When I bought my house 6 years ago the lawn was an overgrown mess. With lots of YouTube and this community, I did some lawn renovations with lots of success. Unfortunately my back yard looks amazing after every renovation and is dead months after. Had done multiple soil tests, had professional lawn care companies take over and last year even had sod installed and now my lawn is dead again. Going to do a final reseed and if unsuccessful I might go join the guys at r/nolawns.
by Dangerous-Pianist294
27 Comments
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So much hard work and good results. Really depressing seeing it all die in such a short amount of time. No advice here, just my condolences sir
Do you have any other information? When did you install sod? How long after that did it start to die? How does it die? What does it look like? What time of year? Etc etc.
My first guess is not enough water. That’s a pretty dramatic change in a year.
Speed zone would be your magic elixir
Wild violet. Hit it twice with Speedzone. Use a spreader sticker. Their leaves are pretty waxy.
What are you doing? Water? Fertilizer? Aeration? Preemergent?
Ancient curse more than likely.
Could you find old aerial images of your property on Google maps or something? I’m curious if there may have been some sort of structure or pool there in the past.
No clue but there may be something buried deeper than the soil you had tested that could be interfering.
I’m sorry, your lawn really did look great each time that really sucks.
It’s creeping in from your neighbors. It’s a vine. You have to get rid of the tubers underground.
Have you dug up any bare spots to see if you have rock or debris under.. a lot of times they just bury stuff onsite could be preventing deeper roots
Is your backyard north facing? I have some spots in my back yard that I have similar struggles with and it’s usually areas that the sun is blocked by the house, fence, and trees.
Your ground looks too hard like break it up with a hard rake or a thin layer of good compost on top, probably both and aerate the soil
[removed]
Grubs or other insects, maybe?
Well let me start by nothing about this is a secret or curse, there is a reason, you just have to figure out why.
The most obvious reason to me is shade in the bare spots, you have a tree with low branches which is blocking alot of light, you have a deck shading the spot near it, and you have a solid fence which is providing shade. Shade and cool season grass do not mix well, even for “shade tolerant” cultivars, the only one that excels in shade is chewing fescue, which could be a good option here.
The other reason if the house is angled correctly and it is getting enough light, is there could’ve been trees there that were removed and the stumps/root systems aren’t decomposed yet. The grass can’t grow it’s roots through them easily to get down to the water, and it usually dies off like this.
The less likely, but still possible reason is bad maintenance practices/bad grass cultivars. If you have brown spots and you are cranking the water up thinking it needs water and they aren’t getting green, it’s disease. It’s a super common and overlooked issue with lawncare for people to think disease is the grass needing water. Disease will happen yearly in hot months, and is especially common with people that have irrigation because it provides more humidity for disease to thrive. Grubs can also cause serious destruction and make it impossible for grass to establish because they will munch all the roots. You could also have shitty quality grass cultivars that just aren’t good. Using a seed from Twincity or GCI that is a high end cultivar mix is much more tolerant to all these reasons.
If none of these is the answer to your problem, then you have to try something new. I’d try fine/chewing fescue, which is a very tough grass that is also spreading. It’s super low maintenance and barely requires much of anything, and will live happily in shady yards. It’s also very soft and pretty much the only grass that is comfortable to walk on barefoot. It has a different look, but does look good in a unique way.
The absolute last option is to use poa trivialis/poa supina, which there is basically no way it will not grow here. If there is stumps: it grows laterally, shade: it loves it, disease: ultra resistant. It will spread laterally very aggressively and repair itself. Also requires almost no inputs to thrive. It’s nicknamed satans grass because it’s impossible to kill almost besides digging it out, and even then if may have rhizomes left deep in the soil and will come back. Cons are it will go dormant in high summer heat (consistent high 90s) but will come back when temps drop and its not the prettiest grass with a lime green color. I’d try supina first before triv, because supina is prettier for a lawn, and triv as a last last resort. Just be sure to treat this as a last option because if you do this there is no going back other than digging your whole backyard out 2-3 feet down and putting in new dirt to change it.
And if somehow all this fails, artificial turf. You deserve a lawn.
So many trees. Have you tried dense shade lawn seed? If it’s too dark even that seed can’t help. Cutting some trees would then be your best bet for lawn.
Too shady?
What kind of grass each time and what zone are you in?
[get your soil tested](https://www.domyown.com/soil-kit-p-23003.html?srsltid=AfmBOoqmiMRpe1ok4DNqFfqYuwpBcdcJJm21KtBeH2NDBsDEs3tFWAKa) so the nerds can make it easy and tell you what you need.
Do you own a pack of dogs that pees all over the lawn?
and did you have some kind of guarantee when the pros put in the sod?
maybe you can ask them what went wrong.
It’s the shade man. Get a shade tolerant mix
Soil looks rock hard in the last pic. I would dig a few test holes a foot or so down and see what kind of soil structure you have. Take a few samples of the top 4” and send them to your extension for a test.
dude, you got a lotta shade. it will be an uphill battle
Just a heads up in case this wasn’t considered yet.
A lot of the professional lawn care companies unfortunately seed with “annual” grasses. So it looks amazing for a year, and that’s it.
It looks pretty compacted and devoid of topsoil. Have you tried aeration, top dressing and overseeing?
soil looks dry
any pets?
Looks like a lovely grub worm infestation indeed.
Have you tried overseeding? You know fescue should be overseeded annually…
Your soil looks worse in every picture where it is visible. It looks dry, compact, rocky, and lacking nutrients. I wonder if you are overdosing it with fertilizer. Do your neighbors have the same problem? If not, then it is something you are doing.
You need to aerate and top dress with compost at a minimum. You also need to give it time, because it is easy to overdo it with a lawn, to the point that you are actually hurting it by doing too much.