Shade & Dogs Turned Lawn to Dirt!!

[nitroant]

O.K., the GF bought a new place and the current owners have two dogs that have turned the backyard into a mine field. All the shade is not helping either. Would bringing in some black dirt and spreading it around and a re-seed with a shade mix be the best bet?

[IFallsRon]

In addition to the black dirt, you'll probably want to till up the affected area to blend in the new soil with the residue that has ruined your grass.

[Powerstroke]

I agree with Ron. You'll want to try and blend the new stuff or at the least try to till up the ground without new dirt if you want to seed it.

Use a shady seed mix and maybe something design for high traffic areas. Thes are far more tolerant of less-than-ideal conditions. Either way its all about proper watering.

[Steve Foss]

I guess when you say minefield, you mean those dead circles from where the dogs have been peeing.

The only way I was consistently able to bring back spots killed from dog urine was to dig out the dead sod and dig out the top six or eight inches of soil and toss it, replacing it with fresh topsoil. The acid in the urine leaches through the sod and into the soil and it can take awhile before anything will grow again there. If your bad spots are really widespread, it'll be a matter of cutting out massive areas of grass and retilling, adding dirt and blending like already was mentioned (an excellent solution) and replanting. If there are specific spots that need attention, you may be OK just using the method I mentioned, and if there are thin spots from shade, you can run a stiff garden rake through those areas, which pulls out dead thatch and aerates and lightly tills the soil to make it ready for planting, and then re-seed with the aforementioned shady/traffic mix.

Any kind of grass seed does best when mulched. The easiest and, in my opinion best, way to go is to get some of that mulch from the home/garden centers that is paper or other biodegradable filaments. Most commonly, it's little slivers of material that's colored green. Mulch keeps birds away from the seed and makes it MUCH easier to keep the seed moist while germinating and after it sprouts, which is a huge part of the battle in seeding grass.

[harvey lee]

The dog problem is ongoing for myself.Every year there are spots that need to be re seeded.The only sure way to probably stop the majority of the dog urine problem is to have a male dog.My males never killed grass and the females kill it all the time because they squat and drench one area.

I have read different things you can do in the dogs diet to stop this but for me it has not worked.

[Steve Foss]

Yep, read the same things. In the end, they don't work because of the acid in the urine.

[setterguy]

The only thing that has ever worked for me to keep the brown spots off the yard is to water right after they go out...my sprinklers are set to go off for 5 minutes in the back yard every morning at 6:45, since the dogs go out at 6:30. As long as you try and wash it away, it should help.

[Powerstroke]

There is one thing that I've seen do rather well to neutralize the soil from female dog spots. Many of my old customers talked about tilling in fresh dirt with gypsum (sp?). This went a long way to have stabilize the soil.

If you plan on having dogs in your future, its time to start training the dogs to use a certain corner or section of the yard. You can mulch this area with wood chips or hardwood mulch and then its more low maintenance and spares the rest of the yard.

[Gus]

My two male springers kill a bunch of grass also. I wish I would have trained them to use one corner of the yard. They seem to always find new spots to completely kill and then move on when it's dead. I think they do it just to tick me off.

[nitroant]

Thanks for the help guys. The mine field I guess I was talking about was that the dogs are diggers. Should have made that more clear. There really is no grass left for them to turn brown, so the pee spots shouldn't be too big of a deal, other than the fact that it may be in the soil still. The offer on the home included and allowance to fix the back yard, so hopefully some black dirt mixed with what is there and a good shade mix grass will do the trick. Might bring a sample into the U of M lab to get the soils tested to see if anything needs to be added. Might just deal with it for now and seed it in September to avoid trying to groww new grass in the upcoming heat. Thanks for the tip on the paper mulch. Might look into a hydroseeder to come out and spray the lawn too.

On a different note, she wants to get a mowing service (perfect, one less thing for me to do) anybody out there have their lawn cut by a mowing service? What can she expect to pay for a normal sized city lot?

[Steve Foss]

Nitro, if the allowance for restoring the lawn isn't big enough, you can save money when you hire a hydroseeder by preparing the whole plot yourself. Tilling it up, mixing in whatever soil/nutrients you need, raking it all smooth to remove hard clumps and eliminate low spots and such. Then they just drive up with the equipment, do the seeding and drive away.

[Powerstroke]

Mowing services are nice as long and you structure exactly what you're paying for. See if anyone in your neighborhood is paying for mowing and ask them who they use. You may get you or your neighbor a discount since you are close together.

The reasonI mention getting what you expect is personal experience. My mom-in-law hired a service for her place. They are retired and the kids don't live nearby. Anyway, they guy charged her to add a large gate through the fence so they could use commercial mowers in the back yard. He made the hole, but never installed the gate till I got involved. Then he charged for weed spraying even though he never did it. I know cause thats what I used to do for a living. SHe had the worst looking yard on the block.

Anyway, a good company will have a small contract explaining when they come, what they do and what to do in case of bad weather or holidays throwing off their schedule. They should do mowing as well as the weed whipping.

Its hard to say what an average yard is cause I grew up in Minneapolis and now I live in Eden Prairie. The average in MPLS is around 2000 sq. ft and in EP its more like 7-10,000 sq ft. Check out the neighborhood paper for mowing services as well as talk to the neighbors.