This text was originally posted as a static page on this site around August 2006. I have converted it now to a blog post to comply with the rest of the site.
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Well I'm apparently having some issues with my yard. I have various issues from thinness, patchiness, clumpiness, and weeds. I am reaching out to the lawn gurus out there to see if anyone can help me. The information below is a summary of my problems.
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2004
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We bought the house in Dec 2003 not really knowing what the yard looked like under the snow. When spring came around, we were pleasantly suprised. The yard looked very good. As this was my first house and my first yard, I was a novice and really didn't do anything to it other than cut it when it was needed. In spring of 2004, the grass grew like crazy and I was cutting it twice a week. Here is a picture from late May 2004.
In my opinion, the yard looked great! Even growth and color and nearly no weeds. A patch of what I think is tall fescue near the garden. I will get to that in a bit. If my yard looked like this I would be SOOO happy. Anyway, throughout the 2004 year, things seemed to go well. I didn't really water much because my parents never had.
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2005
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In spring of 2005, we put on a bag of fertilizer and the grass greened up pretty nicely. Grass growth in spring was still pretty quick and required lots of cutting. However, problems started to develop. This is a picture of VERY early on in 2005 (I cut part of the picture out sorry). As you can see the unevenness is starting to set in.
2005 did not go very well. Weeds started to develop throughout. I sprayed using a 2,4-d liquid concentrate once in mid-summer. Didn't seem to have much effect. Some weeds seemed to partially die. In addition, we had patches that started to really thin out while leaving clumps of very green healthy looking grass (you will see this in the 2006 pictures). In fall 2005, we put down a winterizer fertilizer.
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2006
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Everything we read says "a nice thick lawn will help stop weeds". Unfortunately I can't seem to get this nice thick lawn. When spring 2006 rolled around, we thought we'd try to fix our problems with thinness by overseeding. We first had the lawn core aerated. I then cut the grass really low (as recommended on the seed bag). After cutting the grass, I raked up everything I could (that was not enjoyable) and tried to break the soil a little with a garden rake. Then using a broadcast spreader, I applied at the overseeding rate listed on the bag. The seed used was a Scotts mix that said it would do a bit better in sun and high traffic. As the back yard has virtually no trees, it gets quite a bit of sun. We then spread some fertilizer and watered about 4 times a day for a couple weeks. I would normally go out and check to see if I could find any sprouts. In some areas that had been REALLY bare, I could find them. Out in the open yard it was much harder. The ones that did seem to grow, never really seemed to make it past an inch or so high and did not thrive. It seemed like we got virtually nothing out of the seeding. I fertilized again in late June with a weed and feed as recommended on the bag. It didn't appear to help stop any weeds. I also put down a powder-based insect killer for bugs which apparently didn't do anything, because I have noticed small crickets living in the grass that I never noticed before. Also, we seem to get spider webs in the grass. At least they look like spider webs. Perhaps they are not.
I had my lawn mower blade sharpened this spring and have been cutting to about 2.5-3 inches all year (except for when I seeded). I was hoping this would help promote some filling-in.
That's what I've done to this point. Here are pictures of the yard today (taken through glass sorry):
As you can see, I have some issues. Most notable, the severe patchiness, thinness throughout the middle yard extending to the fence on one side. As you can see, there are tufts or clumps of some dark green grass. This, I think, developed last year and continues this year. Along the fence, I have some clover. Throughout the yard, I have several kinds of weeds, some I'm not sure if I've identified correctly:
oxalis (Wood sorrel)????
purslane????
yellow nutsedge????
crabgrass????
unknown, oxalis, and purslane????
I also have some patches like this. I think this is tall fescue??
Additionally, the first year we moved in, we seeded two spots where we removed bushes. The seed we had used was recommended by the guy at the hardware store, but I think we got the wrong stuff. He had said, that the grass would initially grow in with "fat" blades to protect the smaller grass, but it is 2 years since then, and it still is pretty thick. It's not as thick as those patches I think are tall fescue, but it doesn't really match the yard. Maybe it is another type of fescue or something??
Well that's the long-and-long of my battle with my yard so far. I will be posting a link to this page and a request for help at the
allaboutlawns.com forums. If you can give me assistance in formulating a plan to fix this, I would really appreciate it. Thanks!!!
