# The Grass Factor Lawn Journal



## thegrassfactor (Apr 12, 2017)

I've never been in a position to do one of these, but I made up my mind last year to do so and have fun with it.

This started last year when I attempted to burn off the dormant grass and inadvertently set my shed on fire.






Somehow between that and the rest of last year, I had a lot of idle time to think. I'm not sure how y'all are wired, but if I have too much time to think, I get too many wild hairs up my rear. Alas, I decided I was going to forego applying pre-emergent to my lawn in the fall, pray it would flood (and take my house with it), and then I could trial different poa annua herbicides.

Well, indeed the lawn did flood (but my house was safe)


That being said, the result was pretty atrocious this spring.



Particularly here in the South East, we had a very non-conducive spring for warm season grass. I even had a frost in late April. I knew the lawn was getting pretty damn bad, and it was beyond the scope of "testing poa" herbicides, but I wanted to really push the boundaries for how quick I could get it to recover, and as such held out until May 12. Why May 12? The forecast at the point looked to be in a significant warming trend. Even though I was beginning to see green bermuda, all the bermuda properties I drove past were still, even at May 12, partially dormant. So with a warming trend in the forecast, I decided now was the time to let it rip. But first, some strategy that I'll get into later.

I haven't managed turf in a "professional" capacity in over 2 years. While part of this was for online content, the other part was to exercise my decision making. Also, I wanted to have fun again. It's been a long time since I've enjoyed managing my own property. It's been a long time since I've enjoyed making content. All this to say, this was my attempt to do something fun, take a few risks, and see what the rewared could be. You'll see I took a few risks, got burned, and had to scramble - the beautfy of maintaining turf is implementing strategy and pivoting when need be.

This is the start of my 2020 lawn journal.


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## coreystooks (Aug 6, 2019)

Oh is this going to be good!


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## cldrunner (May 14, 2019)

@thegrassfactor I have learned so much from your videos. I am really looking forward to keeping up with your journal.


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## thegrassfactor (Apr 12, 2017)

The point of this was to create the biggest, fastest bang I could.

My overall concerns are:

1. Temperatures

We're still cool. I had a frost on May 10. I'm going to hit 90 byt the end of this week, but will hovering in the 70s-80s over the next few weeks.

2. The diversity of weeds

Already, the back fifty is full of henbit, plantains, clover, purple and yellow nutsedge, button weed, dallisgrass, fescue clumps, poa A, and poa T.

3. Density of the turf underneath

As part of preparing for the "poa" experiment, I scaled the backyard in November from approximately 3.5" to ~.5". It was about a week before the first frost. This was an attempt to encourage as much poa as possible. The part that had me freaked out now, was how little bermuda I could see. The density of the weed cover over winter had really done a number to the amount of viable bermuda.

As a note - my back yard is common bermuda.

Given all those factors, when looking at the herbicide selection, the idea was to be as broad spectrum as possible.

I've always had good success with monument on sedges + poa, monument + 3 way on buttonweed, 3 way for the remainder of the weeds. To accelerate the burn down, I opted to go with carfentrazone vs. sulfentrazone. Why? I was afriad of collateral damage and stunting of the bermuda, especially given how sparse the coverage already was.

I had to determine rates. The weed density, maturity, and volume was extremely high, so I opted not to tiptoe around.

Application #1:
*edit: Dithiopyr: 2pints/acre
monument: 15g/acre
3 way: 64oz/acre
carfentrazone: 2oz/acre
PS804 surfactant: 1% v/v
(PS804 Label: https://prime-sourcellc.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/PS-804-Select-Spec-Label_Final.pdf

Looking back on it, PS804 was probably not the right choice. It's an acidifying surfactant and given I likely needed the most long term action out of monument (trifloxysulfuron) and sulfonyl ureas have the shortest residual in acidic solutions, it was a bad call. I already have acidic soil - there's no real reason to compound an environment that will negatively affect the longevity of such an expensive herbicide. Poor ROI choice.

I made that application (and make all applications) with my PermaGreen. Application volume of 11 gal/acre.

Two days post application, I'm beginning to see some action:


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## thegrassfactor (Apr 12, 2017)

Even though I had mentally commited to try and "flip" the lawn as quickly as possible, one of the things I forgot was owning a mower. I have a reel mower but I do not have a rotary mower. To remove the amount of vegetation I have on the lawn, I have no option but to rotary mow it - or at least that's how I metnally processed it.

I took a trip to ****en's Turf. I prefer to spend the money locally, regardless of our past relationship.

They had a few push mowers to select from and I didn't want to spend a ton of money. They had this sweet 1500$ big *** Toro but it was beyond my price range. Instead I opted for this big guy:

It has an aluminum deck, is self propelled, and light enough my son can even use it. Also, most importantly, in my price range, and as such is a win.


That day, I scaled the lawn as low as it would go with the rotary mower and attempted to cut with the JD.


May 15

I removed about 20 bags of clippings all said and done.


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## Ware (Jan 28, 2017)

:thumbsup:


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## thegrassfactor (Apr 12, 2017)

I forgot I also applied pre-emergent with my first herbicide application. I edited it to show I had also sprayed dithiopyr @ 2pts/acre.

