# Five years of neglect - david_'s Yard Journal



## david_ (Aug 22, 2019)

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*History​*Bought house Spring 2014. Everything needed work.


We focused on the interior that year. But decided have two trees removed and rip out the Asian Jasmine in the fall.


Stayed that way until spring 2015. Smart. Neighbors loved the look.


Finally some Spring landscaping! Palmetto St. Augustine to match neighbors.


Meanwhile the my backyard poa lawn was looking fantastic but would always die by June.


I continued to use Scotts products, Ortho post-emergent hose end sprayers, irregular irrigation schedules "based on feel" and got very mediocre results. Weed pressure was high, especially given the goat field my bermuda backs up to.


Repeat for 2016, 2017, 2018 (remember the armyworms?)


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## david_ (Aug 22, 2019)

*2019 (Pre-Lawn Forum)​**March*
Halts didn't stop the Poa (again). Maybe the fact my yard floods so badly washes it away over the winter (more on that later). Will be interested to see if the prodiamine works better for 2020.


*April*
Re-sodded some St. Augustine that didn't do well in the front yard the prior year (not enough sun, maybe fungus).

I bought a bagging system for my Bronco which was fun:


*May*
It rained. Did I mention the flooding?




Fixed the valve cover gasket leak these Kohlers are notorious for (hooray RTV) and cleaned the engine for the first time in my 5 years of ownership. Before:


After:


*June*
Sprayed RoundUp on some small sections of Dallisgrass in backyard hoping the bermuda would just fill in. It didn't. There's also a bunch of living Dallisgrass left (top-right of toy car); it will die later in the month.


I impulse bought some sod on the way home from work to fix the areas by my patio. Before:


After:


Needed to do something about my over-shaded front yard. Hired the Tree Shepherds (great company, recommend). They recommended I top-dress with compost as I wasn't following any regular fertilization schedule. They told me the lush lawn would choke out the weeds I was complaining about. They told me about Denton Dyno Dirt. That project begins in July.

*July - aka the month of good intentions and questionable decisions*
Aerate with this:


Compost topdress (4500 lbs of Dyno Dirt with this) plus 4 bags of Milo:


And it greened up nicely:




Patio upgrade (I made the Weber table):


By now, you may have noticed I have common bermuda around my shed, much finer bermuda in my side yard, and some random bermuda sod I put down around my patio. Since variety is the spice of life I decided to seed those bare spots where I killed the Dallisgrass.


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## Bmossin (May 31, 2018)

Im glad to see you starting a journal.


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## david_ (Aug 22, 2019)

*August - aka month I discovered this forum*​4 more bags of Milo (probably will be my last).

My seeding experiment was moderately successful, but I realized my in-ground sprinkler system was a mess. A variety of nozzles/rotaries from 3 decades with no real idea how long to run my zones. So in August, I replaced every single pop-up nozzle with Rain Bird MPRs for the correct distance and made sure all my rotaries were the same - Rain Bird 42SA. 10 tuna cans later and I have a pretty good program. I had been avoiding the project for years. Happy to have it behind me.

I discover the Bermuda Triangle. Promptly forget about this organic stuff and purchase Celsius, Certainty, a backpack sprayer and some tracker die. Application goes down late August. I never knew how much weeds I had until they started dying a couple weeks ago. Kyllinga was outta control.

Stain a fence because that's fun in 100 degrees:


Build a fence to keep the killer goats out:


*September*
Prodiamine and a low dose of Celsius.

Scalp Bermuda to reset HOC to 1.5" and apply some 29-0-5 from Lowes. Greening up nicely.

Firewood:


*Problems yet to solve:*

Some remaining Dallisgrass

Thin areas where I killed Dallisgrass

Flooding

4 different types of Bermuda in the same yard

Leveling


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## david_ (Aug 22, 2019)

Painted dallisgrass today. Well.. I actually just used nitrile gloves and wiped concentrated Roundup on any I could find. Was surprised to see how low and wide they've been growing. I'm sure they'll be some collateral damage but much more precise than the blanket spraying before. We'll see how it does given many of the plants didn't have much for leaves, so I was getting the stems wet.





Edit 6/20/22 - closing this as I've bought a new house and will start a new journal.


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