Welcome To Josh's Blog O' Thoughts: Lawn Care

Well we just got the grass cut for the last time for the season. I have to say, the lawn is looking pretty darn good at this point. Especially considering it's only 2 years old.

This summer was fairly mild and wet (coolest July on record). Definitely do droughts this year. In fact, for most of the summer, I could barely keep up with the mowing.

However, during this growing season, the yard did develop a lot of white clover and various broadleaf weeds. Therefore, my fall mission was to eradicate the weeds.

I did some research online to figure out which weed killer to buy. I didn't want to mess around and only get partial kills only to have the weeds come back next year. I wanted to hit them hard. In addition to looking for something that was strong enough for my liking, I wanted to find something in a concentrate. I have quite a good amount of area to cover and concentrates usually give you more bang for your buck.

If you look at the local big box stores, you will notice that most of the weed killers they sell are not concentrates; they are ready to use. If you look carefully though, you might be able to find one or two options in concentrates.

The other thing you will notice is that most of the weed killers they sell (Weed-B-Gone, etc) have Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2-4D) as the primary active ingredient. I've always heard that 2-4D was a good weed killer, but online research showed that while 2-4D is a good broadleaf weed herbicide, it is actual quite ineffectual against clover.

According to the Iowa State Extension Office the best weed killer for clover is 2-2-methyl-4-chlorophenoxy propionic acid (MCPP). And while MCPP is good at killing clover, it's not great at broadleaf weeds. Therefore, the most effective herbicide for me would be a mix of these two.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find any MCPP at the big box stores, and the 2-4D that they had was not very concentrated which did not give me a good feeling about its effectiveness.

In the end I went to a local farm supply store and found Trimec 899. Not only does it contain 2-4D, MCPP, and Dicamba (good at killing creeping charlie), it was the most concentrated stuff I could find. In fact, the label said that 1 gallon would cover 3 acres. I bought two.

I applied with a hose-end sprayer. I did not feel like shelling out the money for a pull-behind sprayer for my lawn tractor. It took about 2 hours to cover the whole yard. That was about a month ago. There is basically NO clover left in the yard anymore. And the broadleaf weeds are almost all gone too. The ones that remain are all shriveled and appear to be on the way out.

I'm very pleased with the effectiveness of the product and am happy that I have over a gallon left over for the future. If you have common weed problems like these, I'd highly recommend getting yourself some Trimec 899 for a fall application.

If you followed my blog last year, you know that I started a new lawn from seed last Spring. There were definitely some issues. We had a bit of a monsoon last Spring and it washed out a bunch of my seed. Then the weeds (mostly foxtail) crept in during the summer. It got pretty depressing and I had considered spraying the whole thing with Round Up and starting over last fall. Instead, I aerated, over-seeded, and fertilized. I think the results of everything are finally turning out to be pretty good.

This Spring, I aerated again and put down a fertilizer with pre-emergent to help keep the foxtail away. So far, it seems to have worked. I have a few dandelions and a pretty good crop of clover in a few places, but really no foxtail.

So here's the one year pics taken a week or so ago. This was taken just after mowing when it was quite tall, so there are some clippings in the pics that hadn't been raked up yet.

Front Yard:


Back Yard:


Side Yard:


Detail:





Compare that to what I started with:



And this is what it looked like during the summer last year. The coarseness is from all the foxtail:






Read more about my lawn in the lawn care category:
http://josh.breittechnologies.com/category/Lawn_Care

As my readers know, I moved into a new house last winter, and this past spring began the process of Planting a New Lawn. I have tried to document my progress on this blog (see previous posts), so I thought I should continue by posting a fall update.

During the spring, I had a decent amount of seed wash away from heavy rains, which also created some lovely ruts in the yard. The summer saw a bumper crop of foxtail and other weeds sprouting up. I pretty much gave up on the yard work in July and decided to wait until fall to work on it more.

