Lawn Saturday

I didn't have to work this weekend. I didn't have my book anymore to sap away the hours. I wanted to work on the yard and the house. Take some time to get things set up before I get routed by work, all my spare time co-opted by the Spring Rush. I woke up way too early on Saturday and made a big breakfast and got stalled out with an accompanying film from Rek's Netflix collection. I was able to will myself to put in some laundry and then get into the lawn. I cut it first then raked away the excess. Normally it is better for the overall lawn to leave a small amount of clippings to decompose and feed the worms. We should probably think of the lawn as two components, the soil and the grass. If you keep the soil in good shape then there is a better chance the grass is going to shine as well. I am pretty confident that my soil has high amounts of macro nutrients to feed the grass but to be safe I applied a liberal dose of 7-24-24 that I had laying around. The three numbers stand for the percent of the granules that made up of N-P-K, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium. The nitrogen will stimulate quick growth and will generally darken the colour. I am always wary of putting too much on, I don't want to be cutting the grass every two days. Leaving clippings is good for the worms which is good for the soil. They pull it down into their burrows or macro pores and consume it. These macro pores are important for drainage as my lawn is not tile drained. Allowing water to naturally flow away is important to avoid root diseases and allow for aerobic soil flora to do their thing. There are some weeds in the grass and I usually do something about that but I didn't like the weather so I'll wait until later to deal with them. I spent a couple of hours on the lawn, part of which was patching some bare spots either caused by the dog or the weather, not sure which, either way, I sprinkled some coated grass seed on there and then dusted some dirt over the top, gently packed it to increase seed to soil contact then doused it with water to ensure that the seed takes in nice tepid water rather than imbibing a cold drink to start it's life. I'm hoping that if even half of it catches my lawn will look thick and full again. The front got a light dose of 46-0-0 to get it going. It is almost as thin as the hair on my head now and I want to get some growth going. I'm going to wait and see on that. I also top dressed on some older grass seed in a Johnny Appleseed fashion before a big rain to see if that would help. I couldn't think of a more fitting way to rid myself of that seed. Here's hoping that both front and back return to their former glory.