General trouble-shooting problems we deal with on behalf of our commercial and residential landscaping clients at Mirage Landscaping in Calgary concern repairing a thin or bald lawn spot. Whether from disease, insect infestation, pet waste damage, a fertilizer hot spot, or other cause, damaged or missing grass can be a very difficult problem to solve. There are many products that contend to grow grass no matter what, but the expertise of Mirage Landscaping’s three generations worth of experience repairing lawns all over Calgary is a good place to start.
Remove The Source of Damage
If your patches are from an entirely preventable source such a dog urination, overwatering, refueling your lawnmower over the grass, a traffic path, or some other source you can correct, take action. If you remove the source of damage and ensure the soil isn’t compacted, or resource deficient, the grass will often grow in on its own.
Call The Experts At Mirage Landscaping
Oftentimes, it may seem a complete mystery why you get brown grass areas or a dead spot, where the grass looks to be wasting away. Especially if you don’t have pets it can be vexing trying to solve why randomly dying patches of grass are appearing in your lawn.
It is possible that your seemingly random dead patches are signs of infestation, by either insect larvae or by fungus. In either case, we encourage you to get a free quote from Mirage Landscaping of Calgary. If you don’t know Vinclozolin from Oxyfluorfen, we have all of the certifications we need from the Province to apply insecticides, herbicides and fungicides, safely and effectively.
Seeding
If a patch is totally bare, you can attempt to re-grow the grass by preparing your patch for the cultivation of seed. First, you have to bust up the soil to prepare it to receive new grass seed. The soil needs to be somewhat loose for new grass to grow rapidly. Then, sprinkle the grass seed by hand over the prepared spot and lightly cover it with soil according to the instructions.
Newly sown grass seed needs to be kept moist to germinate. The trick with freshly planted seed is to be able to deeply water the spot up to six inches deep, twice a day, while not displacing the seed with the flow of water. A slowly dripping fountain style sprinkler or hand sprinkling gently from a can is the way to go until the grass takes root. If the days are hot, you will want to consider adding in some water absorbent organic mulch to reduce the stress on the new shoots.
Overseeding
True bare spots are relatively rare in any lawn even minimally tended by a caretaker. More common are unhealthy turf patches, or even entire lawns, that are thinning out from what could be many different causes. The problem is that thin spots are usually covering a larger area than a spot repeatedly targeted by a dog. The best tactic for “thickening” the grass of almost any size lawn is to overseed it.
Overseeding works because it is the fountain of youth for grasses, especially the cooler thriving bunch grasses we see a lot of in our Calgary climate. Much like human hair, grasses grow in a lawn, die off, and are replaced by younger blades of grass. However, again like a human, the existing grass gets older and the reproductive cycle slows down. Overseeding is a tried and true cheating of old age in grasses, one pioneered by the golfing industry. By annually introducing new grass seed into the old lawn, fairway, or green, it reinvigorates the grass and makes it not only more resilient under foot, drought resistant, and lush between your toes, it visually cuts down on the appearance of dead thatch too. However, it is still a good idea to annually power rake and aerate lawns to keep them at peak health.
Sod
Briefly, sod is an option to repair heavily damaged lawns, but is more suited to the total replacement of a given area. It is often difficult to visually match up strips of sod to an existing lawn.
Contact Mirage Landscaping Today
It’s not too late to get your lawn ready for summer. As always, we offer free quotes.
