Storm Lawn Repair & Reseeding in Houston, TX

Storm lawn repair and reseeding covers the yards that are not bare from scratch but are not lawns anymore either. In Houston that usually means floodwater left a layer of silt and dead grass, a storm tore up a corner, repair crews rutted the yard, or patches died out and never came back. Lawn repair here is part cleanup, part regrading and part seeding. We take the yard back to workable soil, fix whatever made it fail, and hydroseed or overseed it back to grass.

Houston's storm history in the yard

The region has had a long run of extreme rain. Tropical Storm Allison dropped up to 40 inches on parts of Houston in 2001. The 2015 Memorial Day flood brought 12 inches in 10 hours, the 2016 Tax Day storm 17 inches, and Hurricane Harvey more than 50 inches in some areas in 2017, damaging hundreds of thousands of homes. Wikipedia also notes spring supercell thunderstorms sometimes bring tornadoes. After events like these, lawns are often buried under silt, littered with debris, scoured where water ran fastest or dead from sitting under water.

What we do first

We start by figuring out why the lawn failed. Silt deposits and debris come off. Ruts get filled and leveled. If water sat on the yard because of a low spot, we fix the grade rather than seed into the same hole. Compacted areas from trucks or equipment get loosened. Only after that does seed go down, because seed sprayed onto a problem just grows into the same problem.

Bermuda repair and overseeding

For thin or patchy bermuda lawns, overseeding works well: we prepare the thin areas, spray seed and mulch over them, and the new plants knit in with the existing grass through its runners and rhizomes. Bermuda grows actively once temperatures stay above about 59 degrees and fastest from 75 to 99, so in Houston that means April into September. For larger dead areas, lawn renovation is closer to starting fresh: kill out weeds, prep the soil and hydroseed the whole section.

St. Augustine patches

Many Houston yards are St. Augustine, and that grass has almost always been planted as sod, plugs or sprigs. Seed for it has only recently become commercially available. Some older varieties, such as Texas Common, are prone to St. Augustine decline, a virus with no cure, while others like Floratam were bred to resist it. For a St. Augustine yard with dead patches, the dependable fix is usually sod or plugs, and we will tell you that. If a sunny patch is large, some owners choose to convert it to seeded bermuda instead.

Shade and changed conditions

Sometimes a lawn died because conditions changed: a tree canopy filled in, a fence went up or a new addition blocks sun. Bermuda does poorly in dense shade, so reseeding it there will fail again. We will tell you when an area is better suited to sod of a shade-tolerant grass, a groundcover or mulch than to seed.

Repairs after construction

Not all damage comes from weather. Foundation repair, plumbing work under the slab, pool installs and fence replacement all leave strips of torn-up lawn, trench lines that settle, and soil compacted by equipment. The fix is the same order of steps: settle and level the trench lines, loosen the compacted soil, bring in topsoil where the surface was scraped, and seed. For bermuda yards, hydroseeding the strip blends in faster than plugs. We are happy to schedule around the other trades so the repair happens once, after the heavy equipment has left.

What it costs

Repair jobs vary too much for one published price, so the full scope is quoted on site. For overseeding, Lawn Love's range is 7 to 23 cents a square foot, and Fixr lists $0.08 to $0.25 per square foot for aerating and overseeding together. Angi says professional lawn seeding typically runs $250 to $350. Silt removal, regrading and topsoil are added as separate lines.