# dleonard1122's Lawn Journal



## dleonard11122 (Jun 24, 2020)

Hi all. New member here, I've been lurking for quite a while and finally decided to make an account.

A little bit of background info. My wife and I bought our first house in June 2019. We're in zone 7A, South Jersey. The lawn we inherited was very neglected. The previous owners had recently put in a new septic system, which was great for us as far as not having to deal with that for a while, but it meant that the front lawn was pretty torn up. They also never bothered to replace the irrigation zone they had to cut in order to replace the septic.

So after replacing the irrigation zone, replacing the mismash of various irrigation heads with all new Hunter PGP Ultras, and a new Rachio irrigation controller, I decided to start attempting a renovation.



This photo was after scalping the existing lawn to 1". It was almost all weeds, and I probably should have sprayed it all with glyphosate but at this point I was even more of a lawn care noob than I am now. I did spray it all with Tenacity which did a number on the weeds and I ended up getting good germination on my overseeding.



I rented a tow behind core aerator and a slit seeder, and put down a 3-way blend of Avenger/Titanium/Supersonic TTTF seed over my 10k sqft front lawn. Watered 4x daily to keep the soil moist.

I was very happy with my renovation results for the front lawn. With that, I knew I was hooked. I went into winter planning to focus heavily on the front lawn in 2020 and then in the fall do a renovation of the back lawn, as well as an overseed of the front.

Here's how the front looked to start Spring.



Then Coronavirus happened. My wife and I were very bored stuck at home and decided to tackle a project we had planned for the future. We put in our own paver patio and walkway.

































































Sorry for the flood of pictures. I am posting this from mobile, and it's tough to individually select photos so I'm kind of just posting everything I have for now.

So the patio turned out great. We love it. Unfortunately, it absolutely wrecked the back yard. We excavated 20 yards of soil into the yard, which I later drove one bucket load at a time to my neighbors with a wheeled skid steer. The timing of this coinciding with our spring meant that I made some terrible ruts in the yard.

We didn't really want to deal with a mud pit all summer, so at the last minute I decided to do what I could as far as a renovation for the spring, with full expectation that the results wouldn't come anywhere near what we saw in the front, and that more work would need to be done in the Fall.

To relieve the compaction, and mechanically kill all of the weeds that had taken over 90% of the lawn. I rented a tow behind tiller and just turned it all over. This isn't ideal, and it isn't recommended either. But, I knew I couldn't leave the compaction and I still wasn't comfortable with spraying that much glyphosate, so this attempted to address both of those problems.

After tilling, I drug a heavy pallet, first behind the rented tractor and then behind my garden tractor. This did a decent job at getting the grade as smooth as it was before we tore it all up, but it's far from perfect. In the future, I may consider bringing sand in and leveling it.

For the back yard, I went with a 70/20/10 blend of TTTF/KBG/PRG.

I'll continue to overseed with just TTTF, but I wanted some KBG just to see if I could get some spreading since this yard will be less maintained than the front. The PRG was included to try and get rapid germination to stabilize the bare soil.







The weather really didn't cooperate for us this Spring, so I had even worse results than I had originally expected. It was cold and dry, so the seed took a while to germinate, but eventually we did see something.







This wasn't ideal, but at least we won't have a mud pit all summer. I know we will have to do more in the Fall, but for now it's fine.

The back yard continued to fill in a bit, but then of course now it's gotten dry and hot. It's stressed, and I'm sure some of it won't survive.

In the meantime, the front lawn has also started to get stressed.







I tweaked my watering duration based on some catch can measurements I did, and it improved. Now we've had a few days above 90 and there are spots starting to stress again. I am convinced that it won't be able to stay perfect all summer as it is mostly still young grass that's less than a year old. I'll keep on my normal watering routine, but I'm not expecting perfection yet.

Well. That mostly gets you caught up to present day. I skipped a lot of fertilizer, pre emergent, herbicide, etc applications because I felt like the bigger items were more important. Going forward, I will try to keep you more up to date on things as they happen.


