The Scott’s PatchMaster I put down a while back has been doing well so far.  It grew in pretty fast and has just been thickening up.  It has now been mowed quite a few times.  We started mowing when it ‘looked decent’ and have just kept mowing it as part of the normal yard. It’s not super-scientific (though I suppose it could be) but the right time to mow Scott’s PatchMaster is whenever the heck it looks like it needs to be mowed.

Turn the PatchMaster into part of your lawn as soon as possible because the chances are the rest of your lawn may look terrible compared to the patch. Have no fear, over time it will blend in.  Before you know it you will want to patch your whole lawn so it looks as good as the patched spot but this would a bad idea, and very expensive.  I know this sounds like an ad placement or promotion, but I’m not paid by nor endorsed by Scott’s to promote their lawn care products (aside from occasional advertising through an ad network).  My true feelings is that a) the mulch material (paper) could be better filtered for plastics and other things b) if it’s watered it really does grow up quickly c) it usually looks better than the rest of your lawn and c) money well spent, so far!

YOU HAVE TO KEEP IT WET! This is critical or your PatchMaster will fail and your lawn will end up on FailBlog.  Additionally, you need to have good loose soil for the roots to grow into.  Heavy clay soil, or heavy rock soil may pose a problem to you. If you have either of those I recommend getting a pick axe and shovel and breaking up your soil (watch for water/sewer lines, check your basement for where they exit and use COMMON SENSE).  Remove rocky/nasty soil or screen it to get rid of the rocks and debris and add sand/composted manure/topsoil if needed to turn it into decent soil. There are numerous sites dedicated to improving the condition of your soil, I have not written about that as of yet.

In the area in the photos below I added new topsoil to fill in a hole in the lawn. The soil is untreated with chemicals and all natural. It worked out great and I’m sure you can find similar materials local to you or make them from stuff from the local garden shop, Lowe’s, or Home Depot.

Anyway, enough from me, here are the photos of Scott’s PatchMaster at 63 days, slighty over 2 months.

Related Posts

1. Lawn Watch 2009 – First Scott’s PatchMaster Update
2. Scott’s PatchMaster 21 Day Update
3. Weekend Update: Lawns and Scott’s Patchmaster (28 day report)

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.

Related Posts

1. Lawn Watch 2009 – First Scott’s PatchMaster Update
2. Scott’s PatchMaster 21 Day Update
3. Another Scott’s PatchMaster Performance Update

I wanted to provide some photo’s of the Scott’s Patch Master over time.  It has been a few weeks now since I put the paper/seed/fertilizer mix down on the blank spot, and there is grass growing.   It will take some time to fully fill in, but if it survives the summer which is now upon us, I think it will do ok.

There are quite a few different patch ‘solutions’ out there for fixing holes in lawns and trying to make them blend.  The advantages that a lot of these have over ‘plain’ seed is that they include some kind of recycled paper mulch to help retain water and keep the seed wet.   When you first put down grass seed it must remain constantly.  If the seed starts to germinate, and then dries out, it will die.   With these patch mixes, the mulch or paper will help retain the water, and it will also help keep the soil from drying out beneath it.   However, there is no patch mix that will work if you completely neglect it.  We mowed the patch to about 3 inches after the 21 days.

If you remember, I put the patch on about May 18th, so up to today, June 7th, that gives us a total of 21 days now that it has been ‘doing it’s thing’.   Click on the photos below, when they open up you can use the arrows to move back and forth through them.   Each photo is titled with the date and day number information.

If you’re looking for Scott’s PatchMaster information please see all my PatchMaster Related Posts and don’t forget the 28 Day Update! A lot of folks find this update and miss the last one!

Related Posts

1. Lawn Watch 2009 – First Scott’s PatchMaster Update
2. Weekend Update: Lawns and Scott’s Patchmaster (28 day report)
3. Another Scott’s PatchMaster Performance Update

A couple of days ago we posted pictures of the lawn where we had done the Scott’s PatchMaster patch mix over some new topsoil we put down when we were trying to level a large low spot in the lawn. There was no grass to be seen, but I said it would pop up any day now.

Well we went out today and and behold there are now grass chutes popping up all over the place in that area.  Within a week it should be looking pretty green and grassy as long as it is kept wet. The area has been getting water twice a day, but it could probably use it at least 3 times a day, I’m just always running short on time in the mornings.  So even with less than perfect attention, it’s sprouting!  Check out the photos.  I’ll continue updating as things progress. Total time from Scotts PatchMaster mix to sprouting was ~7.5 days.

If you’re looking for Scott’s PatchMaster information please see all my PatchMaster Related Posts

Related Posts

1. Lawn Watch 2009 *tense music* (1 of 2 posts today)
2. Scott’s PatchMaster 21 Day Update
3. Weekend Update: Lawns and Scott’s Patchmaster (28 day report)

Okay, I bought some more Scott’s QuickPatch for part of the left side lawn I leveled off with topsoil and applied it tonight.  I put the soil down a week or so ago and we had a major rainstorm which I helped level it out and make it part of the yard.  I put weed and feed down about a week ago and was hoping that the weeds would be dead, but they’re not.  Progress cannot be impeded, we’ll take care of the weeds later.  I’ve sharpened up some nail clippers for Bryn so he can get the weeds.

