# GoBlue's 2018 whole yard mono Bewitched reno and Irrigation install



## goblue4016 (Jul 26, 2018)

Hey All,

So im pretty new here and already everyone has been such a great help. I just bought my first house and am just starting my 2018 whole yard reno and going to a mono Bewitched yard, and installing an in ground irrigation system.. Yes its a lot and you all might think im crazy for doing both in such a short time, but the whole month of August im pretty much not working a whole lot due to our our plant in Germany shutting down for their holiday. So im taking on this beast of a project and after reading a bunch of the Journals i figured I would start my own.

I already laid down the 1st round of Glypho and the 2nd round is tomorrow morning. Today was a great day as my seed, N-Ext products, and soil moist came in! still waiting on the Tenacity to come in and I also need to pick up my scotts starter fert with meso, milo, peat moss, etc.

I will be bringing in a bunch of dirt to level my yard and also cover some of the exposed tree roots i have. I'm looking forward to documenting my whole process! I am definitely not doing all of this on my own i should note as well, there have been so many people on this forum to help give their opinions, advice, etc so I am very thankful for that.

here's 2 pics of my front lawn before doing anything:





here is a pic from today after my 1st Glyphosate round last Saturday:



Here are the supplies that arrived today!


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## Pete1313 (May 3, 2017)

Subscribed. I can't wait to see some more updates!


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## bellts02 (Apr 16, 2018)

Word of caution - the experts always recommend not covering tree roots as they need the oxygen. As for your small tree, suggest bringing the mulch level with the ground.


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## goblue4016 (Jul 26, 2018)

Alright... IM BACK!!!! the past couple weeks did not go as planned at all. ended up having appendicitis and it needed to be removed asap.. so im really screwed with my timeline and now playing catch-up.

Before surgery happened I was able to purchase everything else I am going to need for my Reno, lawn roller, dethatcher, aerator, peat moss, milo, tenacity, etc.

I have spent all day yesterday and today getting as much done as possible to try and seed this coming week. ive scalped the ground, 15 cu. yds. of dirt is coming tomorrow to help level everything. there are some low spots that my mower wasnt able to scalp, and since dirt needs to cover it anyway to make it level im hoping i can just leave the dead grass there burried.

because of the setback also I wont have time for an in ground irrigation system even though i have purchased everything for it (including the Rachio 3!) so im going to have to do a quick above ground and still run it through my Rachio since i am gone almost every weekend starting in 2 weeks.

We have had so much rain in NE Illinois the past couple days and its expected to continue for a couple more days, and it has been 85-90 degrees plus for almost the last 2 weeks. its cooled off this weekend but its supposed to heat back up again. I have to get the seed down asap but i am worried about the hot temperatures we have been having.

I had tree trimmers come out as well and they did an awesome job raising the canopies on the huge maples, I finally have decent sunlight throughout the day pretty much everywhere.


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## b0nk3rs (Aug 21, 2017)




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## iowa jim (Jan 22, 2018)

Hope your feeling better after the surgery, i would be getting that seed down as soon as possible. You will probably be fighting falling leaves and if you have any wash outs there will not be enough time to do any reseeding this fall. Hope you can get at least 1 mow in this fall. Heres to a nice warm fall for you. good luck


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## goblue4016 (Jul 26, 2018)

iowa jim said:


> Hope your feeling better after the surgery, i would be getting that seed down as soon as possible. You will probably be fighting falling leaves and if you have any wash outs there will not be enough time to do any reseeding this fall. Hope you can get at least 1 mow in this fall. Heres to a nice warm fall for you. good luck


Thanks Iowa Jim! i am doing fine now feel good but just stinks to loose that valuable 2 weeks. dirt came yesterday but I cant do anything with it yet. A huge rainstorm came in yesterday and today. the picture below is down the street about 6 houses away. my backyard is currently a swimming pool and were supposed to get more rain tonight and then end of next week another 2-3". when it rains it ours i guess lol i feel someone is trying to tell me to not plant grass seed at all this year.


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## iowa jim (Jan 22, 2018)

Im in the same boat that your in, no pun intended. Im at day 22 with my reno so not as much damage as there could have been, given up on doing any more reseeding now until spring.


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## mmicha (Apr 20, 2018)

goblue4016 said:


> iowa jim said:
> 
> 
> > Hope your feeling better after the surgery, i would be getting that seed down as soon as possible. You will probably be fighting falling leaves and if you have any wash outs there will not be enough time to do any reseeding this fall. Hope you can get at least 1 mow in this fall. Heres to a nice warm fall for you. good luck
> ...


I'm in the Chicago burbs, and know exactly the rain you are describing. It was rough! I was fortunate enough to be able to get my seed down and reno started in early August, but these heavy rains still make me nervous.

All you can do is let it dry out, and get back at is as soon as possible.

Honestly the weather in August wasn't even that nice for seeding... It was hot (90+) and mostly humid/sticky. The weather all over seems to just be doing a dance for all of us!


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

Seed down? Germination?


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## mribbens (Jul 13, 2018)

goblue4016 said:


> Hey All,
> 
> So im pretty new here and already everyone has been such a great help. I just bought my first house and am just starting my 2018 whole yard reno and going to a mono Bewitched yard, and installing an in ground irrigation system.. Yes its a lot and you all might think im crazy for doing both in such a short time, but the whole month of August im pretty much not working a whole lot due to our our plant in Germany shutting down for their holiday. So im taking on this beast of a project and after reading a bunch of the Journals i figured I would start my own.
> 
> ...


Great, welcome to TLF, I am in Grayslake and our cul de sac floods nearly every time it rains too! WIll be following your rennovation.


