How to Grow Grass in the Shade

Hi this is Yolanda Vanveen and in this segment we are going to talk about how to grow grass in the shade. Now we all love our beautiful lawns in the sun and we have shady areas where we like to have some lawn as well. Well here are a few tips that I found that worked really well for me. Well first off if you got a shady area, you got to try to get some warmth in that area. And the easiest way that you can do that is to cut some of the bottom branches off. As you can see on this tree we've cut up about ten feet from the bottom, cut all the branches off. So now there is some sun getting in there and that seems to help a lot. And my rule of thumb is right around the bases of the trees I would never try to put the grass right up to the tree. You can always put a little flower bed with some cyclamens, or estilbe or hostas and ferns that they love the shade, but you can start the grass at least as far as the drip line. But I kind of leave them closer then that. So the drip line is where the water hits. But if you watering your grass you can even go in a little further. I can tell right here even though we never watered in this area ever, there's weeds coming up right here, there's grass coming up here, there's no grass at all. So I'm going to keep that for the flower bed, I'm going to start some grass right here. And the easiest trick is just to add lots of compost over this area maybe two inches. And every spring and every fall add lots of grass seeds and make sure it's a perennial type of grass seed that comes back from year to year to year. So you can grow grass in a really shaded area very easily. The easiest way to do it is to put some compost down with lots of grass seed and water it really well. Make sure and water it for two to three hours at a time. Not just misting it. Water it deeply so that the roots can grow. And then let it dry out to the point that it's not going to die, but that it dries out a bit and then water again. And you'll find that the grass will grow much stronger in those areas. And just by adding grass seed every spring and every fall, you'll get rid of most of your broad leaves and you won't have to use any chemicals at all.