Fall Lawn Care

It's fall and time to repair the damage done to our lawn over a hot and very dry summer season. Living in the area we do we have a yard that's sand. Sand doesn't hold moisture and in several large areas in our back yard the grass died out completely this summer. This will be the second season that we've re-seeded several of these areas. One of the lessons that we've learned is that germinating grass in sand is easy, it's keeping it alive that's hard.

We love our back yard and I have lovely gardens and lots of garden ornaments. We're not ready to give up on it yet.

We re-seeded these areas about two weeks ago with a grass seed called Black Beauty. This grass seed is supposed to work wonders in sandy and clay soils. It's a combination of three different grasses that were picked for their ability to thrive under bad conditions such as heat, drought and cold.

One of the way's it works in sandy soil is that it sends roots down several feet unlike regular grass that sends down roots of several inches. Also the outer sheath of the grass also holds more moisture and can tolerate heat.

This wasn't cheap seed, but we felt it was worth trying. If it doesn't work we'll be planting some sort of ground cover out back in those areas next year.

We roughed up the soil and applied a light covering of Chesapeake Green as suggested by the garden center (they also suggested using Leaf Gro to do the same thing). This new grass is coming up beautifully now. It's so nice to see large areas of green again.

The true test for this new grass will be July-August of next year..... wish us luck.