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.

We will be over-seeding the lawn in September sometime, or possibly just ripping it out and seeding from scratch.  I still haven’t decided which is a better way to go.  Ripping out the old lawn and laying new seed would definitely be in order since this old lawn has been here for years upon years, and I don’t think there’s much that could make it look good or feel young again. It is certainly a lot more work though, and I would need to bring in more topsoil for some more spots where it’s thin over the rock base.

The gutters on the house are in terrible shape.  The one you’ll see in the video is a newer one, but it was not put in properly.  There should be a drop in height of the gutter from the non-downspout side to the downspout side, I think whoever did this one just put it in along the edge and went ‘good!’.

You can see the gallons of water pouring out over the edge of the gutters and even at the downspout end of the gutter, although some of the plants in the planter seem to benefit from it.  It needs to be repaired to get the water away from the house though, the sump pump has been working overtime to keep things dry in the basement.

I think it’s kind of odd that the water is pouring out from the downspout end of the gutter.  I’m guessing it’s plugged with leaves or something, I’ll probably have to get up there with the ladder on Saturday and see what’s really going on with it.

Also near the end of the video you can see where the blue stone pavers have been pulled up in preparation for the placement of a new concrete sidewalk.  I found someone in the area who was working on a stone wall and they called up and helped me get rid of this bluestone.  I still have some big bluestone curb and slab pieces sitting around, so if you’re in the mid-hudson area and interested let me know.

Anyways, heres the thunderstorm video, if you can’t see the embedded YouTube video below, just click the link to go directly to YouTube to watch it, you won’t leave the site.

If you enjoy thunder storm videos, check out my YouTube channel on the right.  I have a few from the last couple of years posted there that you may enjoy watching.

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 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).  Hopefully we will get to overseed 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.  The new grass there has not grown a lot, if at all, since last week and looks kind of odd and lighter colored.  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 Helicopter websites over to word press and wordpressifying all the existing pages.  Once that is done I will also be putting a high voltage blog online.  I’m really happy with this system as it makes it so easy to update and modify pages and 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 21 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 a lawn.’ which is kind of what the goal was.   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.

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!

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