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## dleonard11122 (Jun 24, 2020)

6/28 - First present-day update

We continue to have hot, dry weather here in NJ. It feels like we've had highs around 90 with no rain for the past week and a half, and I have somehow managed to dodge every passing thunderstorm.

My irrigation is running every 3 days, putting down 0.5" of water before sunrise. Unfortunately, I've got some spots that don't fully overlap and that's resulting in only 0.25" every 3 days.

It's been 7 days since my last mow at 4", and while there are some stressed spots in the lawn, others were up over 6" tall. With no weather relief in sight for the coming week, I figured to just get out there and give it a quick mow. I tried to get on and off as quickly as possible, and I even mowed around the big stress spots that didn't need to be cut.











This shaded area to the north of my house underneath a large silver maple has consistently been the thickest and nicest part of the lawn. I think it has a lot of surviving fine fescue from the previous homeowners lawn, and with the new tall fescue mixed in it seems to be thriving. This was over 6" before this mow back down to 4"



Here's a shot of the backyard. I didn't mow this because it really didn't need it. It's just hanging on for dear life. We watered a few areas with the tripod impact sprinkler this morning, but I'm not confident in much of this surviving the summer unless we start to get some rain. I don't have irrigation back here, and 25k sqft is just too much for me to keep up with on just an impact sprinkler.


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## dleonard11122 (Jun 24, 2020)

Preparing for fall Overseeding.

Scalped the front yard to 2.5"


Scalped the back to 1.5"


The flag markers are for new irrigation heads I just installed. Hopefully that makes the grass closest to our patio come in well.



The rest of the lawn we will try to water with a tripod sprinkler.


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## dleonard11122 (Jun 24, 2020)

Got the lawn aerated, seeded, rolled, and sprayed with Tenacity. I even applied a fungicide to the front yard where there's already existing turfgrass.



Today was my first time using the new tow behind 21 gal Northstar Sprayer. In short, this thing is awesome and I cannot believe how much easier and more enjoyable the spraying process was compared to when I used to use a backpack sprayer.


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## Zcape35 (Sep 17, 2019)

The back patio came out great, it looks like it was quite the project. I'm looking forward to seeing that grass spring back to life.


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## dleonard11122 (Jun 24, 2020)

The closest weather station to me measured that we received 1.5" of rain in the past 36 hours. I was concerned that all my seed would have washed down the slight slope that my yard sits on. This morning I went out with a flashlight before work and from what I can tell, there's some very small localized areas of movement, but nothing drastic or severe. It looks like all of the dead/decaying matter from scalping the yard has held the seed in place. I'll get a better look later today when I get home from work.


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## dleonard11122 (Jun 24, 2020)

It isn't widespread yet, but after dropping seed on Tuesday, 8 Sept I am seeing early signs of germination on Sunday, 13 Sept. This is 5 days for TTTF which sounds about right. I'm looking forward to it getting taller and more seed germinating.







I've also begun noticing some bleaching in the backyard from the Tenacity application I did. It isn't widespread either, but I see it in spots. My application was meant to be a pre emergent, so most of it probably got watered into the soil and not absorbed into the weeds.


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## dleonard11122 (Jun 24, 2020)

Today is 10 DASD and 5 DAG. I am pretty happy with the coverage of germination I'm seeing. There are some bare spots where seed must have washed away in that storm we got a couple days after I put the seed down, especially in the areas that didn't have existing crabgrass to hold it in place (at least it's good for something.) But overall I'm seeing a lot of grass babies starting to get above the existing weeds (which are bleaching more and more by the day).



Here's a spot that was completely bare prior to seed as a result of running an irrigation line. It's not the best coverage but it will do.



Only a matter of time now before the grass babies start covering over the existing weeds.



This is an example of what happens when seed washes into one spot. Woops!


