growing new grass
 

after having a rainy winter + 2 dogs, our lawn has been destroyed.

it went from nice thick lush green grass to a mud pit in only 6 months.

what would be the best steps to go with re-growing it?

till the yard, roll it, seed it, add top soil, and water every 2 hours?

AND, since 1 of my dogs is still almost 2 years old...hes a giant beast. foot prints the size of my palms. its hard keeping him out of certain areas as hes just able to plow through things, or from him running/rolling around with my other dog and plowing down a temporary fence.

any tips and tricks to make the grass grow faster? certain seed? would compost be better than top soil since its organic? instead of attempting to do the whole yard at once would it be easier to do 1/4 at a time that way the dogs can still have room to poop/play?

thanks!

How big is your yard?

Hydro seeding is amazing, however the company we dealt with (I believe it was super soil) will only do a minimum of 5000 sq feet. Although, I'm sure if you paid the minimum, $500 I think, they would probably do it

You will have full growth in under a month, and it's a great base for re-seeding
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You'll probably want to consider upgrading your lawn drainage, and the soil base.

Or you're freshly replanted lawn is going to turn into a mud pit again in no time.

how do you improve lawn drainage?
dig trenches and lay pipe guiding away from your house?

Perforated drain pipe into either your rain water system or if you have a sump on your property into the sump

Otherwise if your property borders like a green belt or somthing you could just dig a hole outside of your property and fill it with gravel and drain into that hole

Make sure you bed the whole pipe in like 8-10" of gravel on top of the pipe and have the perforations facing downward
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Swales & french drains are on the extreme side if you are having standing water problems.

If it's anything like my lawn, it's because it's mostly heavy clay soil so aeration and topdressing with sand will help.

If in the OP's case the lawn is so badly damaged that the whole thing needs to be reseeded, than it might be a good opportunity to re-turf and get a good base going above the clay.

as well, the more sand in the base the better the lawn you will have. Ie. golf greens are almost 100% sand

However, the trade off is the more sand you have the more water you need.

In our yard we went with about a 50/50 mix on a fairly wet year round yard and I think we could have easily gone closer to 60/40 or higher and still been fine with regular sprinkler watering.
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our drainage isn't that old, but oh well.

half the yard will be a quick fix. we'll be pulling out a section and put sand/tile over it for an outdoor patio for the swing and patio crap, rip a section of the fence out and make it on a hinge so we can get the boat in and out and to get our motorcycles in easier. 1/4 of the yard is a giant koi pond, maybe 4-5 ft deep, 15ft long with a waterfall etc...koi's the size of salmon lol, so that area is garden so that's always a quick fix once the weather gets going. just the rest of the yard, we want to till it, tamp it, sand it, top soil + seed and hope for the best.

Probably the best advice, esp if you have a large area. have a picture?

so if your lawn is muddy with moss growing on it, aeration and top dressing with sand to make it less muddy is the way to go?
i'm in a similar situation but i don't think i have drainage issues (is there a tell tale way to know?)

if there's a drainage issue, you'd 100% know. Muddy, over saturated lawn, the next day after a rainfall. Compare it with the lawn on the city sidewalk for example.

Kind of off topic but whats the best way to get rid of weeds?

Pulling them, weed killer or?

i've tried pulling them and they seem to always come back but i've never done anything preventative, only reactive.

From what I gathered there's not much you can do once they start growing other than to pull them out. The best thing to do is to fertilize your grass early on in the spring so weeds don't have a chance to grow
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Weeds are tricky buggers.

Haivng a healthy lawn is the best way at cutting back weeds.
So, Dethatch, fertilizer, aerate every spring, aerate/fertizer before winter.

If you see a weed, pull it out, reseed a bit. & Let the grass height go higher to stuff out the smaller ones.

we did a tonne of landscaping last year essentially levelling out a 100 foot by 60 foot back yard, the lowest corner was brought up about 2 feet. We then had it hydroseeded as i mentioned earlier but our dumb dogs basically made the yard look like a mine field over the winter months, and as grass was starting to come back in the last few weeks we saw many patchy areas and holes were grassless so we got a dump truck load of top soil sand mix, it's a 50/50 mix so it's relatively firm

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y13...3.jpg~original

down the center and towards the back left corner we also added a drain tile branch that picks up the back end of the yard and down the middle draining off the property to the right side

while it may seem intimidating i think the best thing to do for a lawn is to level it out properly and have it shaped as such that water doesnt pool. From the left side of our yard to the right there is about a 10" slope, 10" over 60 feet is nothing but provides enough in our case

if you guys need any soil i'd highly recommend "Super Soil" in cloverdale, they are super cheap and have very good product. We dont live too too far from them and it was under $200 for a dump truck of this mix delivered right to our house. 3 people can wheelbarrow a dump truck load of soil in about 3-4 hours

So we top dressed, fertilized, then seeded and watered on saturday. I would expect to see growth from the new seed within the month as we bought seed from the company who did the hydro seeding for us, their seed is supposedly coated and retains moisture which encourages growth

Huge backyard there man...

If you only levelled it on top the previous lawn, I would have prob dethatched, aerated, then apply the soil/level, reseed/fertilizer.
It must be looking decent now/germinating? And how much was the seed? Thanks.

I basically aerated as I churned the whole lawn up with the mini excavator I used to level it lol

There's about 6 dump trucks of fill and three of top soil now to get to that point.

The seed, I can't recall how much it was but we bought the bags from the same company who did our hydro seeding, I'll find out the companies name
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