Yard help, growing grass

[Lumber_Jack]

So we moved into a new house last year on June. It's a shotgun style, long and skinny. The back yard is small 30x30. There are also small grass patches between us and the neighbor. The issue is its all extremely shaded. Very little sun gets to the side yards or back yard. The back has lots of weeds and bares spots.

What do y'all recommend as a method to get more grass. I know they make shade tolerant seed, but do I need to prep the ground? fertilize? just throw the seed out?

[felinesNfreedom]

Kill everything! Aerate, and Put down a grass that grows well in the shade. Rye, Fescue, Bluegrass. Make sure you use a starter fertilizer and do you best to keep the weeds down. I started my yard when we moved it 3 years ago with Bermuda. It looked great until due to work I could not keep up with it. I have almost an acre and none of my neighbors take care of their yards so it's hard to keep up with that much yard. I am going to try again this year to get it back into shape. Good luck with yours, they can consume time and money pretty quickly.

[Omega]

Seed choice is key, I've tried many different types and while they do work, the cheap Rural King seed (bagged not loose) worked pretty good, I used it in a food plot for soil erosion prevention and it came up better than the expensive stuff at the house.  Here are some seed choices:

 

Bermuda grass: full sunshine
Centipede grass: partial shade
‘Meyer’ zoysia grass: partial shade
‘Emerald’ zoysia grass: shade
St. Augustine grass: shade
Tall fescue: shade

 

Get a soil test, put down either fertilizer or get seed with it already on it.  Depending on what the current grass looks like you can either kill it then till it up and start over, or just dethatch and run a aerator through it.  After spreading the seed rake it in (needs good soil contact) and or cover it with straw to keep the birds off it.  Another way is to get grass plugs such as zoysia grass or sod, I am going to try this method (plugs) as mine is a mix of different varieties ATM.  This grass take over the lawn so hope to get it to take hold out front, the back is fine.  While I was stationed in Japan, I noticed that the Japanese would lay sod out like a checker board and in no time the entire lawn would be covered,  I am hoping the plugs work just as well.

[Mark A]

What do y'all recommend as a method to get more grass.

 

Move to Denver?

[peejman]

30x30?  No grass.  Make a flowerbed.  Plant low maintenance, shade tolerant perennials such as hosta, ferns, bleeding heart, coleus, spirea, astilbe,  etc.  They'll fill in and choke out the weeds in a few years.  Mulch it in the spring before everything comes out and it's pretty with essentially zero maintenance all summer. 

[chances R]

SHADE + TREES = no grass. Will be frustrating and waste of money. do what peejman said.

[Randall53]

I'm not much of an authority on this, but I have a friend that is, well he says so anyway. He always said the best thing is to do a control burn of your yard to get rid of everything, then to have the ph checked and corrected if necessary, then to reseed. He lost my interest at the "do a control burn" part. I just over seeded heavily and now have a heinz 57 yard. It is green however and I have to mow every 4 days. Unless I want to PO the neighbors. Then I let it go 10 days. LOL. You'd have to understand my neighbors to understand the 10 days.  :biglol:

[2.ooohhh]

So we moved into a new house last year on June. It's a shotgun style, long and skinny. The back yard is small 30x30. There are also small grass patches between us and the neighbor. The issue is its all extremely shaded. Very little sun gets to the side yards or back yard. The back has lots of weeds and bares spots.

What do y'all recommend as a method to get more grass. I know they make shade tolerant seed, but do I need to prep the ground? fertilize? just throw the seed out?

 

 I like to aerate, spread some damp sand and starter fertilizer, then a shade tolerant seed. I'd have to ask our agronomist at lunch to confirm but IIRC our shady spots here on the course  are currently a particular rye. 

[MacGyver]

Grass is something I always want to develop some expertise in, but never quite get around to getting up to par.

 

Couple that with my general laissez faire attitude towards yard maintenance, and you can imagine the state my lawn is in at any given time.

[Lumber_Jack]

Grass is something I always want to develop some expertise in, but never quite get around to getting up to par.

