How to Grow Grass the Brioni Way: Part III

Hello Everyone! Welcome to the last installment of our grass growing saga. In Part I, you learned that when we first bought our house, the grass had died and we had a terrible case of burrowing bees. 

In Part II, you saw our second attempt at trying to grow grass with turf builder that looked like dryer lint.

After two attempts and nearly three years later, we knew it was time to bite the bullet. We finally caved and got sod installed. It was a pretty straight forward process. We got a couple of bids and chose the one that we thought was the best qualified, with the best price. They installed the sod while we were at work, which was pretty convenient for our busy daily weekday schedule.

Here is Louie inspecting the job. 

  

"Looks okay to me, Mom!"

The boys staring back at me...

 

It's fun frenchie gif time! By the way, I still don't know how I did this...

A couple of weekends after we got the grass installed, Justin had to mow/trim the grass because the grass had grown so long.  He bought an old fashioned reel lawn mower off of, you guessed it, Craigslist.  I didn't realize that these types of mowers still exist.  With the size of our yard, and the complexity of the job, this type of mower was perfect.

Overall, I'm happy with the new grass on our little lawn, but I'm still hesitant that it will be able to grow properly.  We have a large maple tree in our tree box that covers our lawn with shade. Without proper sunlight, there might not be proper water drainage, resulting in dead grass...again!  Justin says that he plans on reseeding the grass in the fall, so hopefully that will patch up any bare spots that appear from now until the end of summer.

There you go. Our three part grass growing saga. For cost saving purposes, have you ever tried doing a home improvement project yourself, but in the end realized that you were better off just paying for the services?  Personally, I will always leans towards DIY, even if it ends in "failure" because the lessons you learn along the way are irreplaceable!  On the other hand, Justin would prefer to pay someone else, saving him the time and frustration.

How to Grow Grass the Brioni Way: Part II

Hello! Here we go with the second installment of the Broni how not to grow grass saga. If you remember in this post, we had a problem with dead grass and burrowing bees. A bad situation overall! So a year later we gave it another go. Because we failed miserably at seeding, we went to the home improvement store to see what else we could get, in order for our grass to grow. The salesperson suggested Scotts Patchmaster. It was different from plain seed because the seeds were stuck in this material that resembled dryer lint product, which would therefore hold it in place and protect it from the elements and critters.

It's like the equivalent to seeding and then putting hay over it...it keeps the seeds in place. That weekend, along with the many stares from our neighbors (LOL!) Justin put this product all over the dead areas of our lawn.

As it turned out, practically our entire lawn was covered with this dryer lint. LOL...I'm doing a lot of laughing right now, but I'm sure at the time this was a major stress point for poor Justin...

Justin giving me a thumbs up.

And then admiring his work? :)

I know what you all are wondering..."Did the grass grow?" In short - no.  I don't have any pictures of the final results, but the grass grew in really patchy! Maybe it was the type of seed product we used, but I honestly think it's the DC soil. I heard somewhere that the mineral levels of the dirt in the city are really high, which makes it challenging for grass to grow. I  personally was ready to throw in the towel. Maybe that little space of yard wasn't suited for grass. We do have a huge maple tree in front of our house (specifically in our treebox), so maybe all the shade isn't conducive to grass growing. On the other hand, Justin and his suburban upbringing with visions of a perfect lawn wasn't ready to give up yet.

After numerous attempts to re-grow the grass, ranging from EZ-Seed to another Scott's product that resembled dryer lint, we knew that we were running out of options. We would soon realize that each attempt would fail and our frustration (mostly Justin's) grew more by the month instead of the grass. What would we try next?

How to Grow Grass the Brioni Way: Part I

Let's go back in time shall we? How about three years ago?

Once upon a time we bought a house that had a lawn. In the picture below you can see it. Although, a little brown we had a lawn, nonetheless. After all, the previous owners bought sod in a last ditch effort to sell the house (our house had been on the market for over four months before we purchased it).

 

Then we had a five month renovation and the fall came...

Like the grim reaper, the fallen leaves killed our grass.  Because we were living in Gaithersburg while our kitchen renovation was going on, we didn't think to maintain the lawn. Yes, hindsight is 20/20 and all that jazz... :(

But once we moved in we found out that we had a bigger problem on our hands--Bees. Burrowing Bees to be exact. Just as their name describes, they're bees that burrow into the ground. Despite these little guys being harmless, the mass number of them hanging out in our yard made them more of a nuisance. Doesn't the sound of buzzing bees freak you out? It freaks me out that's for sure.

So we headed to our local hardware store Fragers, to find a solution to our bee problem. Surprisingly, all of the employees came to the bees' defense. They wanted to deter us from killing the bees claiming that,  "They're great pollinators!" Despite the Fragers employees pleas, we wanted them gone. With that said, they suggested sprinkling roach powder on the lawn and in the bee holes.

Here's a shot of Jill doing the dirty work...

And Judy looking on...

After we had spread the roach powder throughout the yard, we applied the EZ-seed around the area. Unfortunately, we didn't know that we had to prep the ground first (i.e. till the soil) resulting in the seeds being eaten by squirrels and birds.  The lucky survivors just sat on the surface of the dirt and grass didn't grow.

We decided to take a little hiatus on this project, but we weren't ready to throw in the towel yet! We had another trick up our sleeve! So our second attempt at growing our grass would come a year later...stay tuned! :)