Repairing lawn after female dogs

We've just bought a new house and previous owners had dogs. The lawn has suffered a little and there are a number of dead patches. The drainage needs looking at as well. I guess on balance about 1/4 of the total area is either dead or bare. On the plus side there doesn't seem to be much moss.

Is there anything we can do to revitalise it? Or is a dig it up and re-lay/seed job?

 

diggin ur lawn up is a last resort if it is otherwise ok ... how big is it btw,
if you decide to dig it, remove turf and stack to use as compost [see other posts]then rotavate, level off, incorporate sharp sand and some bonemeal , level off ..... this is the preparation!
see other posts / read up be4 yo start!
drainage is worrying ....
one approach is to hire an aerator, and top dress with a sandy loam plus grass seed .....

 

Thanks for the reply

It's not that big (meant to put a guestimate on...) only about 10 * 4m. I'll try and get a picture from an upstairs window so you can see the state of it.

I agree - if we've got an alternative to restarting it would be good to take it. If we were to aerate manually, how frequent to the holes need to be? I've just never had to deal with dog damage before: if it's overseeded, will the grass grow or is the soil tainted?

 

first of all get an ordinary fork and dig in to the lawn in various places, this is to test for compaction and underlying probs eg has it been laid on top of a concrete path for example,
you should be able to sink tines to 7" fairly easily if soil is deep enuff ....
to aerate the soil manually use a hollow tine fork and a big strong man, the lawn should be well peppered every 4" ideally and then you sprinkle sharp course grit/sand and sweep into holes, use a spring tine rake to scarify the lawn esp bare patches,, then re seed, sprinkle on sieved topsoil if possible.
Birds will swoop on to this free seed, so use all means poss to scare them off,,,,,,,
dog pee will have long gone, but you could wash with weak armillatox solution if you want

[ 29. March 2006, 10:29 PM: Message edited by: Lady Gardener ]

 

I have two cocker bitches and they can make quite a mess of the lawn. funny thing is, if you leave the brown patches, they sometimes grow back very long and tufty grasses.

Sometimes patches are so bad that we dig them up and re plant with turf from another part of the lawn or let the narutal grasses of the lawn grow back into prepared patches so you don't get a difference in texture/type.

Its a timely remindeer to me that if they get longer walks they do not pee so much on the grass anyway - so off I go walkies!

 

I'm not used to being allowed to type bitch without getting ***** back!

Turns out I had slightly rosy glasses wrt the moss :( . Took a couple of photos so you can have a looksee. The first is the whole thing (about 10m from fence in the foreground to fence in the background):


And this is a bit of a closeup on part of it:
.

It gets a fair amount of shade - there are some VERY large trees to the south that I can't do much about. This shot taken from roughly N just after 10am yesterday.

Just gone round with a fork and it seems to be generally OK - there are odd places with something hard, but move a couple of inches and they go away, so probably stones rather than anything major.

So, we have moss, bare bits, dead bits and weeds (assorted things in the grass and odd docks and nettles round the edges). What do you recommend? Give it a year with a bit of TLC and see how it comes on?

 

the grasses that have survived are very course looking, this would be ok if you were going to sow some rygrass mixture suitable for a kids play area , if you want it to look really decent, you mite want to start again

 

you really need to sort out the drainage - that soils is seriously compacted. Get a basic border fork, and prong holes in it - then, ideally, brush a mixture of peat and sand over it, and that'll help the drainage.
If you mix up grass seed with grass clippings put it in the area wheryou ahve probs, water in well, and fence off somehow, it'll re-establish fairly quickly. I've had similar probs, with 2 female dogs!

 

slice off top inch of turf [compost], then fork lightly over , and re seed would be best i think, watch out for birds when you re seed

 

Do yo really wan't grass?

It does seem a small and awkward patch to get your lawn mower into and if it is so shady then you are always going to do battle with moss.

Are the round bits stepping stones? or is that just very compacted area, if so is it because it is a heavily used path, if it is then perhaps a different material other than lawn should be used.

How are you going to use it? Should you be re thinking in a different direction other than lawn improvement?

I got some *** for using something, but noe female dog.

 

i agree with that, it might look quite good with gravel and make the birdbath a feature, maybe puting it on a circle of paving slabs, difficult to make suggestions without seeing whole garden scheme but seem to me birdbath should be in the larger area not at narrowest part, also have you thought about a nice arch leading in to next part of garden?

[ 03. April 2006, 05:45 PM: Message edited by: Lady Gardener ]

 

just trying my new image really, BUT

and I can't spell this have you thought about pachysandra (its a dense mat forming evergreen, I once saw it years ago in a John Brooks garden, looked stunning, much better than camomile.

 

Sorry I've left this so long - got busy prunning (figuring we'd better do all the stuff we're going to have to stand on the lawn to do first.....).

The good news is that now it's really started growing the bare bits aren't looking quite so bad.

To answer a few questions - it is quite a small area, but I think we do want to keep the lawn. It's probably about 2/5ths of the garden - there's a reasonable area of patio between it and the house and the pond at the far end. To the right there's a pergoa covered wide (c. 1m) path that runs up to the area around the pond. With so much hard landscaping already we're concerned that more would be just too much. Plus it would be good to have somewhere moderately child friendly (either for friends or if we ever have any). I've got some more "overall" pics, but they're not on this computer at the moment.

There are 4 round paving stones on the lower picture, from bottom right diagonaly up. Agree about the birdbath - I think it'll wind up at the other end of the lawn

OH is still leaning towards digging it all up and starting again, but I think I've persuaded him that trying to lay a new lawn while we've a hosepipe ban and we're heading into summer may not be such a good idea.

I think we may have got help though The out-laws have a mantis and have offered to come down in a couple of weeks and a) revise the pergola (it's currently only 6ft and rotting!) and b) attack the lawn.

So.... now I need an action plan.

I was leaning towards chucking some weed/feed/mosskiller over it before they come so that (hopefully) we can then attack it with the mantis and get the moss out. Then I guess aerate, and topdress with sand before overseeding, adding bird scarers and keeping off!

Have I missed something critical or does that sound reasonable? (and I'll try and get the more general pics up so you can have a look).