I knew I needed to fertilize the lawn, and should have when I applied my herbicide application, but I didn't have any to apply.

Given how cool we were (mid 70s, low 80s), I had planned on over applying the N to try to stimulate as much growth as possible as quickly as possible. Do the sparse density, I wasn't overly concerned with upward growth. The lack of density would actually act to encourage the lateral movement of the turf.

I'm not sure if this is scientifically factual or not, but in my experience/opinion, bermudagrass largely does not begin massively upward growth patterns until a certain density is reached. Trying to reason it out, it's easier for light to reach the soil surface, thus limited need to attempt to move upward to find light. Again, not founded in science, just an observation I've made.

I own a fertilizer company so it would only make sense to not spend the money on outside fertilizer and thus decided to get some CX moving my direciton.

I applied 174lbs/acre (.96lbs actual N) on 5/16.

Speaking of wild hairs, I had another one to go ahead and apply the same rate to my fescue (Front lawn is fescue). The great debate of summer fertilizer on tall fescue is one for the ages, and honestly I'm not even sure where I stand on the topic. I have always subscribed to low rates, blah blah blah, but I went ahead and hit it as well. According to the weather, I was on a cooling trend for the next 4 days followed by a pretty significant warming trend -forecasted to hit almost 90 just 8 days after my application. Temperatures are also forecasted to remain high and as such will be entering disease season (brown patch, tall fescue). I had seen the study from NC State relating to brown patch and N https://turfpathology.ces.ncsu.edu/...increase-brown-patch-severity-in-tall-fescue/ rates and decided to put it to the test.

Taking a page from my Canadian friends: Are you silly? I'm still gonna send it.

Here is the bermuda 4 DAIT. You can see the yellow/bronzing from the carfentrazone.





Here is the fescue, day of application





Nothing has been applied to either the front of back lawn since July of last year.

I also somehow snagged this picture of my daughter:


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## Rooster (Aug 19, 2019)

thegrassfactor said:


> I'm not sure if this is scientifically factual or not, but in my experience/opinion, bermudagrass largely does not begin massively upward growth patterns until a certain density is reached. Trying to reason it out, it's easier for light to reach the soil surface, thus limited need to attempt to move upward to find light. Again, not founded in science, just an observation I've made.


My very early, purely anecdotal evidence supports this with ~ 6 month old sod and ~6 week old seedlings. Very little comes off in a mowing despite pushing N hard, but it's thickening nicely.

Looking forward to the rest of this! I grew up in Knoxville and enjoy your contributions here and elsewhere. :thumbup:


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## Tmank87 (Feb 13, 2019)

Go Vols


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## thegrassfactor (Apr 12, 2017)

We got a good rain that night, so I knew the part was on. Here's progression over the next couple of days:

5/17





5/18


5/19





Now that I'm a week post initial application, I can begin to see the dallisgrass purpling from the trifloxysulfuron.

With it in a weakened state, I wanted to repeat an old dallisgrass method I've used before

Monument FB Tribute FB Tribute

In reality, I should have waited two weeks to make this application, but I'm really swinging for the fences here.

I went ahead and applied my first application, max rate, Tribute Total to the dallisgrass. I zone sprayed.

Tribute Total:
3.2oz/A
MSO+Organosilicone blend 1%v/v (https://prime-sourcellc.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Duo-Stick-Select-Spec-Label_Final.pdf)
And a handful of AMS (how about that for precise)


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## thegrassfactor (Apr 12, 2017)

Already under the influence of trifloxysulfuron, I didn't see massive discoloration from the Tribute Total application. Also, I still don't have warm temperature till about now.

The grass has grown enough to contrinue cutting it with the rotary. I'd say it's ~1.25-1.5" at the lowest setting. I honestly have no idea though, and don't really care. I just know it grew enough to cut.






It also gave me the opporunity to put my son to work





AT this point, I decided to go ahead and put the reel on it. I set the HOC @ .5" and gave it an ole double trouble. 





Warmer temperatures are arising at this point, so I started planning on a PGR app. The grass is really starting to grow:





I also begin daily cutting @ .5 HOC, with an actual somewhere around .45




You can see upon closer inspection, it's still quite thin.


Last summer I played around with combining paclo+tnex on common bermuda

TRIGGER WARNING:I do not recommend doing this. Paclo will moderately CONTROL/SUPPRESS common bermuda. This is OFF LABEL and again, NOT RECOMMENDED.

I opted to run the following:

TNEX: @ 11oz/A
Trimmit: @ 10oz/A

And this was my second of several mistakes. (Timing of Tribute app being #1)


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## thegrassfactor (Apr 12, 2017)

Tmank87 said:


> Go Vols


GBO!


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## acegator (May 31, 2018)

This is awesome  Learned so much from your video's @thegrassfactor

Now spill the beans how much chicken feed did you have to use to turn this lawn around?


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## Green (Dec 24, 2017)

@thegrassfactor, nice to see you started a journal. Next time you get to post in it, I have to ask this: when you burn the lawn like that, do you have to get permission from the fire dept and have them on standby?


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