My goal this fall was to get more grass out there so that when the annual weeds started to die off the grass could take over. If you read recommendations on overseeding a yard, you will generally see that the "experts" recommend killing all vegetation and starting from scratch if you have more than 50% weeds in your yard. I wasn't exactly sure of my grass-to-weed ratio, but there were a LOT of weeds. The recommendation to start from scratch has some merit, especially if you are doing a small area, but everyone I talked to thought it was crazy to kill what I already had. Based on this, and my personal sentiment of not wanting to purposely destroy my hard work from the spring, I decided that I would try to renovate rather than restart.

The best time for fall renovation for cool season grasses is the last two weeks in August through the first two weeks in September. I started a little later than I would have liked, but still had my seed down by Sept 17th. Here's the process I used:


1. Purchase a Tractor
The first thing I did was to purchase a lawn tractor. I had been planning to do this, but just hadn't gotten to it. Mowing the 1 acre yard with a push mower was getting tiresome, and I knew the tractor would be handy during renovation. I ended up with a 23 HP Husqvarna with 48" Mower Deck:


2. Fill Ruts
The next step in my plan was to get some dirt and fill the ruts that were created this past spring. I found a place with reasonable prices and had a dump truck load of top soil delivered to my house. This stuff was much blacker dirt compared to the clay my yard is made up of.

I also purchased an Agri-Fab 8 cu ft Poly Dump Cart to help me haul the dirt around to my various ruts:


This part of the process was not difficult, just labor intensive. Fill the cart, unload the cart, smooth, and repeat. Unfortunately, a few days of rain interrupted my plans, and in order for me to get my seed down by mid-September, I had to cut my rut-filling short. So I have some left over dirt and some left over ruts for next spring.

3. Cut The Grass Short
I was able to use my new tractor to cut the current grass pretty short. Some places I even hit dirt which didn't make me feel too good about using the new tractor.

4. Core Aerate
In order for grass seed to grow, they have to be in contact with dirt. If you were overseeding a small area, you might just be able to rake the top of the soil to loosen it up. With a large area of clay, that wasn't happening. Instead, I decided to core aerate. This is the process of pulling plugs of dirt up out of your yard. It's supposedly one of the best things you can do for your grass as it relieves compressed soil (especially clay) and allows air, nutrients, and water to reach the roots. For overseeding, it helps because it creates holes of exposed dirt and deposits dirt cores on top thus creating pretty good soil contact for the seeds.

To do this large area, I purchased a Brinly 40" Pull Behind Core Aerator:


I also purchased 4 cinder blocks to place in the weight tray. I attempted aerating 2 days after a decent rain shower and the thing worked flawlessly. It pulled 2-3" plugs out of the dirt. The only problem was that some of the plugs were slightly muddy and stuck to the tractor wheels on subsequent passes. I tried to make about 3-4 passes in different directions, but in some areas, it was only possible to go one direction and the additional passes seemed to just be hitting the already existing holes.

5. Seed and Fertilize
I purchased another 100lb of Kentucky Bluegrass and 50lb of Perennial Ryegrass. This is higher than the suggested overseeding rate, but I wanted to lay it on kind of thick. I also purchased four 32lb bags of starter fertilizer and three 32lb bags of standard fertilizer (high N content). I used my broadcast spreader to spread all these materials over the lawn in several passes. I ended up only using 6 bags of fertilizer, and saved some seed to fill in bare areas later on.

6. Work the Seed In
To get even better seed-to-soil contact, I used a piece of chain link fence. I got a piece about 4' x 6' for free from someone throwing some away. I hooked it up behind the tractor with a couple chains, put my cinder blocks on top of it to weight it down, and pulled it over the yard several times. It had been a day since I had done my aerating so the cores I had pulled out were all dried by then. The chain link was pretty effective in pulverizing the cores. This helped cover the seed with a layer of loose dirt. The dragging also helped knock some of the seed down into the aerator holes where they seed got excellent soil contact.

