# tdcarl's 2021 journal - You've Gotta Start Somewhere



## tdcarl (Jul 7, 2021)

Hey everyone, quick backstory time. My wife and I moved into our first home after years of apartment life last Thanksgiving (2020). At the time we had a decent lawn and had no idea where to begin with taking care of it (so we did nothing and hoped for the best). Fast forward to Christmas and we found out that my wife was pregnant and we'd be expecting our first child in August 2021. That news put Project Turn an Old Home Office Into a Nursery to the forefront and made the lawn a bit of an afterthought. As spring came I bought a mower (Toro Recycler)and without any reason just set it to the middle setting (2 1/4" in hindsight)and started mowing once a week. Everything greened up nicely in early spring, but once the heat came we started running into problems. I'm pretty sure we watered ourselves into a fungus problem in the back yard, killed a bunch of grass, grew a bunch of weeds, and eventually came to a fork in the road that lead me to start taking lawn care more seriously.

Now that the backstory is covered, some details about the lawn:
I'm in zone 6a (Grand Rapids, MI)
6,000 sq ft (2500 front yard and 3500 back yard)
Grass is some sort of cool season mix.
Currently dragging a hose and sprinkler around for irrigation. We've got an early model of the Irrigreen system installed, but according to the previous owner there is a software issue that Irrigreen couldn't fix. I reached out to Irrigreen and have gotten no response.

Back Yard: Dog spots, declining weeds, surviving weeds, etc. A big mess.

Front yard pic is a few weeks old now.


My goals:
Have a nice looking front yard by neighborhood standards. I'm thinking 3.5" height of cut and maybe lay down some stripes. The front yard is currently "ok-ish". The area by the road is weedy and there's a bare spot up by the corner of the house. 
Get the back yard to a level where I'm not embarrassed to entertain back there. I've got 2 female dogs over 50lbs each that love to rip around the yard and dig holes (we're working on that part), so I'm not going for perfection there.
At this point I've only used big box store stuff. I'd like to expand my horizons.

The plan:
Get the weeds under control asap and maintain the lawn I do have
Continue to mow 2x weekly at 3 1/4"
Dethatch in the fall
Fill in the holes the dogs have dug out back
Overseed the existing lawn and re-seed the dead spots. I'm looking at a TTTF blend currently and hoping to get seed down around labor day. I know earlier would probably be better, but with a newborn coming mid August it's about as soon as I can do it. I'm planning to use a starter fert with Tenacity.
Assess how things look in spring 2022. If I need to touch up some areas I may spring seed, but I'd really like to get a Pre-M down to help mitigate all in of the crab grass seeds that are inevitably gonna be waiting to germinate.
Soil test in the spring.

The action:
As a said, I pretty much sat on my hands and watched things go downhill this spring. 
June 16 I put down Scotts Weed and Feed out front. I thought I may be having fungus problems out back so I farted around and didn't apply it to the back yard until July 16. This was a mistake and allowed weeds to get a foothold back there. Fortunately it's responded quite well so far. I did accidentally dump a bunch of fert in a corner and burnt the lawn. Lesson learned!
July 20 hit the nutsedge with Ortho Nutsedge killer. It's been responding pretty well, but I definitely missed some. 
July 25 sprayed the weeds by the road out front with Bioadvanced lawn weed and crabgrass killer. I had a lot of spurge and it seems to be responding. This was my first time using a concentrate and pump sprayer and I enjoyed it.

Photo dump!
Crabgrass out back:

Front Yard weeds (was a LOT of spurge that is coming under control)

Patchy mailbox area. From old google street view photos it looks like this has been a problem spot in previous years.

Dirt patch by house. This area was pretty thin from the day we bought the house.

Backyard excavation crew: Prim (8 months)

Maggie (7 years)


Glamor shot:


Thanks for sticking with me through all of this incoherent rambling. My goal here isn't to wow anyone, but rather to hold myself accountable and document my progress as a lawn beginner.


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## tdcarl (Jul 7, 2021)

Got a much needed mow in tonight, especially out back. Tried to cut in a double stripe in the front, but without a roller/striping kit it just didn't show up very well.


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## tdcarl (Jul 7, 2021)

Nutsedge seems to be mostly in control. Sprayed a round of the Bioadvanced weed killer out back, but didn't wanna play around with the mature crabgrass and just gly'd it. 

