Simple Tip for Bare Spots in Your Lawn

Sharing is caring!

Now, this little tip may be old news to you pro-gardeners out there, so I’ll share it for those of you who are like me and have a mostly black thumb.

Sometimes, you get bare spots on your lawn, maybe from animals or kids playing.  Here’s a simple tip for how to get thicker grass and fill in those bare spots, all without spending an extra dime!

 

Our lawn and shrubs were in terrible shape when we bought our house a few years ago.  

We have been working on making new beds and thickening our lawn a little each year.  

Our yard started out as all Bermuda grass. But over time as trees grew, areas of Bermuda grass in the thicker shade started to die.

Last summer, we decided to lay down a shade-tolerant grass, St. Augustine, in those spots, which took care of part of our lawn issue.

But the rest of our Bermuda yard was pretty full of weeds.  

My husband did an excellent job killing the weeds earlier this spring, but we were left with giant bare spots in our lawn where the weeds had taken up residence.

Now we have large, dead patches of just dirt. 

These pictures were taken today, after I’ve been working on these spots for about a month.

After learning this simple tip from my gardening-pro Mom, this bare spot is about half the size it was this spring, and many other smaller spots are gone all together!

What is the simple tip?  

Just water your bare spots with your spray hose every other day.

It seems a little counterintuitive, like my 7-year-old observed when he asked, “Why are we just watering the dirt?”

It really works, though! The idea is that your healthy grass will send runners to the nearby water and fill in the bare spots.

See the little runners?  These will eventually root and start growing in those empty spaces.

Here’s another picture of an area where our St. Augustine and Bermuda meet, and you can see both types of grass running to the water.

It takes about 7-10 days before you may start to see a difference, but over time, the spots will fill in with new grass and your holes will be gone.  

No seed and no fertilizer needed.

We’re all enjoying our fuller lawn, now I have to work on the front yard!