Question
QUESTION: Hi -

About a month and a half ago, I completely 'dug-up' my back yard (was pretty much all weeds) and re-seeded.

A month and half later, most of the yard is grown back and the grass is 4-5 inches tall in most spots. However, there are a handful of 2ft x 2ft or so patches that just will not grow. These spots are either still dirt, or have little 'baby' grass on them.

My questions are two:

1) Any advice as to what might be going on with the spots that won't grow
2) Is it ok to mow that 4-5 inch tall grass now?.....I'd like to cut it as try using the clippings to fertilize the bare areas. I dont want to damage the un-grown areas with the mower though.

I live in MD.

Thanks!

ANSWER: Sorry to get back to you so late on this, Jack, but I have wracked my brain and exhausted all resources pondering this, believe it or not.  I have a few answers but none of them are any favorites.  I'll tell you what they are.

1.  Possibly those bare areas were soaked to the point where the new seed floated away from the spot it was seeded originally.  Depends on whether you mulched with straw or something else and how much you watered.  Spray will sometimes do that.  Tired people can get a little careless at the end of the day.

2.  Possibly those areas were NOT watered and are just now beginning to germinate.

3.  The soil in those spots is less fertile, perhaps sandier, and did not hold the moisture effectively; it dried out and was not kept at the same moisture level as the rest of the Lawn.

4.  Variable germination rate -- although this is unlikely since it is happening in 'patches' and not sporadically all over the new Lawn.

Since it has started at least to germinate, you may be in business.  But it's nice to know what's going on.  Sorry I have to guesstimate on this.  It's difficult without a photograph or being there.  Sometimes we never get the answer.  I'll be wondering about this for a while now.

Let's get to your next question:  Mow now?  Great idea.  You did not mention the kind of Grass you sowed.  Make sure you mow, and keep mowing all summer.  This and Nitrogen fertilizing are your best defense against Weeds.  Mow and Fertilize properly and you'll NEVER have to fight Weeds with one hand tied behind your back.

Most Grass is happiest kept at a 3 inch height.  Don't mow too low in one shot.  Mow only an inch off at a time.  If you don't have a mulch mower, mow at half inches until you get down to the 3 inch height.  Tall Fescue grows faster than other Cool Season Grasses and you'll have to mow that more often.

But don't take this lightly.  Mow right and you mow newly sprouting Weeds into the ground.  Weeds HATE when you mow.

Because chopping off the top of a Weed is like a punch in the stomach to the Weed.  Mowing off the tips of your Grass is like giving them a massage.  Great for Lawn roots.  A great big headache for Weeds.

Scientists at University of California at Davis do research on Weeds all the time.  One fact you'll see them point out over and over:  'No single height is best for all turfgrasses... Each Grass species will be healthier and have a deeper root system the higher the Grass is mowed.'

(http://anrcatalog.ucdavis.edu/pdf/8006.pdf)

University of Illinois did another test:

www.turf.uiuc.edu/research/summaries/1994/94_3.1.pdf#search='university%20test%20mowing%20height'

Their plot was planted with Tall Fescue, a cool season Grass.  And they found Weeds grew strongest when Grass was mowed at low heights of 1 or 2 inches: 'Crabgrass populations increased as mowing height decreased...'

Weeds are low on the ground.  They need light like everybody else.  But with thick, tall Grass all over the place, they get less of it.  And the thick, tall Grass gets more.

But don't mow too much at one time, especially the first time.  It is critical to never weaken your brand new Lawn with extreme mowing.  NOT EVEN ONCE.

Hope I'm not too late with that.

Sorry it took some time to put this together.  I hate to guess at things.

And yes, keep the clippings.  They should be small because you are not mowing extremely.  Don't dillydally on the Lawn -- keep your Cellphone off, do what you need to do before you go out and spend as little time as possible on the Grass.

Please keep me posted. Good luck.



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thank you for your inputs. I'd like to ask two follow on questions:

1) I have a lot of Scott's Starter Fertilizer left over from my initial seeding that I figure I might as well use up. How often is it appropriate to fertilize and semi-established / established lawn?

2) For the bare spots I mention in my first question: I think I will attempt to lay new seed in those areas and some new top soil. Do you have a good seed type you can reccomend to plant in these hot and humid, MD summers? While I will lay top soil, the base soil is primarily a hard sandy type. I had intially used a kentucky bluegrass / rye mixture (I think it was Scott's Sun and Shade Mix bag). Which reminds, the bare spots - some are in constant shade, some are in 4-5 hours of direct sun.

Thanks!
ANSWER: Scotts Chemicals Business is the K-mart of Lawngrowing.  They oversimplify in an effort -- which they are very successful at -- to get you to buy their merchandise.  These things cause a lot of problems and you should be aware of them.  Even if you didn't care, for example, what the weedkillers do to you (and your family and pets and neighbors), you are not doing yourself any favors by putting them on your Lawn.

If there is a Fungus wiping out those bare areas, it's because some human came along and applied one of those Scotts powders to the Grass and wiped out the original controls that were in there keeping those Fungi from getting anywhere.

