# Laramee's 2020 journal



## Laramee (Apr 21, 2019)

I've been a long time lurker and this will be my first journal. A little back story on my lawn. We bought our house in 2018 and it was new construction. We have two year old sod that is a *** blend from manderley. I live very far north so we have short summers. My front yard is north facing which doesn't help. I also have two dogs that have made short work of my back yard. I'm addressing that problem right away.

April 18th and we still had lots of snow but temps were finally starting to come up.





April 21st all the snow was gone and the lawn wasn't frozen so I did some light raking. The one section in my back yard is almost all dead from the dogs.






April 29th and 30th I used my thatch rake to clean out a lot of the dead grass and debris I had. I didn't go very aggressive because I discovered I have a bad shallow root problem in most of my yard. Probably form my bad watering practices when I first got me sod and the very wet summer we had last year. I did a clean up mow at 2" after using the thatch rake.

Here is a before and after picture of on section in my back yard. 




May 6th I decided to do a another clean up mow at 1 1/2 to try and get more of the dead grass cause I wanna try and keep the lawn around 2" this year but we'll see.

May 12th I did a double pass with an aerated. I drop .3N/K. Applied a 3 month rate of prodiamine. Used my hose end sprayer to put down kelp4less extreme blend. 1tbs/K

May 19th I have everything a cut at 2"




The side of my back yard that has a few dog pee spots are filling in nicely. I also used my pro plugger to fill in some of the bigger spots.

For that mostly dead section in the back, once the rain stops plan is to scalp whatever's left as low as I can. I'll bring in some top soil and do some seeding.

So I'm having a battle with quackgrass. In my back yard and a little in the front as well. It's coming over from the new uninhabited house beside me.

So I mixed up some roundup and sprayed my fence and alone my property line. I also planted some that are trying to get over in my grass.


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## Laramee (Apr 21, 2019)

Yesterday I gave the yard a cut at 2". 2" is a little too low for the front cause of how uneven it is. Had some scalping in a couple spots. The dead spots from the street salt are starting to fill in.

Today I sprayed .2N and used my pro plugger to fill some of the dog pee spots in the back.


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## Laramee (Apr 21, 2019)

Today was a busy day. I want to start growing grass in my back alley. It was just back filled with rocks and whatever junk after the contraction. So I dug down about 4inches. Filled with top soil. It's way too windy today so I'll get my seed down maybe tomorrow if the wind dies down.








My one section of the backyard that was mostly killed by dog pee, I scalped it at 1" and filled in a bunch of low spots.

Pre scalp

Post scalp

Post fill


Than I gave the rest of the back yard a cut at 2" and the front a cut at 2 1/2"

If the wind calms down later tonight I'm going to get an app of FaS down.


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## Stuofsci02 (Sep 9, 2018)

Very nice. What are you striping with?


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## Laramee (Apr 21, 2019)

@Stuofsci02 its just a makeshift strip kit. It's just a piece of metal zip tied to my mower.


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## Stuofsci02 (Sep 9, 2018)

Laramee said:


> @Stuofsci02 its just a makeshift strip kit. It's just a piece of metal zip tied to my mower.


Works pretty good!


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## Laramee (Apr 21, 2019)

Yesterday night when the wind died down I applied fas and .25lbs n. 
This morning I put down some extreme blend then watered it in and the fas off. 
My seedworld order came in today and I applied a curative rate of propiconazole. I have leaf spot showing up.

I seeded the small area in the the alley. Raked it in, than stomped it down. (Well not really stomp but just walked on it) Put some peatmoss on top and let the sprinklers go. It was at that point I found out my sprinkler timer is broken so I'll have to fix that tomorrow. 
I also didn't have enough peatmoss to do the other section in my back yard. I didn't want to have to pull around a bunch of sprinklers around. So once i fix the timer and get more pestmoss and probably another hose. I'll get sprinklers set up and seed those bare patches. And than everything will get an app of tenacity.





The quack grass that was coming on my fence line is almost all gone. Except one piece, which I probably just missed when I painted the rest with roundup.


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## Chris LI (Oct 26, 2018)

That last photo looks nice and dense. Did you git that last sucker! :twisted:


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## Laramee (Apr 21, 2019)

So yesterday I gave everything a cut. Hard to tell the difference the fas has made yet.







I seeded the other section in my back yard. Sprayed tenacity and cover with the rest of my pestmoss. I don't have enough. And I can't find any anywhere in town, so that always good.


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## Laramee (Apr 21, 2019)

Just got back from camping today. Grass looked like a jungle. I think I cut it Wednesday before we left so it's been 5 days. We got hammered with rain over the weekend and it's raining today but I snuck in a quick mow between rains. All kinds of new quack grass has popped up due to the rain and the time between mows. Seed heads are in full force out here.





The seeded spots in the alley had some washout from all the rain but... we have germination. They were seeded on the 4th so that makes 11days to germinate.


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## Laramee (Apr 21, 2019)

June 19th I did my second app of fas. I added .25n/k Into my fas. The next morning I sprayed propiconazole at 1oz/k than sprayed extreme blend at 1tbs/k with my hose end. Than watered everything in. I need to really do something about my dogs. The per spots are killing me.







So today we got home and I noticed that someone drove onto my new grass babies in the back alley. Kind of a pisser offer. The progress is coming along pretty well.


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## DiabeticKripple (Apr 14, 2019)

that seed looks familiar!

looking good!

as for the dog spots, is there any way you can fence off a portion to let them do their business? i did that and the rest of my lawn is bouncing back.


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## Laramee (Apr 21, 2019)

@DiabeticKripple well the plan is to build a ramp off the deck and delicate small portion on the back yard to a dog run. I just kind of get busy with camping and what not.


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## Laramee (Apr 21, 2019)

So I though I'd give a man update on my seeded areas. We're 8 or 9 days after germination and I'd like to think we have pretty good progress. Acouple thinner spots but I'm sure they'll thicken up over time. Next I will probably give them a low dose of nitrogen but I'll just play that by ear.


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