I recently realized that the well pump was cycling too frequently (it was probably set to work well with the defunct Irrigreen system) so I got to work fixing that.

Upgraded to a 3 sprinkler setup (Orbit H20 6 heads) to draw more water from the system and adjusted the cut in/out pressure settings on the pump and now we're in business. It's running consistently and keeping a nice even spray pattern in the lawn. It's not quite head-to-head coverage, but I'm pretty happy with it for now.

Gave the lawn a haircut this morning as well.


Baby is due within the next 2 weeks so just gonna try to keep on top of the weeds and get ready to dethatch and overseed in about a month.


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## uts (Jul 8, 2019)

@tdcarl you are off to a great start. Trust me most of us are crazy about our lawns but as a father of a 3yo, spend every waking minute with the little one and mum, both will love you so much for it. I would forget any additional inputs apart from the usual stuff.

Call me crazy but with work and everything gets very busy, I look back and glad that I did that. Maybe my 3yo girl has me on her fingers too much


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## tdcarl (Jul 7, 2021)

Thanks! Spending time with the kiddo and wife are priority #1, so I'm with you there!

Big day today! My wife got me a striping kit for our anniversary. I got it all assembled today, so tomorrow it'll lay down it's first stripes.

Also picked up the seed for my fall overseed. Grabbed a bag of starter fert with Tenacity and some urea (for use in the future) too.


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## Chris LI (Oct 26, 2018)

You're going to love the Toro striping kit! I love mine. Since you mentioned overseeding,; I've also rigged it behind the spreader for overseeding, to get better seed to soil contact. If you have a drop spreader for seeding, it should work even better. Try to scalp and rough it up a little, first, if you can fit it in between family time.


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## tdcarl (Jul 7, 2021)

First cut with the striping kit. Pretty pleased with the results.


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## hobbyaddict1 (Aug 26, 2021)

How did fall seeding go? Did you pursue the irrigreen issues any further?


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## tdcarl (Jul 7, 2021)

hobbyaddict1 said:


> How did fall seeding go? Did you pursue the irrigreen issues any further?


I sent Irrigreen an email, but never heard back. I coulda called, but accepted that any upgrades aren't in the budget. My 3 sprinkler system works well enough for now.

Haven't updated in a while! Fall overseed/patching went ok. I should have taken more pics before/during as I've probably made more progress than I think. The biggest patchy spot washed out twice while seeding, then I think some fungus got to it and dinged it up pretty good. Put down azoxy today, probably should have done it a lot earlier. That area will probably get some spring seed. 
Overall the back yard is looking pretty ok, still some spots slowly germinating. I also found out I had a ton of nimblewill in the front yard. Good news is it's dying, bad news is it looks bad in the process.
Enough reading, time for pics!
Fun pattern from early August.

Late August, area by the driveway/road starting to get a bit toasty.

Last fun mow before I hacked it down and dethatcher.


Dethatched, seed down, starter+meso, peat moss (on the big open spots) on Labor day. Then we wait. In hindsight I should have gotten more peat moss and covered more areas. Also some preventative fungicide would have been a good idea.
Germination! Started seeing the first grass babies at around 5-6 days.

Put in a new mailbox a few days ago

And here's today:

The area with nimblewill.

This was where that mega crabgrass was in my pics earlier this summer. Please ignore the disgusting flower bed. That's next year's project.

The backyard.

Washout and fungus area.


This area was a little thin all summer and never really bounced back after dethatching. I was hoping to to get more germination popping through, but I think I should have been more aggressive getting the old stuff out.

Also, new toy today!

Going to break it in tomorrow by spraying 0.5lb/k of urea.


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## hobbyaddict1 (Aug 26, 2021)

Looks like you are staying on top of it! I recently purchased a back pack sprayer as well.


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## Wile (Sep 17, 2020)

Looks like it's coming in great. Baby seedlings make me happy. Have you used the sprayer yet? I'm considering getting that one since I already have the batteries.


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## tdcarl (Jul 7, 2021)

I've used it once so far and it worked well. I got some TeeJet nozzles since then, so I'm looking forward to my next N app on Sunday to try those out. For the price I think it's a great deal, especially if you've already got more batteries. Most of my tools are Bosch, so this is my first tool on the Ryobi platform.
I didn't get any pics, but that fungus-looking area has bounced back nicely. 
Here's a few pics from last Saturday's mow.


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