# Sam36's Futile Lawn Journal



## sam36 (Apr 14, 2020)

To spring off of my introductory post, I think I'll do some journaling. Not sure what the whole plan is, you probably won't see any fancy striping here, but there should be some improvements


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## sam36 (Apr 14, 2020)

I bought this pro plugger last year and never used it, think I'll try it out on a bare spot in the back yard.



Hmm, somewhat lipstick on a pig-ish. Think I'll just keep this area watered more and see what happens



Time to wake these ladies up.


Lets see if I can do everything in under 2 hours



Win



Last bag of AS



Let's put out 40 lbs over 20k with the mini. Should have an earthway 2170 by the end of the week. Need to pick up some more fert too.



Been mowing at 2.5". Went at 2" this time. Didn't hit any rocks either.



Can tell it is shorter. Made it patchier too. Mother nature has failed this year so far at any good rain, so will have to do it manually.



Most of the patches in the front are crabgrass. Going to water it really good tomorrow, then hopefully a rain storm will come the next day. Then I'll bomb it with some more celsius and quinclorac


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## sam36 (Apr 14, 2020)

Forgot that I am actually out of quinclorac and the site I bought more from hasn't even shipped yet so I guess scratch that plan.


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## Redtwin (Feb 9, 2019)

Try your local Site One store


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## sam36 (Apr 14, 2020)

Got the earthway 2170 in





Gears are plastic, but seems durable




You can cram 130lbs into the hopper but you get a bit of frame flexing and it gets top heavy. This is diammonium phosphate. The white specs are rocks strangely.



Did some mowing







Been trying months to kill crabgrass, only to discover it is actually king ranch bluestem which apparently nothing kills. Current plan is to treat with msma and hopefully that will give it a contrasting color against the bermuda and then I'll torch it. This was a test run. I'll probably get one of those big weed burner torches. Probably still won't kill it completely but then it will be easy to make weekly visits to the black patches on the yard and burn or treat with roundup more.


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## sam36 (Apr 14, 2020)

Doing some spraying today. Covered about 24k sqft. Running blue teejets at 50psi. Crawling along at 2.8 mph to hopefully get around .9 gallon per 1k



Lets see how yellow it gets


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## sam36 (Apr 14, 2020)

sam36 said:


> Lets see how yellow it gets


Pretty yellow, (Taken on May12th) but really helping solve my KR bluestem problem:


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## sam36 (Apr 14, 2020)

Not much new news. Got tired of the overgrown "goat pen" behind my house:



Hard to see, but it is really unlevel and lumpy. So going to do some "lawn leveling":



And like 4 hours later..



Got tired of looking at the black dirt. Had 10lbs of "Pennington Sahara II" that I had bought for another project. Not sure what "sahara II" is.. I thought it was a version of "NuMex", but not sure. Can't figure out if the seeds produced are sterile (a true hybrid) or not either... But been thinking of playing with one of the true "hybrid from seed" varieties, p77, riviera, arden15, etc. Went with the riviera replacement "Monaco".

And for an experiment, I did 2lbs of "Sahara II" on the right side of the field, and 2lbs of "Monaco" on the left side of the field. Manually raked and got a good loose layer of soil on top (way more work than I thought!). Threw out the seed with a spreader, and been watering. Was using one impact sprinkler, but had to add another because winds we blowing way too hard and the far right of the field was staying dry:



Also discovered stupid ants have been gathering up the seeds and stacking them in piles everywhere: :roll:





Watered the field everyday several times for about a week before seeding. Put out a thick layer of roundup. Unfortunately, I forgot to turn the sprinkler timer off so about an hour after the app, the sprinkler came on and probably washed most of the poison off... :bd:

Nonetheless, I am interested in comparing the two sides of the field. Stuff like growth rate, and I probably won't water it any more after august so that will be a good drought test. Then we'll see which one stays green the longest into November. I assume Monaco will win in all categories... but we'll see. Not sure if I'll mow it this year. Goats will probably keep it to 1/2" anyway, especially come July it will probably be the only green thing around. On day 5, I found a few germinating sprouts from both.


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## sam36 (Apr 14, 2020)

Oh course it had to rain 2" overnight





Seeds don't look too stirred up, but definitely some soil was washed around. Kind of messes up my plan to have two patches of different bermuda to compare. The slope is from left to right so the monaco will have ran into the sahara II. But the field is somewhat 'U' shaped so only the center right side will have a mix of both (hopefully).


