Grass for a shady area

If the water is running in a stream, a deep ditch cutting across the stream, filled with gravel and covered over, might help. Building a raised garden bed to block the water (with reinforced wall - rocks? - on high side) would shunt the water off the grassy area, but maybe into a worse place. Digging up the whole lawn, laying in gravel and covering, like the kind of thing P-dog is talking about and then laying down a new lawn could work too.

<heya p-dog, good to see you!>

Yeh, got some time to goof off this weekend, and no heavy drinking to do...

Why no heavy drinking?

Hey patio!

The yards around us drain beautifully -- INTO our yard. We're kind of the low point around here, it seems.

The main problem doesn't seem to be drainage per se -- when the rain stops, the water seeps into the ground -- but when it REALLY rains, as it did several times last year, the water goes rushing through to a stream that develops at the back of the yard. The stream at the back is fine, the rushing through is the problem.

littlek, just sent some pics, hope that'll help give you some ideas.

(Again, much appreciated, everyone!)

Empty social calendar this weekend.

Which is fine. Need a break.

ooooohhhhhh..... yeah, the water must come from EVERYWHERE! Pretty property.

If there is one major offender as far as water seepage, I'd try to block it with a drainage ditch. You could try to add railroad ties all along the border, but I dunno if that'd help. Perhaps the ultimate plan for that space would be as Pdog suggests, raise the lawn and add gravel below it.

Pdog - Sometimes it's good to rest your liver...

Soz, where is the stream located?

It wouldn't be very difficult (though it would be labor intensive, and you and eg probably don't have much time or energy to do the work) to build a little retaining wall, fill it in, and have a grassy area there. Very artificial, though, and more suited to building a patio.

Course, if you did that now, you could rip out the grass when the sozlet gets older and put in a nice BBQ area...

The stream, when it appears, is at the very back of the property line. You can barely see a chain-link fence in the first pic, that's where it is. It's actually on the next person's property.

It only appears occasionally, during/ right after those ginormous downpours. So ~5 times last summer (after July). Most of the time it's dry.

(Ain't it purty? I still get holy crap this is mine? palpitations now and then.)

So, does the stream run between the 1st and 2nd of the three big trees?

Nope, it runs behind all three of them, from left to right in the first picture. Right along the property line.

The water rushes through to it in a kind of general way, especially over the grassy area, and especially from the slope by the stairs.

Where I think I am right now is just trying to get the toughest, most shade-resistant grass possible, and then if it has some yucky patches that's OK, oh well. But it actually looks much worse now than in the pictures -- more bare patches (though they may have cunningly taken the picture when there was some snow on the ground to disguise that) (pictures I sent littlek were from the seller's brochure thing last year) and obviously needs some work of SOME kind.

Once we have something passable for a while, we may implement some of these other really good ideas -- so I still appreciate those ideas, good to know what the options are.

The description of your backyard sounds very similar to mine when I first moved into my home 6 years ago. My yard went from patches of barren ground in the back, to semi-thick grass cover…but, it took a few years to happen.
It's very hard to get grass to grow well under shady trees. I did a lot of experimenting with different grasses and fertilizers, and at one point, even considered putting sod down.

After lightly turning the soil, I had found that using a cheap rye grass seed combined with a shady mixture seemed to work the best. New lawn fertilizing is an absolute must, as well as frequent watering because tree roots tend to soak up all ground moisture.
Also, applying a light touch of lime aided in reducing the acidity in the soil, making it softer, which in turn helped new growth to germinate.

In the spring, the grass in the back tends to be a fragile under the shade trees, so occasionally I have to apply a little new grass seed in order to help maintain its thickness.

For a quick cover, mix Dutch clover with grass seed and your lawn will thicken up before the summer season ends. However, it can grow wildly (taking over the lawn and requiring lots of mowing in order to look good) and when in bloom attracts bees, making it unsafe for bare feet.

If you apply seed and then have a good rain, your seed will be washed away.

The really torrential rain that causes problems seems to only happen in late summer.

They had a beautiful lawn going early May-ish, and I think they must've put down some seed rather than just leaving it from what was there, judging from the pics and what I remember seeing when we saw the house around this time of year last year.

As far as I could tell, what happened was the lawn was happy and green when there was still sun filtering through and the trees weren't in full leaf, and then it got sunshine-starved and over-pooped, and THEN after all of that it also had the late-summer torrents tearing through.

VERY useful info colorbook, thanks!!

OK, so I've got a clean slate back there -- 5 yard bags full of leaves, one major pile remaining to go into yard bags I need to buy, but about 95% of the area raked and weeded and ready to go. (All but the pile.) Forecast is a couple of days of sun and warm temps, then a couple of days of rain starting Friday, then sunny again. Assuming the forecast is right, would it make more sense to put down the grass seed (Scott's for shady areas) right before it rains, or when it's sunny and will rain soon?

Again, for these spring rains, runoff isn't such a problem. It tends to be a more gentle rain that just soaks in.

So last night, I was talking to E.G. about laying down grass seed, and he said, "yeah, the gardeners* said they just had to re-seed every year." OH. Wish I would have known that earlier, but I guess it doesn't change anything.

Well, one new question: When I was raking, the old dead grass from last year was coming up easily. There are still a lot of clumps left after raking. Should I leave those even though they're currently dead and seed around them, or go ahead and pull up everything brown?

I'm inclined toward the former because the root structure will help hold the seeds in place in a rain, and because it will keep things more moist.

*The previous homeowners employed gardeners who we kept on for a couple of months at drastically reduced hours while we got settled in. Won't be able to afford them this year, nor do I really want to.

That brings me back to, though, thanks so much for your great advice, everyone!

Local nurseries always know the best grass seed to use in a specific area. Call them and see what they recommend, soz. They can give you good planting directions as well.

Well, sure. If I get no info here, I'll do that, but the calling thing never works very well. (Very few people are patient with relay.)

I've already decided on Scott's, they have planting directions. Curious about what people here think of pulling up remaining dead grass or not tho.

I wouldn't pull up the grass. Sometimes it's good to sort of perforate the earth before laying seed down. They sell cleets that strap onto your shoes. You could also just wack at the ground with the tines of a hard landscaping rake.

WHACK WHACK WHACK.

Sounds fun.

Any thoughts on plant when it's rainy/ plant when it's sunny? I'm thinking of planting when it's sunny and watering a lot, seems like best of both worlds to get it started out.