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Need help improving lawn in Montreal

7 years ago

Hello, I need help to make my lawn look better, and I'm not sure what the best next step is, or if I should just give up and hire a lawn care company. I know very, very little about lawn care. I fertilize right before it rains in the spring and fall. I don't mow too short. I pull weeds. And that's about it.

The lawn itself is just really patchy. I've tried spreading grass seed, and it grew in certain areas but not in others. The sun comes mostly from behind the house, so it only really gets direct sunlight in the afternoon. How can I make sure it'll be fully green by the end of this summer?

These first two pictures are from last September, right after a massive weed pulling effort.

Here it is recently, right after the snow finished melting.

And here it is a week ago.

Thank you very much!

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Comments (2)

dchall_san_antonio
7 years ago
Do you know if anyone nearby ever gets crabgrass? If crabgrass is not an issue in your area then you might be able to seed now. Otherwise it is best to wait until August to seed.

When you seeded did you water it lightly (5 minutes) 3x per day? Seed needs continual moisture to germinate. Once the seed comes up you can start to back off on the frequency and increase the duration. For your lawn I would use a turbo type of oscillator type sprinkler on a hose. The turbo oscillators are much more reliable than the old mechanical oscillators.

To get full grass coverage most all of the time you should put some Kentucky bluegrass in your mix. It is a full sun type of grass, so it should work for you. Once it becomes established KBG will spread to fill in thin spots and help keep weeds out.

Watering: Deep and infrequent is the mantra for watering. This is for all turf grass all over the place. Deep means 1 inch all at one time. Put some cat food or tuna cans around the yard, and time how long it takes your sprinkler(s) to fill all the cans. Memorize that time. That will be the time you water from now on. My hose, sprinkler and water pressure takes 8 full hours to fill the cans. Your time will likely be less. I like gentle watering. As for watering frequency, that depends on the daytime air temperature. With temps in the 90s, deep water once per week. With temps in the 80s, deep water once every 2 weeks. With temps in the 70s, deep water once every 3 weeks. With temps below 70, deep water once a month. Note that you have to keep up with quickly changing temps in the spring and fall. This deep and infrequent schedule works in Phoenix and in Vermont, so it should work for you. The reason for deep and infrequent is to grow deeper, more drought resistant roots and to allow the soil to dry completely at the surface for several days before watering again. If it rains, reset your calendar to account for the rainfall.

Fertilize the lawn on Victoria Day and again on Labour Day. Fertilize again sometime between Halloween and Remembrance Day. The specific timing is after the grass has completely stopped growing but before total dormancy sets in.

Are you interested in using organic fertilizers?
Jonathan thanked dchall_san_antonio
Jonathan
Original Author
6 years ago
Hello and thank you very much for the advice! I have a few additional questions and comments, if you can spare a bit more time.

For one, I forgot to mention that I was told my soil was very compact, making it harder for grass to grow and easier for dandelions and some other weeds to grow. How would you recommend fixing that? The same person recommended just getting a bunch of earthworms and spreading them all over the lawn, to aerate the soil as they dig down.

I get some crabgrass myself. Out of curiosity, why would this effect when I should seed? Also worth noting is that it's still sometimes close to freezing here overnight. Should I wait for a minimum nightly temperature before seeding?

And should I put down some new soil where I'll be seeding? And would you recommend any particular brand of seeds?

As for fertilizer, I hadn't thought about organic. What would you suggest?

Thanks!
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There are two different products made from corn. 1. Corn GLUTEN meal is the one that stops seeds from growing into plants. 2. ORDINARY corn meal is the one that stops fungal disease. Both materials are an organic fertilizer, but corn GLUTEN meal is much more powerful fertilizer than ORDINARY corn meal. You want ORDINARY corn meal, not corn GLUTEN meal for your fungus problem. Your biggest problem might be that you didn't tackle this issue last September. Seeding, reseeding, or overseeding, whatever you want to call it, should be done in the fall after the summer heat goes away. If you seed now you might expect up to 70% of it to die out from the summer heat before next fall. Still, you need to do something, so bite the bullet and seed now - and do it all over again in September. Back to using corn meal at seeding time: I would not use any corn product when seeding. Nandina, one of Gardenweb's best experimenters, was testing corn meal against fungal diseases and observed that the germination rate for new seed in the corn meal plots was not as good as in the control plots. You can seed without any fertilizer and apply the corn meal after you are certain no more grass seed is going to sprout. That should be about 2-3 weeks.
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Very nice to see you're doing some homework. Can't tell you how many times someone writes in with a question that's identical to one posted a day earlier. In your picture #1 what's going on with the brown in the lower left corner? Is that an optical illusion or is the soil heaped up 10 inches higher than the concrete? If it's not an illusion, do you have any issues with water backing up toward the house? And if not, then it would look better with a little retaining wall down there. Also in the first picture, what do you think is going on along the driveway with the tan area? My first thought was chinch bugs but then I thought it might be car exhaust cooking the grass. It only takes a minute or two of hot exhaust to cook grass. If nobody parks a car right there with the exhaust pointed at that spot, then go to YouTube and search for chinch bugs. Mute the sound so you don't have to listen to the ignorant comments made by the people shooting the videos. Those videos are good to learn how to find and recognize chinch bugs. They're not helpful when it comes to getting rid of the pests. You have what will be a very nice lawn once you get the moisture and fertilizer under control. If you want it still nicer, then you'll have to get a soil test.
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