off a bit there.
Thanks!
Josh
Hi Josh, glad to hear you’re having some luck. That’s pretty weird with the specific areas which aren’t growing at all though. Have you used any herbicides/weed killers in those areas in the past year that might be preventing the seed from growing? When you spread the PatchMaster out could you see seed all throughout the material? Other factors could be hungry birds got to those spots, or something else kept it from producing. You could try to mix the seed in with the PatchMaster mulch, rather than just cover the seed with it. I’ve also had pretty good luck with raw seed in larger areas. I’ll clean out the area with a steel rake and loosen up the soil, sprinkle some seed over the area, then use the backside of the steel rake to mix the seed in with the loose soil and then soak the area pretty good the first time, so maybe you could do the same with those sections of the PatchMaster mulch. I’m not quite sure when I quit watering, once the patched area was fairly well grown in I watered less and less as time went on and the grass seemed like it was well rooted, and now it just gets watered when the rest of the lawn does, if we’ve had a long dry period and things start to looking a bit brown.
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