But once you wipe them out, it's showtime at the Apollo.  The Grass is defenseless and all hell breaks loose in those areas where natural defenses have been scrapped.

If you have rich, healthy soil, you are not going to do anything good for your Grass by putting down more Nitrogen fertilizer.  You will, however, stretch the Grass.  If there's any bad stuff down there in the soil, it's going to come knocking at your door.

Your shaded areas should not have the Scotts seed there.  For your shaded areas, you want to get a shade-happy Grass.  That would be your choice of Tall Fescue or (my preference) a new Bluegrass hybrid called Supernova.

The online Grass seed retailer, Seedland.com, describes 'Supranova Supina' Bluegrass as 'the most shade tolerant, wear resistant, cool season turfgrass on the market in the US and Canada.'

Supernova is not sold everywhere.  But if it's not at a store near you, order it from Seedland.com:

http://www.seedland.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=BG-SUPINA

You can also try the Bluegrass/Rye mix.  But I think the Supernova will grow better.

More and more I am thinking that this bare-spots question is 'damping off', a Fungus condition that attacks new seedlings.  Since you have the Scotts in the garage, I figure it is safe to assume you have been using these products all along, and that's a definite setup for Fungus.  Happens all the time.

You're probably going to run out and purchase a Fungicide for the cure.  I recommend that after you do that, and it does not work, write back and I'll tell you how to fix it.  No sense going into that now.

Topsoil is never the rich, healthy soil you want to grow Grass in.  Right now is not the best time to be seeding Grass, either.  If this was my Lawn, I'd go out and get a nice bag of White Clover and seed those bare areas with that, then sprinkle it around the yard with the rest of the new Grass.  At least you'll be pouring slow-release long-term Nitrogen into your soil at healthy doses.

Once the Grass is growing, it should be watered with CARE.  That means don't water it all the time.  Just water it when it needs it.  Overwatering -- which is VERY easy to do -- is asking for a Fungus infection.  Since you probably have that already, it's just waiting for you to turn on the sprinkler.

Watering should also be done in the morning when the Grass has a chance to dry off.

But you should give that Starter Fertilizer to your neighbor.  The smart money says build up your soil.  No fertilizer can make a plant grow beyond what it is genetically programmed to do.  Forget the Miracle Gro advertisements with the soccer ball-size tomatoes.  Forget the Scotts fluorescent green yards.  Those houses are sets.  The only way to boost the green in Grass is to force feed it with chemical Nitrogen.  And that's not good for the Grass.  A classy new state of the art hybrid seed is the only way to achieve a classy new state of green on the Lawn.

Sorry to sound harsh about this.  There's science out there researching Grass and ways to grow it.  But Madison Avenue is very good at marketing outdated, obsolete Lawn 'care'.  Eventually you'll come around.

Any more questions let me know.  You might want to check out the new AllExpert, Tom.  He is not so anti-Scotts as some of us.

Good luck and thanks for writing.


---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: So no fertilizer, or just no Scott's Fertilizer?

Any warm season grass seed that you know of?

What is White Clover?

Thanks!

Answer
Hello again!  Some secrets about Grass: Concentrated Fertilizer has WAY more Nitrogen than your Grass can use.

But Scotts (which turns 100 years old this year and is now called Scotts Miracle-Gro and includes Ortho, Scotts Lawn Care and Smith & Hawkin) OWNS the Concentrated Fertilizer business.  And they take full advantage of how little people know about Grass.  They pretend to provide advice and guidance, when all they want to do is sell their fertilizers, pesticides, etc.

Yes, it's a free country, we don't have to buy it if we don't want to.  But they're not doing anybody any favors.  And since it is a free country, I do what I can to point out all the things they tell people to do that are just plain wrong.

But Scotts is a very big, very powerful company.  They spend SO much money on commercials and ads, getting people to buy their products.  So no newspaper wants to tell you that their concentrated fertilizer wipes out MOST of the microscopic life in your soil, and that microscopie life is what makes your soil GOOD.  So once the life is gone, before it can regenerate, you're putting MORE concentrated fertilizer down.

Now the Grass is screwed.

It can't find anything to eat, because the soil is no longer being built up by the microbes; it's now up to you to keep fertilizing it.

But the stuff is so concentrated, and you're not going to stand there 24 hours a day like a microbe watering your Grass with fertilizer, so you have to starve it and every few weeks you over-feed it with more concentrated fertilizer and because it gets very green for 15 or 20 hours as a result, you think, Wow, this is good for my Grass!  And Scotts has the photos and pictures to reinforce that pipedream.

Now your Grass is growing in empty soil and along come about 10 different Fungi and one of them attacks the Grass.

Before, there was microscopic life in the soil whose OTHER job (when it wasn't feeding your Grass) was to compete and control Disease-causing Bacteria and Fungi.  But the microscopic life is gone (you killed it).

So you go outside one morning and you see brown circles on the Grass, or yellow stripes, or red speckles, and the local Lawn Doctor tells you it's a Fungus, so you now have to buy a Scotts Fungicide.  Great for Scotts, bad for you.