Hopefully in a week there will be sprouts and in short time there will be lawn.  I love how this stuff works, but it really really makes me want to build a home-owner sized hydro-seeder over the summer.

You can flip through the photos and see the stages from:  Topsoil -> Crushing up the compressed quickpatch -> applied quickpatch -> watered quickpatch.

Oh please! contain your excitement, don’t crowd.  The pics are as exciting as watching grass grow, but I’ll take photo’s twice a week and provide a post in about 2 months with all of the ‘progress’ photos together so you can see the lawn sprout, become infested with weeds, and then get razed with a large blowtorch!

Sorry about pics being out of order, my image viewer app plugin is a dimwit.

Related Posts

1. Lawn Watch 2009 – First Scott’s PatchMaster Update
2. Working to Rebuild a Lawn in Poor Condition
3. There are Mushrooms Everywhere in the New Lawn

Things seem to be going good all around out here.   I mowed the peninsula lawn this weekend for the first time since planting the grass and it looks great.   It’s still thin but now that it’s gotten more sun absorbing leafy surface area going and I added the starter fertilizer it’s really been picking up pace.   With any luck this lawn will be established before the weather gets too hot, but I’m not sure.   We’ve only been watering it every 2 days using the timer lately.  It’s still bright and green and seems to be thriving.  Additionally we’ve gotten rain over the past two weeks which helps save money on water, etc.

The lawn on the back yard hill is growing in okay, I was hoping it would have been thicker but that doesn’t seem to be the case.   If I could have gotten this or the peninsula to grow in as fast and thick as that Scott’s quick patch (PatchMaster(tm)) stuff I’d have been happy.   Maybe I need to look into hydro-seeding for any future lawn work ( DIY Hydro-seeder anyone? ) .    The Scott’s quick patch is basically hydro-seeding ingredients minus the water from what I saw on the bag.   I saw a spot down the road where the town had cut up some big 8-12 foot wide swaths of land to do fire hydrant work, then hydroseeded when done.   That was 2 weeks ago and the grass is already growing really fast there.

I also have some more photos of the Iris flowers.  The second one looks like it’s sticking it’s tongue out   Say ahhhh!

Additionally are the photo’s of something special brewing in ‘Mom’s Sunshine Garden’  I was worried they weren’t going to come up, but they bloomed fairly quick.  It appears something has been nibbling them, but with the number of bunnies I’ve seen around here, I hope it’s them and not bugs!

And finally you can see a couple of herbs from the garden planter.  The first one is Sage and the second one is Parsley.

Related Posts

1. Weekend Update: Lawns and Scott’s Patchmaster (28 day report)
2. Solar Power Landscape Lighting and Weeding the Yard
3. Scott’s PatchMaster 21 Day Update

I took some more photos on the progress of the lawns which we planted a while back.   The peninsula area of the yard seems to be growing alright, although I had expected that maybe it would be further along in it’s growth phase. I just need to be patient I guess, grass will take it’s own time to sprout. The lawns current condition is certainly an improvement the moss mess that it used to be!

I took photo’s of the lawn patch on the area we dug up for the drain pipe from the gutters and then replanted.   I bought some of the Scott’s PatchMaster and applied it and kept it watered and damp. It sat for a little while doing nothing and I was started to get frustrated with it thinking that the patch would never grow in and then it grew rapidly with little green shoots popping up all over the place seemingly overnight.  The Patchmaster might not be such a bad product after all!

The area of the property where we filled in the big sunken spots in the ground with fresh topsoil and used the brown germinating mats over the grass seed seems to be doing okay.   Again, I would like to see faster growth but I’ll just have to be patient and keep myself contained

I recorded a video of one of the modified square spray sprinklers sucking water out of the lawn!   Well, not really, but due to the shutter/frame rate of the camera, it looks as if things are moving backwards at points. Check out the modification at the link there, it’s semi-high tech and works great!

Related Posts

1. Lawn Watch 2009 – First Scott’s PatchMaster Update
2. Scott’s PatchMaster 21 Day Update
3. Another Scott’s PatchMaster Performance Update

In the back yard there were some HUGE dips and sags in the soil which made the area look like a small association of rolling hills.  Additionally the blue stone which the property sits on was poking up through certain areas.   This last weekend I ordered 5 cubic yards of topsoil and we filled in the holes quite a bit and planted new grass for that area.   We tried something different with this area, getting seed germinating mats made out of some kind of wood fiber.  We’re going to see how those work out for their intended purpose.    The mats are biodegradable so you don’t have to rake them out of the lawn, and the stakes are also biodegradable.

Here’s the view from ‘street side’ look back into the back yard.

New topsoil on the back yard areas that had huge huge dips in them.

Here’s a view of the same area looking from the barn towards the planter.

Shot from the back yard by the barn to the planter.

Here’s how it looks with the mat installed.

Back yard fill with seed germination mat

Related Posts

1. Leveling the Uneven Yard
2. New Lawn by Barn Progress Report
3. End of March 2009