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)

After weeks of nightly, hours long, rainy downpours they have subsided a bit, but now we’re getting these daily thunderstorms ripping across the Catskills and through town.  I posted a video of one the other day which was pretty fantastic and very active for our area.  The thunderstorm video below is in the daytime and mostly shows the quantity of rain that comes with these storms.  You can see the Scott’s PatchMaster patch in there also after about 5 or 6 weeks of growth.  It’s doing well, but of course it looks better than the rest of the lawn.

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.

Related Posts

1. June 30 Severe Thunder Storm in Ulster County, NY
2. More Fun With The Yankee Gutters
3. Awesome New York Thunderstorm

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

I mowed the lawn and got a couple flights in with the Mini-Titan helicopter.  It’s a great little heli, though there’s not a lot of room in the yard, yet, to get really crazy with it, I just buzz around over the back yard.   There’s an R/C club a few miles away I might join, if they don’t mind helicopters.  A lot of places don’t like these ‘dagblasted whirly birds’ flying around their airplanes

As you can see in the pic of the other side yard, it hasn’t been taken care of yet, I’ll probably work on raking out the dead wild violet roots, filling in the holes and sunken spots this week evenings and put some grass seed down.   I’ve started to cut back on watering of the peninsula lawn, I want to force the grass to start extending it’s roots down into the soil so that it will hopefully be decently established by the time our smoldering summer comes along.

Related Posts

1. Weekend Update: Lawns and Scott’s Patchmaster (28 day report)
2. Leveling the Uneven Yard
3. Working to Rebuild a Lawn in Poor Condition

We’ve been working on the yard next to the barn for a few weeks now. I went out one weekend to rake up the yard as it had a lot of moss growing it in. Much to my dismay moss was apparently the only thing growing in it and it tore up in large sheets to reveal a terrible soil beneath. The weekend we rented a tiller and bough a lot of peat moss to try and improve the soil quality a bit, we tilled it in to a depth of about six inches then planted the seed on top to see how that worked. Being my first lawn I wasn’t sure what to do when we got a last few sputters of winter and the temps dropped below freezing, so spread another round of seed, and again the week after that. So there is now a lot of seed on the ground in the area which has started sprouting. Here are some photo’s of the area in order of earliest to most recent.

Side yard after rolling in the seed

Sprinklers in place helping the seeds germinate

A few weeks after the planting

Related Posts

1. Cleaning out Flower Beds
2. Weekend Update: Lawns and Scott’s Patchmaster (28 day report)
3. Leveling the Yard a Bit