# tomizzle's lawn journal. Arden 15 from seed.



## tomizzle (Apr 8, 2021)

Location: SF bay area

Size: 225 sqft

We bought this house 3 years ago. The front yard used to be a lawn of mixed grass. We killed that lawn and transformed most of it to a garden.

We left a small area for a lawn. 


When it started to get warmer I seeded it with arden 15 but germination didn't happen probably because it wasn't hot enough even though soil temp was within range. After around 3 weeks i got tired of waiting and tried to pre-germinate the seeds indoors. After a week the seedlings appeared and I sowed them into the ground along with some scotts started fertilizer.

After another week or so I saw little grass blades.


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## HungrySoutherner (May 29, 2018)

With your soil temps its going to be slow for a while in the SF area. Does the soil temps get above the 70s-80s in the Bay Area? Also does that area get direct sun most of the day?


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## tomizzle (Apr 8, 2021)

That area gets sun 9:30-5ish right now. I guess we'll see. If it doesn't work I'll switch to a bentgrass.


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## tomizzle (Apr 8, 2021)

Took some soil temperatures

65F air temperature at 1:45pm
94F soil surface 
70 at 3 in
60 at 6 in

Lawn as it looks right now. Uncovered more seedlings right under the surface by brushing away some soil.


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## ronjonbomber (Apr 14, 2021)

Running an Arden 15 from seed on the East Coast (SC), I used Greencast's soil temp maps to pull the trigger on seeding. April 5th hit 65 degrees and I dropped it and starter then, germ in 3 days and ongoing. What is your water schedule?


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## tomizzle (Apr 8, 2021)

Used to water twice a day. 7 minutes around noon and another 3minutes at 3pm.

Current status



Due to the frequent watering, a couple of dollar spots? Appeared.



So I'm reducing watering to deeply once a week and 5 minutes two more times a week and applied Disease Ex.

Since I'm reducing the watering I'm expecting reduced germination so the areas that are currently a bit thin will stay that way until the grass spreads.

So I'm growing 12 plugs. I sowed some seeds in each so I can put them in spots that need help in a few weeks.


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## tomizzle (Apr 8, 2021)

Lawn update

I think I cut watering too much. I went about a week without watering and you can see parts of the lawn is not as deep green as others.

I'm now watering 20mins twice a week. The lighter green parts have recovered somewhat.

Some of it have started to spread so I'm going to edge it soon.


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## ronjonbomber (Apr 14, 2021)

Starting to fill in, congrats! Have you done any fertilizer since the first dose of Scott's starter? A lot of people on here (myself included recently based on this info) are spoon feeding nitrogen either .25/lb/1000sqft weekly or .50/lb/1000sqft every two weeks. I'm have success with this and it may speed up your fill in.


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## tomizzle (Apr 8, 2021)

I left town for a week and a half and came back to bermudagrass gone wild.





Parts of the lawn was ovrr 5 inches tall but the middle is still quite low and more yellow for whatever reason. Either uneven watering from the sprinkler in the middle or uneven soil nutrients.

I've been applying the stater fertilizer every couple of weeks. I'm going to start to give it a more balanced fertilizer. Something closer to a 2 1 2 with extra iron. I'm just going to mix a few types of fertilizer to get the ratio I want.


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## tomizzle (Apr 8, 2021)

2 days after applying chelated iron. The low spots are starting to fill up. There's a stripe of yellow to the left that may have been caused by some fungus or chemical but that's starting to fix itself too.


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## tomizzle (Apr 8, 2021)

Starting to look pretty good!

At next fertilizer cycle I'm gonna level it with some sand.


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## LucidLawns (May 24, 2021)

That's looking great! I just seeded Arden 15 about 12 days ago. Fingers crossed I get full coverage and turns out as good as yours is looking, keep up the great work!


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## tomizzle (Apr 8, 2021)




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