all right guys i'm going to show you how to turn your yard from this into this
how's it going guys welcome back to the patriot diy channel now today we're going to be talking
about over seeding your lawn now the property that we're on right now is one that we built our house
on about a year ago and this entire property used to be a field and when we built our house
we leveled everything out we cut everything down and we were trying to plant some centipede
grass out here that did not work out great for us we had very little centipede come up
overall what's out here in our yard is mostly just what volunteered up from the ground and one of
the big issues that we have out here is that we have very hard packed clay soil now if you guys
are from the south you probably are familiar with this problem this ground especially when it's dry
can be hard as rock and it's really difficult for water to penetrate it's difficult for those seeds
to penetrate down into the soil and and get some good growth most of the time the water just runs
right off of it it doesn't really soak down in like it should now we're going to try a little bit
different methods see how it works and take you guys along for the ride so if you like these kind
of videos guys make sure you hit that subscribe button down below hit that notification bell and
give us a thumbs up we really appreciate that all right now before we get started guys i want
to let you guys know i'm not a landscaper i'm not a professional i'm just a guy trying to get some
good grass to grow in his yard and i don't want to pay somebody else to do it now i'm going to
give you guys an example of some of the worst and some of the best areas of the yard before we get
started and then i'll give you a before and after once we get to the end of the video so make sure
you stick around for that what you see behind me here is an example of the worst it uh we have very
little grass here it's mostly just really hard packed dirt and just to give you a quick little
breakdown of the plan what we ended up doing was putting down a soil conditioner i will put some
links in the description below to some different soil conditioners what we used is designed to help
kind of break down and loosen that soil next thing we're doing is we're going back with an aerator
and we're going to aerate the entire yard that aerating just by itself is going to help loosen up
that soil let some water and nutrients and stuff get down in the ground that's really going to
promote more growth from the grass and then we're going to come back over the top with more seed and
see how that works out now let's get started and i'll show you what we're using
first thing we did guys was we went ahead and cut the grass down super low that's just going to help
eliminate some of that competition and really let the water and the seed get down to some fresh soil
it's really important to get good seed to soil contact cutting that grass down nice and low
before you start this process is definitely going to help you out all right guys now for the soil
conditioner this is what we use it's just a gypsum soil conditioner and it's supposed to improve the
structure of heavy clay soils like i said you guys may choose to use something different just
why depending on your soil type and i will put links to all this stuff in the description below
all right guys we're just putting down the soil conditioner with the push behind seed spreader
it's doing a good job you want to make sure you look at the directions on the bag to make sure
that you're putting down the recommended amount for your area and we're just going to go back
and forth in both directions in this yard to make sure we get good even coverage everywhere
all right guys this is the aerator we're using i will put a link to this in the description below
it's just a heavy duty plug aerator pull behind your mower it's important guys for
this process that you're using a plug aerator there's a couple different styles of aerators
some of them that just have the spikes and just make holes in the ground those have their place
but for the process that we're doing that's really not going to work out because all that
really does over time is just packs down the soil even more the benefit of a plug
aerator that actually digs into the ground and it pulls out plugs of dirt and actually removes
soil and then lays it over on top and that's going to actually create a cavity
that the water and nutrients can get down in and then those plugs will degrade over
time and work back in and improve the soil even more you can pull this with anything
pull it with any kind of mower four-wheeler probably golf cart whatever you want to use
so
i will say i was a little skeptical of this thing that as hard as our ground is i was worried it
wasn't going to get the job done but man let me tell you i am pleasantly surprised with this thing
it's doing a great job pulling plugs out of the ground it holds plenty of weight to weight that
thing down and really dig down into the ground as you can see there's plenty of holes in the ground
this thing's doing a great job
and even here in some of the hardest pack ground we're still getting a good probably about an inch
inch and a quarter plug pulled out of the ground that's really going to get the job done there
now i showed you guys some of the worst area this is what the majority of our yard looks
