My Lawn..What Am I Doing Wrong?

Hi everyone,

I’m new to the forums so please be gentle.

A little background - our lawn was returfed by our home builders last year and it looked smashing, but thanks to lazy mowing, poor watering and very little care on my behalf, it over grow and I pretty much ruined our lush green lawn. Unfortunately, i now have a patchy lawn that’s very thin and brown in parts. See images attached.



Thanks to lock down, I decided to give resurrecting my lawn a go.

I’m new to all this and have, to date, taken all of my advice from youtube, which seems to say rake out the dead grass, aerate, topsoil and over seed, then water and fertilise and you should start to see some fantastic results in around a 1 to 2 weeks.

So... I’ve raked out the dead grass, added 4 25kg bags of topsoil and I’ve added 2.5kg of grass seed to the lawn.

I did all this around 3 weeks ago and I am yet to see any new growth or the lush green grass I thought I would be seeing by now.

I’ve watered every night, except when it rains, I’ve added fertilisers to my lawn and even started using a new push mower to help get a better cut and yet my lawn still looks tired and brown and I’m not seeing any new growth from the new seed.

Whilst we have a south facing garden it’s not very big and it gets shaded through parts of the day from the buildings around it. Because of this I decided to use the b&q shady seed, assuming this would work and yet nothing happened in 3 weeks! In the end I bought some standard seed from a local garden centre and 1 week on still nothing.

We live in an area in the West Midlands with clay soil so the garden can be boggy in the parts that revive little sun and dry in the parts that gets most sun. Since our lawn was already patchy I didn’t bother with the aerate part of the YouTube advice, could this be my problem ?

What am I missing?

Any help would be amazing as this is driving me crazy ha ha

Photos attached.

 

Well. I'm not into lawns, but I think you need patience, things dont happen overnight

Hopefully someone will come along at some point and explain what you need to do.

 

What fertilisers did you add and was this applied after you seeded?

 

Thanks Pete, i think with the current lock down, patience is something i'm sorry lacking ha ha. it feels like I'm checking the lawn at least 2 if not 3 times a day just to see if there's any change. come to think about it the more you obsess over it the more crazy you go ha ha

 

so i used my cheap supermarket lawn feed around a 2/3 weeks before. I used a watering can to apply this one.

I then did all my work on the lawn and left if around 2 weeks before i then applied one of the miracle grow fertilisers, i forget which one as the box broke and i had to decant this into a tub. i dint have very much of this but i did use a spreader to distribute this right before it rain for a couple of days.

i've then used Neudorff CleanLawn Organic Lawn Feed and Improver today.

 

Dont you think you might just be overdoing it a bit?
I think one spring aplication of lawn weed and feed is about all you need. sit back grab a beer and W A I T .

 

I figured that a brown lawn is starved of either sun light, water or nutrients.

I've tried to fix the nutrients part and i've watered loads plus we have had some good rain recently. Sun light is something i cant control, but next week looks good.

Yes, i've probs over done this a bit, but, i didn't have very much of the supermarket own brand so was probably using 2 caps per watering can rather than the recommended 4, plus this was some 3 weeks ago and we've had quite a bit of rain since, so i guess maybe it washed away ?

With the miracle grow, i managed around 1 and half hand spreaders before i ran out of that. Having said that, the spreader does what it says on the tin and i reckon i covered most of the lawn with a fine sprinkle before it ran out.

I assumed the Neudorff CleanLawn Organic Lawn Feed would be ok as its organic and must be good for the soil.

 

Hi @Blondboy13

 

Hello, if you check my thread a bit lower you'll find I had pretty much the same problem, patchy, thatchy, dry dead grass with boggy clay soil. It's been a few weeks now and it looks miles better. So I'll explain what I did.
Rake rake rake, get all that dead grass off, like I was very vigorous and probably damaged some grass but it was necessary.
Get a large watering can and liquid feed and use the correct dosage
Stop cutting so low, let your grass grow a bit and put your mower on a medium/high setting. I made the mistake of cutting on lowest setting and it looked so bare. Then regularly mow at this setting till it starts looking thicker. (I was doing 4 days or so)
Once it started looking thicker and I was regularly mowing I then took off the grass bin on the mower and leave the small clippings on the grass.
I did try seeding but it didn't end up taking but this was during our first dry spell in April and I don't think I watered enough so I'm gonna leave seeding till autumn where it will rain often.
I'm no expert at all but your lawn looks exactly like mine did so hopefully it can help

 

Here's the link.Help with lawn, advice needed.

 

I've attached before and after pics..about 4 weeks progress.
Its still nowhere near perfect, needs a cut desperately (been raining past 4 days)..it probably needs another weed and feed and it will need seeding in autumn all the bare patches

 

Looking good @Liam G

 

Seed\young fresh grass does not do well with most types of fertilisers if applied too early. The soil you spread will have had enough to get the seeds growing. Every time you apply fertiliser it alters the soil Ph levels as all do and if you over apply it can have the opposite to what you want.

at this point don’t apply any other feeds, raise the cut height and allow the grass to grow a bit. Keep watering in dry spells.