Save Money By Repairing Barren Spots In Your Lawn By Doing It Yourself

You’re relaxing on the nice-looking wooden deck in front of your lovely home. You’ve had a great day at work and now it is time for you to just ‘chill out’ before dinner. That cup of coffee sure tastes great. You are so proud of your home, family, and job. How much better can it get, you ask yourself.

Just when that thought materializes in your mind, your eyes spot something hideous in your front yard. Something so horrible that you almost drop your cup of coffee. You are now speechless. What are you looking at--a stray dog, a burglar, a chemical spill? No, probably as bad. It’s a bare spot at the very edge of your beautiful lawn.

You start rationalizing, thinking it through and fail to find the answer as to why this is happening to you since you are a good person, a fine employee, a loyal American, a friendly, helpful neighbor, a good husband and father, so why does this bare spot have to be in YOUR lawn? And after all the back-breaking work you have put into your lawn for summers on end?

At dinner, your beautiful and dedicated wife notices that there is something different about you. She asks, “Hon, everything alright?” You managed to nod yes. Then take a bite of her delicious pot roast. She is still not satisfied with your answer. “Hon, you can tell me. Is it work?” You wipe your mouth with the pretty napkin that your wife has chosen for the dining table, and reply, “Well, dear, I don’t know how to say this, but I found an ugly, hideous, bare spot in the edge of our lawn!”

Your wife is now speechless along with your two kids. It’s like a cloud of silence has overcome your family at hearing this bad news. And what makes this worse, you are far from being a knowledgeable landscaper or grounds keeper. You are a highly-qualified and intelligent CEO of a profitable plastics firm that is now adapting to going green in all of the plants you manage. Looks like you are in trouble, mister.

You and your wife manage finish dinner and retire to the den with your coffee and German Chocolate cake for dessert, but you cannot eat the cake or sip the fresh coffee for you are now a stack of anxiety--worried to the bone about that terrible bald spot in your lawn. Even your mostly-balanced, level-headed wife is beginning to worry. “What will our neighbors think, dear?” she asks trying to hide her fear. “The Joneses will think that we are nothing but insensitive people who don’t care about the appearance of our yard,” she adds. You only sit with your head down staring at the tops of your house shoes.

You think first of calling in a lawn care professional, but even with your salary as a CEO, the prices they charge is simply outrageous. You try to think of a good neighbor who is trained in the field of lawn care, but come up empty. Okay. Don’t panic. There is an answer, but you may not like it at first, but when you apply my “Repairing Bald Spots In Your Lawn Made Easy,” you will be thanking me for when you are finished with this do-it-yourself lawn project, you can once again sit on the nice-looking deck on the front of your house, relax, sip your coffee and know that it was all worth the effort that you put into repairing your lawn.

I know first-hand how it feels to have a bare (or bald) spot near my lawn. It made me feel awful, depressed, and almost sad enough to walk the floors with worry. But I didn’t. I found out that even people such as “I,” who has no formal training and education in lawn care, CAN make needed-lawn repairs myself. And you can too.

First, let’s make you a list of the tools and items that you will need to repair that barren place in your lawn.

1. A wheelbarrow or facsimile such as a two-wheel cart that can be purchased at Walmart, Lowe’s or Home Depot. I suggest Walmart for their two-wheel carts are not as costly as their competitors’ models and you are all about saving money with this job, so visit Walmart and ask one of their friendly Home and Garden associates (like I did) to show you the two-wheel carts, and maybe the rest of the things on this list.

2. Gloves--preferably cotton gloves for you will be getting your hands dirty. Don’t fret. I found out that I did not get sick from working with my hands in the dirt. My dad, a multi-talented man with no formal training, loved to work with his hands and get his hands dirty. He lived to be 89.

3. Rake--one of the bigger models with metal tines that can make wider sweeps when you are finished with the lawn-repair job.

4. Topsoil--Depending on the size of the barren area in your lawn, ask the Walmart Home and Garden associate to help you equate how many bags (which are extremely-affordable) you will need. I say topsoil, but if you have a garden tiller that you can use to turn the soil inside the barren area, you may not need topsoil at all. I didn’t have a garden tiller, and found out that the ground was way too hard to dig up to prepare the place I repaired, so I bought six bags of topsoil and that was a plenty.

5. Work Clothes--that you will not be afraid to get dirty. If the weather is humid, wear a pair of old Bermuda shorts and old shoes. You will see why later.

6. Lawn Repair/Grow Anywhere Grass Seed--that Walmart supplies. My Home and Garden associate explained to me that this is a special type of grass seed with the fertilizer already in the mix so all you have to really do is prepare the soil, sow these seed about ¼ inch deep, turn the soil to cover the seed and be sure to water this barren spot everyday to give the seed time to “get a hold” as the associate explained to me.

7. Watering can or if you have a garden hose, you can use that instead of the watering can.

This is pretty-much all you will need and I got away with my equipment cost, including topsoil, at about $100.00. That’s all. And since I didn’t need fertilizer, that was an additional savings. I hate to even think of what this job would have cost me if I had used a professional lawn care company.

All I did was use a sharp-edged hoe that already had to break up the soil the best I could. Then I spread a layer of Earthgro (the brand name) topsoil over the bare area I wanted to repair. Then I sowed, by hand, the special grass seed until the barren area was completely covered. Then I spread more topsoil to cover the grass seed and I gently packed the soil, but not hard enough to stunt the growth of the grass seed. I finished the job with a good soaking from a cheap watering can that I also bought at Walmart.

Now all I have to do is water this spot daily until I see the grass sprouts coming up through the topsoil, but I am going to continue to water this spot to give the young grass plenty of moisture so I can have a thicker area of grass when the seed have matured.

I know that I used Walmart a lot in this self-help, money-saving story, but I got to be truthful. I live on a fixed income and don’t have money to throw around, so I had to save wherever I could and still get the results I wanted on this bare area in my lawn. Walmart did save me a great deal of money on this lawn care project.

And after the job was finished, I felt so good about myself for being able to do something on my own without having to use those costly lawn care companies.

And that in itself, was worth all of the manual labor that I put into this project. Now I think I will pour myself a cup of fresh coffee and walk around my lawn to see if there are more places that need my ‘expertise.’