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## dleonard11122 (Jun 24, 2020)

At 12 DASD and 7 DAG I had to cut the front yard. I mowed down to 3". It looks so good, I can't believe it. This lawn hasn't had fertilizer since Spring. There's still Tenacity bleaching present, but I'm looking forward to that growing out over the next couple weeks. I plan to mow this (and the backyard for the first time) next weekend and maintaining 3" HOC for the fall.


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## dleonard11122 (Jun 24, 2020)

The sun was in a better place to show off the stripes in the front lawn today. I can't wait to start putting some N down next weekend. I just decided today I'm going to start doing liquid fertilizer apps by dissolving urea in my tow behind sprayer.


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## dleonard11122 (Jun 24, 2020)

I got out the tape measure after work today to see how tall the grass seedlings in the back were. Most were around 2"-2.5" and maybe a couple up near 3". I know the recommendation is to mow new TTTF at 2" for the first few cuts but my lawn is too uneven for me to feel comfortable with this. I'm hoping to mow at 3" on Friday.

Additionally, I've settled on my fall Fertilizer plan. I'm going to apply 46-0-0 Urea as a liquid in my tow behind sprayer. I'll do this weekly, putting down .18#N/M each application. Additionally for the front lawn (which is more mature turf as a result of being overseeded last fall) I'm going to be applying 6-0-0 Main Event, mainly for the iron but also the added micros and humics. I'll apply this once every 21 days, or with every 3rd fertilizer application.

This will be my first time spraying fertilizer, but for the cost and ease of application I don't think I can beat it. I am really looking forward to seeing how the front yard takes off, and for the bath yard to start tillering and filling in.

I do have a question for anyone who may be reading this and is familiar with foliar nitrogen applications. Should I avoid mowing 2 days before/after applying, like I would for a foliar herbicide application?


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## synergy0852 (Jun 30, 2018)

You can do it right after a mow no problem. Don't do it before a mow though as you want it to sit on the blades for a bit. Most try to water it in at some point after 4 hours or so. I personally spray in the evening and water the next morning to rinse the blades.


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## dleonard11122 (Jun 24, 2020)

@synergy0852 Thanks, that works out perfectly for me then. I plan to mow and spray Friday evening and then Saturday morning my daily irrigation cycle will run.


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## dleonard11122 (Jun 24, 2020)

I found a photo I took of my original soil test back in Spring 2019. This was done through Rutgers via my county extension. The test on the right was based on samples collected from the front yard, and the back yard is on the left. Knowing what I know now, I'm not 100% confident in the method that I used to collect the samples. I'll probably get a coring tool this winter to do another test and see how things have changed in the last two years.


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## dleonard11122 (Jun 24, 2020)

Well..... The weather was just too nice today after work so I gave the front lawn a courtesy mow. At 3" again and I was barely taking any clippings in areas. I assume it's a little stunted from the dry cold weather we've had, but it could probably use some N as well. I am picking up the Urea and Main Event tomorrow. Can't wait to spray at some point this weekend.



After I got done the front, I decided to heed @Harts advice and give the backyard overseed it's first mow sooner than I was originally planning. I anticipated mowing this weekend at 3", but based on his advice of mowing earlier at lower heights I decided to give it a try today at 2.5". I know the recommendation is 2" but 2.5" was the lowest I could stomach without concern of scalping in some areas. I'm using a 48" ride on mower and unfortunately my back lawn is pretty uneven.



I'm now 15 DASD and 10 DAG. I didn't git many clippings (if any) on the new grass, but it did help to cut back any of the existing grass (or weeds)

This section here is the best looking in the backyard. It had a lot of existing grass desirable grasses, and the new seed is coming it well too.



Here's a close up shot so you can tell me if my blades need to be sharpened. 


And here's that section where the seed got washed together. It's hilariously thick, and im sure most of it will die off as they keep growing.


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## dleonard11122 (Jun 24, 2020)

In addition to the mowing, we got quotes today to have two large silver maple trees removed from our front lawn. One is about 40' and unfortunately dying. The middle of the canopy never came in this year, and it sending a bunch of sickly looking branches out with no leaves.

