Bad grasses can ruin a lawn faster then most other things.  Yellow annuals or bent grass can take over a lawn completely in just a few years. You can repair these when the spots are small but after the 1st year or when the grasses have become much worse, it can be a lot harder to repair.

Weeds are usually fairly easier to fix.  Most can be eradicated with a few treatments of weed and feed.  If you lawn is all weeds, you may want to have it replaced.  A ball park figure your tearing out and replacing a lawn with new sod is roughly $2 per sq ft.  This could be more or less depending on where you live and how big of an area you are replacing. The cost or repair is a lot less.  (Subscribe to my blog and I will keep you up to date on some of these best and latest methods.)

If pests have damaged your lawn and the dead layer of thatch is more than 1/2 to 3/4, replace it.  Be sure to put a heavy dose of insectiscide on it befor you tear it out to prevent the pests from returning.  If damage is only in spots and non extensive, this lawn can be fixed.  Some insects leave your lawn and migrate away, some stay.  Some have suckers and some chew.  For insect the chew such as beetles and grubs, use a contact pesticide.  If they suck use a sestemic one. (spiders, fleas, and flys. )

Grasses can be repaired or replaced anytime lawns are actively growing. Cool weather grasses like to be dealt with in in the spring and fall.  (Less weeds in the fall.)  Warm grass lawns  like to replaced or repaired in the late spring and summer.

More to come on lawn repair!

The type of grass growing in your lawn depends more on the variability of sunlight and the variety of the existing soil, then it does on the outside temperature.

Did you know different type of grasses in different parts of the country grow differently.  Warm weather grasses such as those found in southern California, Florida much of the south and the south eastern coast are thicker, warm weather grasses.

Generally speaking, the hotter it gets, the better warm weather grasses grow. The faster growing time for these grasses is when the weather is between 85 and 95 degrees.  Warm weather grasses are a lot better at repairing themselves or self lawn repair.  They are also more vigorous and grow by shooting rhizomes out in many different directions at once.  Two of the most common types of warm weather grasses are St. Augustine and Bermuda grasses.

Cool weather grasses are a lot different.  These are predominately the types of grasses that grow in the north west.  Although this grass grows like crazy in the spring and the fall, it grows a lot slower in the winter and the summer.  Part of the slow grow in the summer is due to the hardening of the soil. This compacts roots and prevent water absorption.  In the winter, many of backyards in the northwest see less than 4 hours of sunlight a day.

Cool grasses grow in a circular pattern and are far less vigorous than warmer grasses.  These grasses also face a few other problems including poor drainage and competition from moss.  Lawns that don’t get a lot of sunlight in the winter may be replaced by moss (which has a shallow root system and needs less sunlight.)  Cool grasses includes different varieties of fescue and ryegrass.

The best way to maintain a lawn healthier is to mow higher and mow more often.  As  a general rule don’t moth your lawn under 2 inches and mow regularly so that you never have to cut more than 1/3 of the blade at a time.  Both types of grass benefit from longer, less frequent watering as a method to help develop the roots.