7. Water
So far, I have found watering to be the worst part of yard work. For one, I feel like a heel for using all the water. Secondly, it is darn near impossible to cover an acre of ground. I did my best to get most areas of my yard wet at least once a day. Other than that, I had to hope for some light rains.

The Results
After about 10 days I was seeing sprouts, especially in the aerator holes. What's more, the sprouts were KBG sprouts not rye (based on the seed hull still attached). Also during this time, the water and fertilizer helped the existing grass start to grow and fill in. After a couple weeks, the existing grass had grown enough that I had to mow again. I tried not to damage any seedlings and think I did a pretty good job. The cool weather put the annual weeds into retreat so they didn't look nearly as bad. However, I did have clover start to pop up throughout the yard. At any rate, I think things started looking pretty good. Here are the pics from 10/05/2008, about 3 weeks after my overseeding.

Front yard:


Back yard:


Front yard closeup (this is one of the best spots in the yard):



So I'm pretty much done with my yard work for this year. Next spring, I'll be focusing on weed killing. I'll be putting down a pre-emergent to help prevent the annual weeds, and might spray for any broadleafs and clover that come up in the spring. Because of the pre-emergent, I won't be doing any overseeding in the spring. I will however, aerate and fertilize to keep the ground from compacting and help the existing grass spread. I'll make sure to post an update next spring.

Comments welcome!

It's been roughly 2 months since I seeded my lawn from scratch, and I decided it was time to post some updated pictures.

The front yard:


The back yard:


These pictures were taken just after mowing. It was the third mowing I've done since seeding. I started mowing on my highest setting, but have since lowered the mower to the 3-3.5" range.

As you can see in the pictures, it doesn't look too bad. There are quite a few weeds and some thick-bladed grasses growing in there. They grow MUCH faster than the good grass so it doesn't look very good if it hasn't been cut in a while. Some of the patchier areas are filling in a little, which is helping. The combination of rain and mild temperatures have kept it green with very little watering.

I'm still mowing with just a push mower (not even self-propelled) and have yet to tackle the back hill. The weeds and bad grasses are getting pretty tall back there, but it will have to wait at least another week until I can get to it. Surprisingly, the back hill made it through our monsoons pretty well. There is good grass growing in several spots on the hill which will help prevent erosion and washing out when I overseed.

I probably won't have any more updates until the end of August when I start overseeding it. Right now, I'm just letting it survive the summer. Soon, I'll begin preparations for overseeding this fall.

It's been approximately 36 days since I seeded my lawn so I thought it was a good time to provide another update. Let's start right off with the pictures.

The front yard:


The back yard:


Closeup of a patch of the grass at 36 days.


As you can see, I'm doing fairly well considering the circumstances we've had as far as weather. Before seeding, I was concerned that we wouldn't get enough rain to keep the seeds viable, and with the seeded area being roughly 2 acres, I didn't have the time or resources to water it all. Turned out that we had just the opposite: too much rain! So much, in fact, that most local rivers set historic flood levels. That said, I was happy that some of my seed actually made it through all that rain. I did have most of the seed in the side yards wash away so now I'm mainly focusing on the front yard and the back yard.

These pictures were taken about 2 days after I mowed it for the first time. With my mower on it's highest setting, I knew I wouldn't be cutting most of the grass, but I wanted to cut down some of the weeds so they didn't take control of the yard. In the close up shot of the grass, you can see one of the fuller areas of the yard. You can see quite a bit of good Kentucky Bluegrass, but there is also quite a few undesirable grasses that cropped up. If anyone can identify them, leave me a comment.

In some areas of the yard I have seedlings that are quite skinny and don't seem to have grown much above 1" or so. I wonder if I didn't give them enough fertilizer to start with, or if too much fertilizer washed away in the rain.