 

Couple that with my general laissez faire attitude towards yard maintenance, and you can imagine the state my lawn is in at any given time.

 

honestly I'm the same way, and really don't care a whole lot about how it looks.  If I can walk out there and not track mud back in the house, I'd probably be satisfied.  

[Hozzie]

Bad time of year to have to redo it, but since it is so small and shaded, it should be fairly easy to redo it.    What I would do:

 

1: Once it starts growing, spray it with roundup.   Wait two weeks, spray it again.

2: After 2 more weeks, till it thoroughly about 2"-3" deep.  You don't need to till it 8" deep.

3: Have soil checked.  Adjust as necessary.

4: Rake it and break up any clots.

5: Seed

6: Fertilize with starter

7: Water

 

John Deere Landscapes off of Thompson Lane is a good place to get advice about what seed to use. If I could find a Zoysia that would work, that is the way I would go.  Very low maintenance.  They should be able to test your soil as well.

Edited March 3, 2016 by Hozzie

[peejman]

I don't mind mowing and like my yard to look nice.  But, I've learned over the years that if your neighbor's yard has weeds, yours will too.  There's simply no way around that, other than paying the chemical people to come spray it regularly.  I've also learned that the weed/feed fertilizer just makes the weeds grow faster.  Mine is green and it grows and that's all I really care about.

[SupaRice]

I've got a half acre in town with some shady spots... I've not really done anything but cut it, haven't kept up much.... kids

I was also thinking about doing the zoysia plugs since the kids kill everything running around.

Anyone have experience with it? They say it's drought resistant and holds up well to traffic. How fast does it take over, in a single glee season?

[KaNaPaPi]

Try "Mid America" grass seed.  It is a mix of Fescue and Bluegrass.  It is both shade and sun tolerant.

[tacops]

Or you can skip the grass seed and just spread straw and tell everybody "it's growing".  No mowing.  :D

[Dirtshooter]

Put in some raised beds and plant some veggies, solves 2 problems. Fresh produce and no mower needed!!!

[dawgdoc]

When I moved into my new house with a neglected yard, it took me three tries to get grass to grow well.  I was overseeding fescue over a previously-sodded, patchy fescue lawn in the front and chert in the back.  The back was so barren that one of the greatest improvements came from making large mulch beds.  People in the rest of Georgia complain about Georgia clay; I wish I had soil that nice.  I estimate that I converted half of the pathetically-seeded back yard to non-lawn in the form of mulch beds around tries, planting bed terraces, and play areas.  Not having to mow or deal with the frustration of trying to get grass to grow in those areas has been nice.

 

I did not have much success until I seeded in fall rather than spring.  I also rented an aerator and did the whole yard before the seeding.  The other thing that helped with the success was light watering three times a day for 2-3 weeks.  I manually watered using a hose-end sprayer.  My understanding is that the seeds germinate after they absorb a certain amount of water, hence the reason you have to keep them moist, but not necessarily watering in the amounts needed for a mature lawn.

 

Every time that I have planted fescue in the spring, it germinates, starts to look good, and then dies once it gets hot.  My front yard gets full, blistering sun in the summer, and some of the fescue dies each year.  Also, I have some type of wild Bermuda grass that is progressively spreading across the fescue and taking over.  I tried a different approach last year and put out Zoysia seed in the thin areas.   We will see how it turns out.  I predict that within 5 years, my entire front lawn will be a mixture of warm-season grasses even though it was completely sodded with fescue 10 years ago.

[Ski]

I did not have much success until I seeded in fall rather than spring.  I also rented an aerator and did the whole yard before the seeding.  The other thing that helped with the success was light watering three times a day for 2-3 weeks.  I manually watered using a hose-end sprayer.  My understanding is that the seeds germinate after they absorb a certain amount of water, hence the reason you have to keep them moist, but not necessarily watering in the amounts needed for a mature lawn.

Every time that I have planted fescue in the spring, it germinates, starts to look good, and then dies once it gets hot.  My front yard gets full, blistering sun in the summer, and some of the fescue dies each year.  Also, I have some type of wild Bermuda grass that is progressively spreading across the fescue and taking over.  I tried a different approach last year and put out Zoysia seed in the thin areas.   We will see how it turns out.  I predict that within 5 years, my entire front lawn will be a mixture of warm-season grasses even though it was completely sodded with fescue 10 years ago.