like we do have some grass in there but as you can see there's plenty of bare spots in there
this is the before all right guys now we've got the conditioner down we've got everything aerated
now we're ready to put down some more seed and then water and then it's just a waiting game after
that all right guys now this is the seed we're going to be using this is the pennington tiff
blair centipede seed and we're just going to be putting it out with our battery powered handheld
seed spreader from scots now i'm going to put a link to all these things in the description below
so you can get them for yourself now centipede is a warm season grass seed so we're in late
spring early summer right now when we're putting this out and it's about the right time for it
they actually call this the lazy man's grass seed because it grows low and slow so it requires a lot
less maintenance a lot less cutting and a lot less fertilization but it does produce a beautiful lawn
all right guys just a little update summer is in full swing we are mid-june right now and i
just want to give you a little update we got a lot of centipede coming in
uh so i'm gonna go over here and give you a look at that
all right guys as you can see this uh centipede seed is really starting to come in nice obviously
it's still a little patchy in areas but that's the great thing about centipede is that it spreads so
eventually it will spread into these empty areas and fill itself in and hopefully by the end of the
summer we'll have something really impressive to show you guys but i'm very happy with the amount
of centipede we have coming in it's looking really nice nice and thick in some areas obviously patchy
all right guys we are now in the middle of august and as you can see behind me this yard has made a
huge transformation all the work we've done over this summer has really paid off in this yard we
got a nice thick stand of centipede grasp now i'm just going to quickly go over everything we did
and then we'll walk around i'll show you some comparisons some before and afters of some of
the best and worst spots in the yard so as you guys already saw we put down a soil conditioner
we aerated we overseeded with centipede and then of course we watered it as much as we could we
did also go back and aerate again in the middle of the summer and then we went back into some
of those really tough spots and put in some new good quality topsoil and more seed on top of those
to really help those grow now let's go check it out and see some before and afters all right guys
as you can see we got a nice thick stand of centipede grass going here you can see just
how nice and thick that is coming in you can see i did just get done cutting it i cut it down nice
and low usually at one and three quarter inches and that's going to do a couple things for you
centipede really likes to be cut low so keeping it cut low and often really helps kind of choke out
some of those other grasses that are in the yard and allow that centipede to thrive now you can see
that this area looks a whole lot better than it did before but it's not perfect there are still
some tough patchy spots in here and let me show you what that centipede looks like see
how that centipede is starting to run across the top of that area and that's what centipede
does especially if you keep it cut low rather than growing taller it'll start spreading out
and run across the ground and really fill in those bare spots here's a shoot of centipede
that i pulled from the edge of the yard that was growing over onto the sidewalk
and you can see how it grows nice and long and that's really where it gets its name
centipede from because it runs and spreads and really fills in those areas as you can see the
majority of the yard has really filled in nicely of course some of those tougher spots are still a
little bit patchy here but like i showed you before they are starting to fill in as well
now over here guys is the worst part of the yard this is the toughest spot we really had
a hard time getting anything to grow this is where you saw at the beginning of the video
and as you can tell it's still got a ways to go to fill in but
man does it look better i'll show you the before and after here of how much this has filled in
and as you can see these little shoots of centipede here are starting to do their job
and fill in those gaps now right here you can see a huge difference this is that area
you saw earlier in the video that was really nothing but red clay dirt there was really no
grass here at all and you can see how much this is filled in there's really very few bare spots left
this is a huge transformation it's looking great
all right guys that's it for this video as you can see we've got a nice foundation
and as long as we keep maintaining this the centipede is going to continue to spread and
continue to take over and fill in any bare spots that are left i could not be happier
with the results that we got so don't forget to check out our links in the description below
for all the products we use to make this happen and if you haven't done it yet guys make sure
you hit that subscribe button down below hit that notification bell and give us a thumbs up
thanks for watching guys please like share and subscribe
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