DiY FANTASTIC LAWN
HOW TO HAVE A GREEN HEALTHY LAWN

For what it is worth let me start off by saying I was a gardener for 7 years. With that said, I am going to share share simple DiY techniques to a green lawn.

Remember when you were a kid and people would shout "STAY OFF THE GRASS!". Perhaps they thought they already had a well established lawn. Fair enough. If you are just starting fron scratch every year trying to improve it, spending loads of money on fertalizers and chemicals, you are pretty much wasting your time. You can have a plush nice lawn every year by following a couple simple practices.

First, tear your yard up! Leave a small percentage of your leaves down in the fall over the winter. These few leaves will be in good use come spring. When spring comes lightly till these leaves into the soil. Don't worry about tearing up your yard or uprooting exsisting grass. Don't till it like you would a garden but get down an inch into the soil. If your neighbors are looking at you like you are crazy, let em. Lightly till the hole yard. Don't cry when you see %50 percent of your grass uprooting in this light tilling. That grass will serve as a bit of yard fuel along with the amount of leaves you left on the yard. Remember, we are not tilling in the garden sense. But we are tearing up the yard pretty good. If you have ever seen how bad a power rake machine tears up a yard on a low setting, we are doubling that. Thrash it all up pretty good even if you already have some plush grass you think might not be in need of this. Do it all. The power rake on the left side of this page would be nice. Your situation is mainly up to the amount of physical health and energy you have to do this. If you are low on energy I might suggest one of the brilliant power machines on the left of this page.

Ok. You have torn up your yard and your whole family and neighbors think you are nuts. This is good. Now pull the old lawn mower out of the garage. Put the blade of your mower on the lowest setting. The mulching blades with the attachments on the left of this page would be even better. The lower the better so don't skimp. We have more abuse to dish out on this yard. Don't be afraid. You have already "destroyed" your yard. Some might think anyway. You will find this is a very good thing in the future trust me. Put your safetly googles on and go mow the whole property. That lowest setting mower blade should be grinding up your yard even further. Go for broke, people already think you are nuts. And remember you are not using the bagger. We are doing a super mulch on all the clumps of soil, grass and leaves we severely kicked up. This is good. By this time onlookers are saying "this guy (or gal) is insane, They destroyed the whole yard. They will think twice in a couple weeks when your yard is better homes and garden worthy.

Moving on. You should now be looking at a yard that looks like a tornado hit it. This is good good good! Now, go to your garden supply house and get a huge bag of weed and feed and a small bag of manure. That's right I said manure. You want a lot of weed and feed. We are going to overdose your lawn on weed and feed to the degree it would burn and destroy other lawns. At least get a good 20 dollars worth a weed and feed and a 7 dollar bag of manure. At Menards I picked up a 35 pound bag of weed and feed for $15.

You made it home from the garden supply. Take the garden hose and lightly mist the whole yard. If you can time this before a light rain even better. While the yard has been wet and we wait for it to settle a bit we mix up the manure and the weed and feed. By the way. Weed and feed is also mainly called Crabgrass Preventer. Mix it up with the dung. Now cover your whole yard with this mixture. Those people that put these things on light should not even bother. We are not worried about burning a yard. We would not be putting it on this thick on an established yard later in the year unless it was a attempted jump start later in the season. Spread that mixture all over the yard strong. The fertilizer coming out of your spreader should be coming out of the bottom like a water fountain. Your only worry is getting it on this thick all over the yard without running out before it's all spread. You might try it on a lower spread setting and just do it several times. Use it all. It is not the time to be a spend thrifty miser.

You are done. Woo hoo. Thats it. Now it's a 1-2 week waiting game depending on rain and environment. Within 2 weeks your yard is going to go POOF! You better have that mower blade sharpened we near destroyed mulching up the yard. You are going to come home from work one day and your yard will have this very, very dark green grass on steroids. You will be mowing at some point three times a week instead of one to keep it under control. The weed and feed will have stopped any dandies from coming up. Any that try will be easilly snuffed out by this monster out of control grass. The people accross the street will being spending tons of cash to have a nice yard while you are pretty much good for the rest of the year. Notice how the guy accross the streen using chem-lawn has his grass turn thin and stringy like yellow angel hair pasta. All the people that thought you were nuts will see how thick and green your new yard is. And you accomplished it all with a severe thrashing and 20 dollars. You can't beat that.

We just needed to get that soil good and stirred up so it could breathe and accept new nutrients and water. Grass is kinda like fire in this respect. The more you agitate it the more intense it will grow. This technique will work any time of the growing season but is strongly recommended in the first nice days of spring. I also recommend throwing on another bag of weed and feed a few weeks later to snuff out what few dandies may have survived.

Years ago I remember when this technique was applied to a million dollar plus house and property. Some realitor called and stated, "The yard at this house we are showcasing in 2 weeks is yellow and dead. Please fix this and make a green yard in 2 weeks time for this open house home showcase". A few hours after doing this to this yard we get a call from the realitor. She is screaming "OH MY GOD, WHAT DID YOU DO TO THIS POOR LAWN". My boss at the time told the woman to calm down and please be patient. It looks bad now but in 2 weeks you will have a yard worthy of this planned open house. About a week later we drove by this yard. POOF! This whole yellow dead yard had turned into plush thick green grass. The yard had poofed so much we anded up having to mow the lawn 2 more times in that week before the open house to keep it under control. The day before the open house the realitor lady called to apologize for yelling about the yard. She also thanked us for the miracle green grass. And if you mow lawns for a living for example, you will double your business as any yard you do this to will need mowed twice as much for months ahead.

Another good thing about your lawn is that it will be healthy enough to not need as much water as might normally be needed to stay green. Another good technique to water a lawn is to use soaker hoses. Grass drinks from the root. Sprinklers do nothing but feed thrirsty weeds and waste water. Take an old garden hose, plug the end and then poke a hole on each side of the hose like every 3 inches. Lay this hose in your lawn and move it every 30 minutes or whatever applies to your situation. Water in the evening right at sunset.

There you have it. Now you have the best yard on the block. All the people that thought you were nuts for destroying your yard will be tearing theirs up next season. Not to worry. You will be a full year ahead. A yard and different types of grass have charactoristics that can last for years. It gets better every year if you keep doing this. Enjoy your lawn.

Here is a pic of my lawn after a few weeks after "destroying" it as suggested above. Not too shabby. You can tell the mower blade is dull.