If you want to plant a cool season grass like fescue, then planting in the later summer or early fall is the way to go (along with frequent watering until shortly after germination).

Another thing to think about is moss. It is an alternative to grass if you're just worried about erosion and muddy shoes/boots/feet.

http://www.gardensalive.com/product/should-your-lawn-be-made-of-moss

[RED333]

Cement the thing, 30 x 30 pad, no grass cutting, no mud, roller skate year round!!!

[ReeferMac]

I did not have much success until I seeded in fall rather than spring.  I also rented an aerator and did the whole yard before the seeding.  The other thing that helped with the success was light watering three times a day for 2-3 weeks.  I manually watered using a hose-end sprayer.  My understanding is that the seeds germinate after they absorb a certain amount of water, hence the reason you have to keep them moist, but not necessarily watering in the amounts needed for a mature lawn.

 

It's a combination of moisture and temp. Need warm days (about 2-weeks worth where daytime temps <=60), avoid cold nights (no frost/freezing). Water in the morning, again in afternoon/evening if it dries out.

[Patton]

There really isn't a great turf grass for shade, but some will do better than others. You can almost rule out Bermuda, but Zoysia can sometimes tolerate a little bit of shade. The issue with both of these and other warm season turf grass varieties is the cooler winters in north Tennessee. While some of the most beautiful lawns in Chattanooga are warm season they receive winter damage every so often. Tennessee is actually an area where warm season lawns suffer winter damage and cool season lawns suffer from disease and drought in the summer time especially in south Tennessee. If it were me I would sow a turf-type tall fescue blend of named varieties like Millinium and Bonsai along with no more than 10% Blue Grass. Stay away from Kentucky 31 unless you are sowing a pasture. The reason to do a blend is so you do not lose all of your lawn during drought or disease. Regardless, with a cool season lawn you must do two very important things correctly. They are sow seed in the fall and apply pre-emergent in the early spring; everything else is not too important or time restrictive. Sowing a lawn is like painting a car; it is all in the prep work. If you want to spray a non-selective herbicide twice, two weeks apart before seed and aeration it will look much better. If you do not water everyday for 22 days straight it will not look as good otherwise.

[No_0ne]

Want to grow lush green grass?  Easy.  Hire a gravel hauler to bring in enough loads to turn it into a gravel parking lot, in a month or so you will have the nicest lawn around ...

[Sam1]

So we moved into a new house last year on June. It's a shotgun style, long and skinny. The back yard is small 30x30. There are also small grass patches between us and the neighbor. The issue is its all extremely shaded. Very little sun gets to the side yards or back yard. The back has lots of weeds and bares spots.

What do y'all recommend as a method to get more grass. I know they make shade tolerant seed, but do I need to prep the ground? fertilize? just throw the seed out?

 

Sod.  Forget growing from scratch.  After last year when I bought sod and laid that down (think it ended up roughly 600+/- sq/ft), I would not plant grass again unless it's a massive amount of ground.  It cost about as much as it would to grow good grass, it's not going to have any dead spots and you don't have to waste 6 weeks waiting to see if it even grows.

 

It was also a fescue mix, so it grows good and stays green all year.

Edited March 4, 2016 by Sam1

[Patton]

Sod would be a viable option being he described his lawn as 900 sqft which is just a little more than two pallets. Doing it yourself would cost about $330 if you pick it up yourself and instal it yourself. If you do a cool season sod in the spring it will require lots of water and several applications of disease preventative throughout the summer. Make sure you get it down before April.

[Lumber_Jack]

Sod would be a viable option being he described his lawn as 900 sqft which is just a little more than two pallets. Doing it yourself would cost about $330 if you pick it up yourself and instal it yourself. If you do a cool season sod in the spring it will require lots of water and several applications of disease preventative throughout the summer. Make sure you get it down before April.

I can wait. What time of year is best to lay sod?