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## sam36 (Apr 14, 2020)

I've been taking pictures of the growth nearly every day, but hard to get good ones without getting muddy and screwing up stuff. Seeds were planted on May 21 and this is from today (June 8):



So we have Monaco on the left (just left of the sprinkler) and Sahara II on the right. There's clearly a difference. There is a line of common bermuda that my one dose of roundup didn't fully kill (about 3ft in front of the sprinkler), but the more rapid growth of the Sahara II is evident. At first I thought maybe the 2" of rain had washed the seeds from the left of the field to the right. But in looking closer, the field slopes not only to the right, but also to the center. There is clear evidence of more seeds in the center of the field than the edges. I then thought perhaps the right side was getting more water, but that is not the case either. In doing more comparisons, it was clear that while the Sahara II was getting close to 2" tall, the tallest Monaco I could find was a mere .5", most more like .25".

Today I got curious on what exactly "Sahara II" is, and I discovered that its code name goes under 'SWI-1001'

Searching for that leads to an interesting test doc It seems the data is from the 2002 - 2008 era, but it thankfully has both Riviera and SWI 1001. Riviera seems to be the recommended winner with SWI 1001 ending up in the middle tier loosing in all catgegories except one: "establishment vigor". Riviera gets one of the worst scores: 24 while SWI 1001 gets one of the best: "7"

So if Monaco is the successor to Riviera, it perhaps inherited its establishment slowness as well. So this will be an interesting test!

I think around May 28th and then on June 1st, I put out about 3lbs per 1k sqft of diammonium phosphate. Up until the 28th, everything was mostly looking the same. But about 2 days later, around the 30th, the Sahara II suddenly just started taking off. So just 10 days or so after seeding, the Sahara II was over 1" tall. And just a few days later was close to 2". The new greenery quickly caught the attention of the goats and they promptly "mowed" it down to about .5", which is where they are keeping it.


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## acegator (May 31, 2018)

Love the journal very entertaining.

Grew up on a farm now live in the burbs would love to have my pigs back lol



sam36 said:


> I've been taking pictures of the growth nearly every day, but hard to get good ones without getting muddy and screwing up stuff. Seeds were planted on May 21 and this is from today (June 8):
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## sam36 (Apr 14, 2020)

Goats are really desecrating my project here.



Since this is the only green thing around, they are standing here all day and keeping it at like .25". I didn't mind at first, but then starting finding quite a bit of brown bermuda that had just been completely uprooted and left. So with that, I put up a temporary fence.

This was a few days later on the 21st:



Monaco on the left, Sahara II on the right. Monaco has a slightly deeper green. Some of the common randomly turns yellow. Not sure why, perhaps from the initial dose of roundup still affecting. But you can use that to judge the size difference.



Close up of Sahara II



Closer up of Sahara II (in a thin spot)



Close up of Monaco.



Closer up of Monaco. (in a thin spot)

Monaco is certainly slower growing. Hard to say, but it seems to be more apt to spread laterally. Hard to find any Monaco without stolons, where as there are a few areas of Sahara II without any stolons.


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## sam36 (Apr 14, 2020)

And now (a week later)



Hard to tell, but the Monaco had a much more pleasing color, its slight, but noticeable. In the top right, there is a slight brown hue in the Sahara II which the Monaco does not have.



Close up of Sahara II


Closer up of Sahara II


Close up of Monaco.



Closer up of Monaco. Really putting out those runners and has a good color.

Trying to figure out when to let the goats back in to "mow" it. There's still a few areas that are thin and have shallow roots. Part of me wants to just go do it now, another part says to wait another week. Hmm.


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## sam36 (Apr 14, 2020)

The Monaco mostly refuses to grow vertically at all. The Sahara II I figured would grow tall like common, it is indeed taller than Monaco, but nothing like common.

From July 3rd:


And July 19th:



Close up of Monaco thin spot (really putting out runners)



And close up of Sahara II, it also seems to have good runner production:



For comparison, this is a section of two different kinds of "common" that is natural around here. In the picture, one seems more lighter in color, but in person, it has more of a teal color. This lighter one is not too bad, it mostly grows out and not up. But you can clearly see the runner production difference between this and the monaco/sahara:



We are also now under Stage 1 water restrictions, only supposed to water twice a week now. Certainly hot and dry!


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## sam36 (Apr 14, 2020)

Time for some really overdue updates....

After a fresh mow on August 8th:


A few days later, August 12th:



And August 30, mostly very little watering all month (compare the brown fields in the back):



In July, I got annoyed with a random bare spot in the back yard so I used the tractor to cut it out. July 5th:



Planted monaco and been watering as needed. August 30:


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## sam36 (Apr 14, 2020)

Found this new toy on craigslist in September for $100:



September 5th. Maybe it rained or I actually started watering again, can't remember. But it is green. Note the color difference between left and right:



Farther back:



And the 18th, still having temps in the 100's:



September 26th after a mow:





November 14th. Got very little rain over the fall which is rare. Temps at night mostly stay above 55 degrees. A few times it dipped down to 50, and just a couple of times, down to 40 degrees. With a freeze eventually going to happen, I took down the fence and stopped watering and turned it over to the goats:


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