It's that time of year when lawns around Michiana, for a variety of reasons, are developing some bare spots.

You have several options: conventional grass seed, spread-on grass patch, or sod.

Or you may want to try a product called Patch Perfect.

It's billed as "grass seed on steroids,” but would it pass our As Seen on TV test?

I found a perfect spot in my backyard to test the Patch Perfect.

It's a high traffic area -- the kids play whiffle ball there, and I can never get any grass to grow. So we're going to put a little Patch Perfect down on one spot here and we'll use some conventional grass seed in another spot. And I’ll compare the two after several days and weeks.

Before you put the Patch Perfect down, you're supposed to till about an inch down into the ground. Now the secret to the Patch Perfect, according to the manufacturer, is that there’s a powerful fertilizer mulch cocoon that surrounds each seed. Each seed holds 400 times its weight in water, so basically it waters itself on demand. Then you water it regularly when you can.

Patch Perfect is also supposed to work well on urine stains from pets in the yard. The formula somehow neutralizes the pet urine in the grass.

So here we are 11 days later. On the urine patch, you can see there's a little bit of grass popping through. I think perhaps the mistake I made was in not clearing out the old yellowed grass and getting down to the dirt.

On the Patch Perfect area where I tilled the soil, though, the grass is thick and rooted into the dirt. It's probably thicker than any grass I've got in my yard right now.

On the side where I used the regular old grass seed, there were only a few sprouts here and there.

The difference is night and day.

If you've seen the infomercial, they say that Patch Perfect will grow in the shade, and even on concrete. So I decided to test it.

This one cinched it for me… We put Patch Perfect on top of a cinder block in the shade, without using any dirt, and it still grew a thick layer of grass.

This truly is grass seed on steroids. I've never worked with any grass product that has worked this well. So Patch Perfect, in my opinion, gets the big thumbs up.

Patch Perfect works great, but it's not cheap and you usually can only order it online.

The official Patch Perfect website is offering a buy one, get one free offer. It costs $19.95 plus $7.95 for shipping and handling.

That's enough to cover about 100 square feet.

You can learn more about it at the following site: https://www.officialtvwebsite.com/patchperfect/ver2/

Next week, another product to help beautify your yard.

We gave you a sneak peak in this week's As Seen on TV test -- it's the Awesome Auger.

It's supposed to "take the hard work out of yard work."

But can it handle our hard test?

Find out next Monday on NewsCenter 16 at 11:00.