I don’t get along very well with grass. It grows when I don’t want it to – on weekends and potential fishing and golfing days, and it doesn’t grow when I want it to, like in March, when I’m sick of winter. It also grows where I don’t want it to grow, like in the middle of my asphalt driveway. How does grass do that? Then, of course, it won’t grow where I want it to, like I bald places in my yard. I have such a spot in the back yard beside our patio.
Grass doesn’t like to grow in that one spot because, first, it’s pretty shaded, and second, it’s right beside my fire pit, where in past seasons, I have fried the adjacent grass with my massive bonfires. I have since obtained a more modest fire pit that does not create such an inferno, so that’s no longer an issue. But perhaps the biggest problem with that one space is that it happens to be below one of my wife’s flower beds. Each time I have coaxed a few infant grass seeds to emerge and begin filling in the bare spot, it rains and washes all the mulch from Nancy’s flowers down on top of my seedlings. I have advised her that water tends to go downhill, almost every time, and she finally put in a border around the bed to secure the mulch.
This spring I considered my options for the bare spot. First, just forget about it and hope for moss and weeds, or, I could pour concrete, then the grass would grown between the cracks, or I could try and plant grass seed one more time. I opted for the later and headed for Lowe’s. I would need some sort of seed that grows in a semi-shaded spot. I would also need some topsoil or dirt of some kind to encourage growth and then, I suppose, I would need fertilizer to nourish the baby grass sprouts. I looked like about a fifty-buck project and I was not optimistic about my chances.
Then I saw it, a pack of Scott’s Patch Master. The bag said it had everything I would need inside: seeds, fertilizer and soil. It was $10. What the heck, I bought it.
Fellow grass growers, this stuff works. I now have a decent stand of grass around my fire pit and I think it has taken hold.
When I opened the bag, the gray stuff inside looked a lot like a worm bedding I once used for a miniature worm far, Worms, by the way, like to be watered regularly or they tend to die and stink up your worm farm boy. But I digress. The instructions said to just scratch the dirt’s surface with a rake, break up the gray stuff, scatter it around the bare place, water it and wait.
I did and it worked. The grass took off in a couple weeks. It’s still a little patchy, but I am hopeful it will become well established and fill in nicely. As long as the border around Nancy’s flowerbeds holds in the mulch, I believe for once I will have grass where I want it to be.
Scott’s Patch Master. It’s good stuff.