The other is 50' and a bit closer to our house. Probably 10' away, and some of the larger branches tower over our roof. Everytime we got a storm I was concerned for these two trees, so I think we'd like to go ahead and have them cut down. I plan to replace them with something a bit smaller and more attractive. Currently thinking a flowering dogwood tree as that is native to my area.

The tree removal company said they'd need to bring their box truck onto the lawn to cut the trees down. They have mats they put down first to distribute the trucks load and reduce rutting, but I'm sure having the mats down on the lawn for any significant amount of time is going to do damage, right?

We have the option of scheduling the work to be done soon, which would obviously be during the prime growing season for my TTTF. Would that help the grass survive/bounce back? Or should we wait until the lawn starts to go dormant in November/December?


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## dleonard11122 (Jun 24, 2020)

I did my first foliar fertilizer applications today. I applied .4#/M of 46-0-0 to my entire lawn, and .1#/M of 6-0-0 Main Event to the front lawn only.

Unfortunately, it wasn't dry enough to mow this morning, so I didn't get that done. I let the fertilizer sit on the grass blades for 4 hours and then ran a short irrigation cycle to water anything leftover into the soil.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to see a difference in the grass. I also hope to get out and now again.


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## dleonard11122 (Jun 24, 2020)

It dried out enough to give the lawn another mow today. I can't say that the lawn looks noticeably darker as a result of the iron and fertilizer treatment yesterday, but it does look good so I'm happy with that. This is the front lawn cut to 3" again. Overall I'm really happy with where this is at right now. I've got a couple of patchy spots but you cant tell unless you're on top of it. From the street, I think I finally have the nicest looking front lawn on the block. Take that, old retired guy down the street with KBG.



The back lawn got its 2nd now to 2.5" today. I was certainly taking clippings on more baby blades of grass today than the last cut. I hope that continues to be the case.



We'll be out of town for the next 5 days, so it'll be 6 days before I can get out and mow again. I'm intrigued to see how everything looks when we get back.


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## dleonard11122 (Jun 24, 2020)

Saturday I gave everything a quick mow. The front is still looking great at 3", and the backyard is coming in thicker now at 2.5". I'm really hoping the lower-than-usual mow for the TTTF will encourage lots of tillering to fill in and thicken up.

Yesterday, I had some time before the football games started to get out and spray another app of liquid 46-0-0. I went heavier this time, with 0.25#N/M across the entire yard. I also had enough Tenacity to make a second app on the front yard, so I used that up.

Based on my lawn sizes (10k sqft front/ 22.5k sqft back) it is relatively easy for me to put 10 gal in the tank for a front yard app, and 21 gal in the tank for a backyard app. For the backyard fertilizer app, I put 12# of the 46-0-0 in the tank, and I noticed that it was settling to the bottom and not dissolving well. I hadn't noticed this for previous applications to the front or back, but this was the most urea I've tried to dissolve at once before too. I ended up turning my pump on to bypass, and that with a little stirring from the top of the tank seemed to get it to dissolve. I'll need to keep an eye out for this in the future, and will probably just invest in one of those stirring attachments for drills.


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## dleonard11122 (Jun 24, 2020)

Gave everything a mid-week mow today after work. The front yard looks really nice right now at 3". I know a lot of the folks here like to go reel low, but even the difference between 4" to 3" has been crazy to see.



The back lawn is really starting to grow in now. It's filling in a lot of the bare spots and crowding out any of the dead weeds that were leftover. I have been cutting this at 2.5", but might start to let that come up to 3" before winter. I also might just leave it at 2.5", still not sure. 


So far I've done two apps of foliar N by spraying 46-0-0. I might try putting out granular 46-0-0 this weekend at 0.5# N/M just to see if I notice a significant difference or not. If no difference, I can always go back to weekly foliar apps at 0.25#N/M.


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