Lately, I've been watering once daily to make sure that the grass I do have doesn't die this summer. Luckily, this summer has been very mild. We've only seen a few days that got into the upper 80's. Mostly we've been in the high 70's to low 80's.

The questions I need to get answered at this point are:

1. When should I taper off the watering?
2. Should I give it some more fertilizer now to stimulate growth and filling-in?
3. Can I over-seed some smaller areas now if I baby them with watering, etc?

I'll post back when I figure out what to do!

Well I thought I'd post with my latest update from approximately day 28. First the pics:

The front yard:


The back yard:


A patch that's growing well:


It may look fairly patchy, and that's because it is! But all things considered, I think it's doing pretty well. The biggest issue has been the rain. Our area here in east-central Iowa has seen record amounts of torrential rains this spring. Some storms were dropping 4-7 inches of rain in a weekend. It has hardly let up. The result has been record setting floods in virtually all towns near rivers. So considering all the rain we've gotten, I suppose I should consider myself luck to have this amount of growth.

The front and the back are OK, although patchy. This is probably because the seed washed and gathered in places. The front does have a little rut down the middle of it. The back hill which can be seen in earlier posts is also doing relatively well although patchy like the front and back. The side yards, however, were mostly a wash. They will have to be redone completely this fall.

The other day, I threw down what remaining seed I had in the front and the back to hopefully fill in the patchiness. I figured the worst that could happen is that it didn't take, and that was the guaranteed result if I let it sit in my garage. I also had about 3/4 bag of starter fertilizer with slow-release nitrogen left and I spread in the front and back to hopefully give the grass and extra "boost". I had noticed that some of the sprouts seemed a little stunted so maybe this will help.

At this point, I'm out of supplies and time so I pretty much just need to let it go and see what I can get out of it this summer. Luckily, it appears that it might be a good summer for weather. It's DEFINITELY been wet, and mostly cool. The highs next week will only be in the 70's when they would normally be in the 80's.

I will post back with more updates as they come up.

It has been 11 days since we planted our yard and things (I think) are going pretty well. Last weekend, the area saw a pretty nasty storm which included massive amounts of rain and even a town-leveling tornado. Luckily our town was not in the tornado's path, but we DID get a lot of rain which ended up washing out some of our newly graded yard. You can see one of the ruts created in this picture:



There was an area on the other side of the house that also experienced washout, but rather than being a 2" deep rut, it washed out more like a delta pattern. I'm planning on coming back later on to fix these areas after the majority of the lawn is established. This will allow me to baby those areas a little more.

The good news is that the front yard and back yard seem to be mostly intact. The back hill also seems to be mostly unharmed. I'm pretty much judging this by the fact that the straw is still spread evenly in those areas, however, I am still worried that some of the seed may have washed away underneath the straw. I'm not sure if that's feasible or not, but if I go out and try to examine the dirt, I have a somewhat difficult time making out individual seeds (those KBG seeds are TINY though). Some seeds could be covered by straw or dirt, but I still wonder if any of it washed away. Hopefully not.

Now for the good news. We are starting to see sprouts in the yard!! I'm guessing that these sprouts are from the Perennial Ryegrass and not yet the Kentucky Bluegrass as it has only been a week and half so far. If anyone knows how to tell the difference between Ryegrass and KBG sprouts, please let me know. Here's a picture of some of the sprouts which I'm assuming are from our Ryegrass seeds (remember I only put down 20% Ryegrass. There were WAY more KBG seeds in the mix):



Here's a picture of some other things sprouting. I'm assuming these are some of the original grasses coming back up from live roots. To me, they look too hardy to be from new seed. Anyone know what they might be?



And of course, there are several weeds coming up as well, but that was to be expected. Overall, I think things are going pretty well, but I am getting antsy to see some more results. Hopefully, the KBG will kick it in to gear and start sprouting!

I was finally able to get the lawn seeded the weekend of May 17-18. It was a little later in the season that I had hoped for, but the weather gave us no choice.