SOMETIMES the Fungicide will stop the Fungus.  But it can NEVER kill it.  And once it's gone, there's another one waiting to take its place.

Your Birds are miserable because their breakfast Grubs and Worms have disappeared (they dined on the microscopic life), your Grass is stressed because it can't eat like a normal Lawn (it has to be fed), and you're out there mowing and fertilzing and fungiciding and weedkilling.

It gets expensive, it's a lot of work, and it's a waste of time.

Building up your soil is the secret to growing Grass.

Instead, you're working to make Scotts stockholders rich.

Responsible adults gave them BILLIONS worldwide last year.  Scotts holds 58 percent of the 'lawn chemicals' business (pesticides), sell 52 percent of its fertilizer, and reap huge chunks of houseplants fertilizer, potting soil and Grass seed sales.

It's not that their Fertilizer is better than other fertilizer.  They just charge more and put it in nicer bags.  Scotts knows how to get you to buy Scotts.  They advertise with amazing grace (the ad budget increased 15 percent last year to brainwash fertilizer customers even better).

By the time they're done pitching their very ordinary, very useless powders, you're ready to pay through the nose for it.

If you damage or kill your Lawn with it, Scotts will give you a refund.  It's up to you to get your Lawn back.

As a concept, concentrated fertilizer is bad for Grass.
Common sense dicates that if a Tomato has genes that say, Get THIS big, the Tomato will get THIS big, and no bigger than that -- IF the soil it's in is good.  If the soil is poor, this Tomato will NOT get THIS big.  Soil is almost always good until we start messing around with it.  American Settlers LOVED the soil they discovered in the 1920s.  Then they grew the life out of it; when they realized the soil was no longer good, they moved and started over.  The Depression Dust Bowl was born.

Meantime, Scotts was learning how to market fertilizer and weedkiller.  Ordinary people moving into their dream houses in the suburbs were perfect targets.  They knew nothing about Grass or Gardening.  So Scotts set out to educate them.  And now we have a whole generation that only knows what they've learned from Scotts.  That's like getting Coke and Pepsi to teach you about nutrition.

So when you say 'no fertilizer', since most stuff labelled 'fertilizer' is going to be Scotts, the answer is almost Yes.  But any fertilizer is going to be bad for your Grass if it's concentrated -- a double-digit N-P-K analysis.

It's like this, Jack:  Would you rather sit down to breakfast, lunch and dinner, with a snack in between, and a midnight snack before you turn in?

Or would you like to inject yourself with an IV once every 3 or 4 days?

When people brag that their high-Nitrogen fertilizer is in perfect form for the Grass to utilize immediately, they're bragging that they're going to shoot up their Grass.  A little more investigation will tell you that MOST of the stuff in the hypodermic needle is going to be washed away instantly.  It gets into the roots, or it doesn't.  There's no waiting around.  It washes away and it's gone.  Table's cleared.  Sorry, we're closed, come back next week.

Building up your soil will feed your Grass a good, healthy breakfast -- the kind you probably don't bother with (neither do I) but that we WISH we did and KNOW we should!

Building up your soil will have lunch on the table EVERY DAY.  Not because you are out there with a spoon.  But because you have microscopic life in your soil MAKING IT!  Llike little cooks down there, cooking all the time (except in winter).

And dinner is a 3-course 5-star meal EVERY DAY.  It's a good life for lucky Lawns.

That's how far Science has come.

Researchers all over the U.S.A. study ways to make Lawns weed free and healthy.  Other researchers breed Grass varieties.

And in regard to your question about Warm Season Grass, you should get to know the National Turfgrass Evaluation Program.  This is a highly respected powerhouse of Lawn information all taken from their annual studies of hundreds of Grass seeds all over the country.  They test warm- and cool-season Grass in College Park, MD:

http://www.ntep.org/states/md1/md1_bg.htm

Top Rated Bermudagrass in the last study was 'Riviera', with a 6.3 Spring Greenup score and 99 percent Summer Cover achievement.  Winning Zoysia was Emerald, with a 7.0 for Spring Greenup, peaking in August and September.  You can read all the details online.

About White Clover, in the 1950s, before people were used to Weedkillers, they used to buy White Clover seeds and mix them with Grass seed, then sow it in the Lawn.

White Clover is those clover-leaved, little white-pompom flowered 'Weeds' that Scotts Weedkillers wipe out when you put them down.  They are Legumes and 'fix' Nitrogen into the soil.   They are amazing.

If you have White Clover in your soil, it's like having your own little sous-chef down there helping the microscopic organisms make dinner for your Grass all Spring/Summer/Fall.  Funny how you never hear people complain that the Clover in their Lawn burned their Kentucky Bluegrass and now it's all brown.

I hope this answer gets to you.  AllExperts hates it when I write too much.

Lots to digest here, my friend.  We are all on the same side here.  I want your Grass to look thick and beautiful.  I want you to have the BEST Lawn up and down the street, the one that people stare at when they're walking their dogs, the one that gets second looks.

Any more q's I have a lot more a's ready.  This is my favorite subject.