Reseeding the Lawn

The lawn has really taken some abuse this year. We tried to water it every now and then during the long drought, but with the expense of watering the vegetable garden and the increase in water rates, we were not able to water it enough to really help. So, here we are, reseeding the lawn.

Now is a good time to reseed the lawn, because the temperatures are dropping. Grass seed prefers a temperature below 80 degress for germination. Our temps are still a little higher than that, but it shouldn't last much longer.

Here is a view of the house from the road. This shot doesn't look "that" bad, except for our bushes that need a good pruning!



This is the worst area of the lawn. All that dead brown grass is really unsightly. Ian says the good news is that all the dead grass was nasty crab grass anyway, so it wasn't really a big loss.



The view from the porch isn't all that attractive either!



We had to cultivate the dead grass areas by hand, because the seed needs to be sown into soil and not on top of dead grass. That was not fun! It took about 8 total man-hours.

According to the lawn seed, you have to water it twice a day for 3-4 weeks. Ugh! That's probably going to add up to a lot more $$ than if we had just kept it watered throughout the year.

I will post weekly pics to keep an eye on the progress. It supposedly takes 3-4 weeks for the seed to germinate, and you aren't supposed to mow until the new grass is a couple inches tall. I think we are going to have to mow before that unless we want some anonymous letters from neighbors filling our mailbox!