The first step was the have the soil loosened up since the rough grading left many bulldozer tracks in the yard. With 2 acres, this would take forever by hand so I was looking to hire it out. Quotes by a couple landscape companies were in the $1500 range which was more than I wanted to spend. I ended up finding a local farmer in the classifieds who does grading on the side. He was able to go over the entire area with a Gill for about $400. This pulverized the clumps and dozer tracks and loosened the soil 1-2" deep. The yard looked very nice and smooth when he was done.

I got an early start on the 17th because I knew this was going to be a big job. I loaded up my walk-behind broadcast spreader with fertilizer and started walkin'! I spread seven, 32lb bags of starter fertilizer and then started on the seed. I had about 200lb of seed to spread as well. The wind held off nicely during the seeding although it was sunny and pretty hot. The seed and fertilizer was all done by about 2:30PM.

The next step, according in my original plan, was to lightly rake the seed into the soil and then lightly go over it with a roller to get the seed pushed into the dirt a little. I walked over the front yard while dragging my rakes behind which worked fairly well, but took a while. Then I tried pulling the roller over it. I only had a few gallons of water in it so it wasn't real heavy, but it didn't quite have the effect I thought it would. With the soil already dry, it didn't seem to be doing much of anything. I tried rolling again after watering the soil down a little, which seemed to work better, but still wasn't quite what I was expecting. After doing the front yard area with the rake and roller, we determined the result wasn't worth the extra work, so we skipped that for the rest of the yard.

I then moved on to covering the yard with straw for mulch. I had no idea how long it would take, but knew it wouldn't be quick. It ended up taking about a day and a half with two people working to shake out 58 bales of straw over 2 acres. We averaged about 20 minutes per bale. It was a huge pain, but I think it will be worth it. The straw definitely helps keep the moisture in and helps keeps the seeds protected. I calculated that I walked a MINIMUM of 20 miles during the seeding and strawing. It was definitely a lot of work. Especially with hills.

For the first four days, we didn't have any rain so we attempted to water the area ourselves. I tried using a moving "tractor" sprinkler that follows the hose, but didn't have very good luck. First, the max distance on those things is about 200 feet so we'd still have a lot of manual moving to do. Second, I think the wheels would work much better on established grass because they tended to "spin out" in the loosened soil. Third, even on high speed it laid down more water than is really necessary at this stage. Instead, I bought some cheap, plastic impact sprinklers for about $2 each. I tried to chain them together, but being on a well, we just didn't have enough pressure for it to make sense. With three in the chain, nothing happened. I could get it to work with two in a chain, but then the throw distance was halved so there was really no gain. Instead, we moved individual sprinklers around and ran them for about 15 min at a time. They pretty evenly distribute the water over about a 60ft diameter. However, with this method, it's basically impossible to water the entire yard 3-6 times daily as recommended. So we covered the areas near the house pretty well and then in the evenings, I would try to get some of the further away areas. We are getting some rain now, so that will help.

At this point, we are just hoping for frequent, but light rains and waiting anxiously to see the first signs of growth. Here's some pics of the yard (with the house blocked out).

Front yard after seeding and strawing:


Back yard after seeding and strawing (viewed from the side):



More updates to come!

One of the first things I found difficult about seeding my new lawn was deciding what type of seed mix to use. Where I live, Kentucky Blue Grass (KBG) is the primary grass of choice. Also used in local mixes is Perennial Ryegrass (PR) and Creeping Red Fescue (CRF).

KBG is used as the primary turfgrass because of it's ability to rebuild itself and fill-in bare spots. However, it's drought tolerance is not that great which means it will probably go dormant (brown) in the summer unless watered, but usually revives in fall. PR is usually used because of it's quick germination rate of 7-14 days whereas it can take 21-30 days for KBG to germinate. And finally, the CRF is often used in shady areas as it is more shade tolerant.

