How to Spray Grass Seeding

There is very little more discouraging to a home owner than spots in his yard that either have thin or no grass. When faced with bare batches of lawn you have two options. You can hope that your grass reseeds itself and nature will take care of the brown spot, which can take months or even years. Or you can reseed your yard. The following steps will help you to achieve the lawn of your dreams.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Rake
• Lawn fertilizer
• Grass seeds
• Seeder
• Polyethylene plastic

1. Choose a date to reseed your lawn. Most lawn care experts recommend spraying your grass seeds in late August or early September. The reason that this is the best time to seed your lawn is because it gives the seed a chance to start growing and to develop a solid root system, but won't leave the young blades subjected to drought and intense summer heat.

2. Rake your entire lawn. You want to make sure that the rake is a heavy duty metal or plastic rake that won't break when it becomes entangled with hidden branches or layers of dead grass. Once you have raked all the debris and excessive vegetation from your yard you will want to return to the bare patches that you want to seed. Use your rake to pulverize the soil, because the ground needs to be loose so that the seeds can push their roots beneath the surface of the ground. It isn't enough to simply scrape the rake across the surface of the bare patch, the soil needs to be loosened to a depth of 6 inches.

3. When the soil is sufficiently loose, add some peat to keep it loose and lawn fertilizer. Use your rake to level the bare patch.

4. Load your grass seed into your seed sprayer. If the section of your lawn that you are reseeding is small, it might be easier to simply spread the grass seeds.

5. Slowly push your grass seed sprayer across the bare patch. Keep an eye on how much seed is going onto the grown. There should only be six seeds per square inch of bare ground.

6. Spray the fresh grass seeds with a gentle mist of water. Do not over water the area, as this will either wash the seeds away, or cause the seeds to rot instead of sprout.

7. Cover the freshly seeded area with polyethylene plastic. In addition to holding the moisture into the ground and creating an ideal growing situation for your seeds, the plastic will also prevent the birds from eating the seeds. Use rocks, bricks or garden stakes to secure the plastic.

8. After one or two days remove the plastic, there should be tiny sprouts where the seeds once were.

9. Lightly water you new grass two to three times daily until the new grass is at least an inch tall. At this point, you can decrease the number of times you water your grass to once a week. After the grass is 3 inches tall you can stop watering the grass and let nature take over.

Tips & Warnings

• Some blends of grass seed is better suited to areas of your lawn that gets a lot of direct sunlight and other blends are better in shady areas. Consult with the lawn care expert at your local gardening center to determine what kind of grass seed will be best for your lawn.