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How to Correct Snow Plow Damage to Your Lawn.

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plow damage If you live in the colder parts of the US, waiting for the snow plow to visit your street is just apart of life.  Although we are way under our normal snow totals for northern Illinois, there have been a few days where the snow plows did clear the streets. Most snow plow drivers do a great job and keep damage to personal property to a minimum, but there are still times when it just happens.  As you can see in the picture, the plow jumped the curb and took out a strip of sod along the edge of the parkway of my neighbor’s lawn. When this type of damage occurs, you have a few options when it comes to repairing the damage.  You can call your village hall and fill out a complaint form and they will usually send someone out to fix it.  Depending on the amount of work that your village can get done with limited manpower and a reduced budget, this work may not get completed until well into summer. In the meantime, this area will fill in with weeds, making it more difficult to repair. Another option would be to wait until it starts to warm up in the spring and re-seed or re-sod the areas. This is a good option and one that will correct the problem quickly, but again, you have to wait until the weather is good in order to complete the work. The option that I always found to have worked the best is to replace the sod that was torn up and try to put it back in the same location as best as you can. Unfortunately it usually doesn't fit back into place like a piece of tile, but at least you can get a good deal of the area filled back in.

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When you look closely at the picture, you will see that the grass that was scraped off is actually greener and seems to be growing better than the grass that is already growing in the area – despite it being upside down since the end of December. You can also see that the grass is torn up, but that is to be expected. Even though it is in the lower 40’s today, the turf was still a little frozen. It did break apart as I was trying to piece it back together. I am not worried about it as it is early February, so the turf still has plenty of time to grow. The area may need some reseeding in the spring, but it will probably recover on its own now that the turf has been replaced. The other advantage is that the grass growing in this area is mainly Bluegrass. It has great recuperative qualities. Bluegrass, as well as Bermudagrass, have small swellings on their roots called nodes. These nodes are growth points that will regenerate new grass when the surface plants have been removed, as long as the area receives adequate water. As I have always stated, turfgrasses are amazing plants and can survive even when subjected to any number of adversities. Do you have snow plow damage to your lawn? Let us know by either commenting below or asking your local Spring-Green.