A seed mix is a mix of more than one type of grass (KBG, PR, CRF) while a seed blend is a blend of different varieties of the same grass type. Going to any of the local garden/home improvement stores showed that most of the off-the-shelf mixes from companies like Schultz and Scotts are a mixture of these 3 grasses. However, I was surprised to see that KBG was always the smallest part of these mixes. It was typical to see 40% CRF, 40% PR, and 20% KBG.

Initially, I had been turned off to the idea of a mix because my previous yard had very obvious patches of different grass types. I took a long time trying to decide if I should use a mix or just a blend of different KBG varieties. I have virtually no shade in my yard so I had no need to use CRF. This left me with just KBG and PR to choose from.

The Iowa State Extension Office recommended 80% KBG and 20% PR stating that the PR will come in quick and help shield the KBG seeds and prevent erosion. This made sense but I was still nervous. PR is a bunch-type grass meaning it spreads outward in a bunches rather than spreading laterally like KBG. I was concerned I would end up with something similar to my previous lawn with obvious tufts of different grass throughout. The extension office assured me that if the mix was right, I shouldn't have to worry about this. So I took their advice and settled on and 80/20 mix.

The extension office also recommended using 2-3 varieties of KBG in the mix. That way if a particular disease affected my lawn, it would be less likely to kill the whole thing. That makes total sense to me, but with 2 acres to seed, some KBG varieties can just be cost prohibitive. I ended up choosing the varieties I did because they were available in bulk at our local farm supply stores and were reasonably priced. I did throw in a little more expensive KBG (from Schultz) but it is a smaller percentage. Being common types of KBG, these varieties didn't have outstanding scores on the National Turfgrass Evaluation Program (NTEP) ratings, but for the cost, they were about my only option.

So here's what I ended up with for my mix:


45lb KenBlue KBG = 23% of mix
90lb Baron KBG = 46% of mix
24lb Brooklawn KBG = 12% of mix
----------
TOTAL KBG: 81% of mix

36lb Perennial Ryegrass = 19% of mix

Yesterday the weather finally cooperated enough for us to get our rough grading done. The grading project which began on April 7 and ended on April 30, really only took 4 days of grading work. Unfortunately, we go so much rain in April that 4 days of work had to be spread over the whole month.

To see what the yard looked like before the grading check out my earlier post. Here's the pictures of the completed grading:

Front yard:


Back yard (side view):


Back yard (looking down the hill):



In the front yard, the excavator brought up the dirt around and house and fixed the grade so that water will run away from the house and out of the front yard. He also added a bunch of topsoil that he found on the lower portions of the lot. Although it's not "black dirt", it is much better looking dirt than the clay he used to build up the grade.

In the back we have a hill which we were expecting. The excavator used dirt from a hill on a lower section of the lot to build up a flat area just outside the back of the house. The result is that we now have 40-50ft of flat land outside the back of the house, and the hill where he got the dirt from has also been leveled off. On the hill, the excavator did a great job of smoothing it out and making the grade consistent. I attempted to measure the grade of the hill last night using non-precise methods. One measurement came in at 12 degrees inclines and another came in around 9 degrees. So I'm estimating that we have roughly a 10 degree grade overall on the hill. The hill itself is about 100ft long if you walk from top straight down to bottom. The width of the hill pretty much runs the length of the back yard so it is 120ft+ wide. At the bottom of the hill, the excavator smoothed out a nice large flat area and fixed the grade to keep water flowing down the lot to the stream.

Overall, we are really pleased with the way it turned out. We were slightly concerned that the flat area at the bottom of the hill would get too soggy, but the excavator says the water should run off. We've been down there before after a rain and it seemed no worse off than other areas, so I think we'll be OK. The next step is to have someone with a tractor and a disc break up the dirt and get it ready for planting. Unfortunately, the forecast is calling for more rain, so who knows when that will get done.