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## goblue4016 (Jul 26, 2018)

Well its done..... now its just the waiting part. I seeded yesterday.. I know I know.. I REALLY wanted to seed way earlier but after that massive amount of rain we had I realized that my underground drains were not draining at all and that I not only needed to level my yard but re grade it too so water doesn't pool up in the backyard and also come towards the house.

So last weekend I was able to get my buddy to come over with his skid steer and dump trailer and we went to work and re graded the entire house, plus he helped me spread 25 yards of dirt to level after the re grade. not to mention that with his skid steer we were able to get out all the pea gravel and rock border that was around the entire house (the rock absolutely drove me nuts! I will be putting down mulch instead).

We stopped at a weigh station before dumping the rock and with 2 separate trips the total weight was 22,500 lbs.

After that it was just final prep during the week and also fitting in some work lol. BUt yesterday everything went smoothly, I put 1 more layer of glyphosate down the day before since I had a lot of new dirt, I put down 3lbs per 1k of Bewitched mono. scotts starter fert with meso, milo, soil moist, m-binder, and peat moss.

I also put down the morning of some N-EXT products RGS, and humic-12 to hopefully help speed up root development a little since i seeded too late.

below are some pictures for this past weekend re grading and you can kind of tell my yard redesign from my earlier pictures. I will post the seeding pics later as well they are just on my work phone which I dont have right now.

I know im sure people will laugh at me for seeding so late but I am happy with how it went down. the most important thing after all that rain was re-grading because i wouldnt have wanted to do that next year or in 2 years after seeding new grass. Hopefully i will get extremely lucky and it will work out but even if I get no grass and frost kills it, then everything is still ready to go for spring seeding. but hopefully I wont have to worry about it.

Afterwards I installed a temp above ground sprinkler system just to tie me over for this fall. I still used poly pipe, valves and a Rachio to run everything so i wont have to worry about watering as it will just do it for me.

realistically whats everyone opinion on how this is going to go now? is it just way too late for my bewitched to make it? anything else i can do to help give it the best chance possible?

here are some pics pre and during grading:



















and here are 2 pics of after rock removal and grading was done and I was leveling with the ATV:


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## goblue4016 (Jul 26, 2018)

@mmicha Nice another person in chicagoland area! yea that rain was definitely nuts, i hope your seeds are still going strong though! And yea I wanted to seed earlier but your right with August being almost 90 and/raining the whole month.

@g-man I have been following your reno as well and man I feel you guys got hit harder with rain than we did. hopefully post all this rain your seeds are still doing good!

@mribbens Grayslake nice! I grew up in Gurnee, and this house is in Libertyville so were pretty close. 1st house and never even really thought to think about these old subdivisions and poor drainage. luckily im towards the top of the hill but still.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

The grading looks great. I would definitely add prg. Bewitched by it self will be really hard to establish this late and you don't want all the grading to wash away in the winter. You could always Reno again next year (without the grading).


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## Pete1313 (May 3, 2017)

Congrats on the seed down, but I have to agree with @g-man. It is really late for seeding KBG. It is even later for a slow starter like bewitched. I would throw down some PRG so all your grading efforts wont be in danger. Your average first frost is around 3 weeks away.


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## Michael303 (Jun 12, 2017)

I wouldn't give up hope on germination. I'm not sure if it gets colder much sooner in Chicago but when I did my reno I ran behind because of an irrigation project and didn't get my *** seed down until Sep 29th. I didn't have the establishment I was hoping for by the time the growing season ended but by the end of the next summer it had filled in for the most part.

I was just reading an article someone else linked to recently regarding late-season overseeding and it suggested hitting it hard with Nitrogen, up to a pound per K per week to help establishment. I'll see if I can dig it up.


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## ken-n-nancy (Jul 25, 2017)

goblue4016 said:


> ... I REALLY wanted to seed way earlier but after that massive amount of rain we had I realized that my underground drains were not draining at all and that I not only needed to level my yard but re grade it too so water doesn't pool up in the backyard and also come towards the house.


You were wise to re-grade _*before*_ the renovation -- otherwise, you'd just end up needing to do the renovation again. Looks like you and your buddy did a lot of work and the grading looks nice. Well done!



goblue4016 said:


> ... yesterday everything went smoothly, ... I put down 3lbs per 1k of Bewitched mono. ...
> 
> realistically whats everyone opinion on how this is going to go now? is it just way too late for my bewitched to make it? anything else i can do to help give it the best chance possible?


It's tough to know how to proceed. I have a couple practical data points, as I've seeded Bewitched late in the fall on two prior renovations. From my personal experience, your Bewitched has a shot, but it's only maybe a 50/50 chance.

First, some data on our relative climate. I almost surely have earlier cold temperatures than you do. The average first frost date here in Southern NH is Sep 26. I'm guessing yours is probably a couple weeks later?

However, even though my first frost date is earlier, the real problem with Bewitched getting established before winter is the declining sunlight.

My first data point was my side lawn renovation to a Bewitched monostand in 2015. I seeded on September 9th. Enough of it came up to survive the winter and give at least sparse coverage everywhere. It didn't grow enough to need cutting until May 9th of the following year, but I never needed to do any re-seeding, and by the end of June the next year, it looked great. You're only 2 weeks behind that time, in a warmer location, so I think you've got a shot.

My second data point was a Bewitched seeding on Oct 11th due to septic tank repairs. Even though it was so late, I refused to seed anything but Bewitched into the side lawn. Practically none of the Bewitched came up at all. However, after aggressive feeding the next spring, the Bewitched of the "old lawn" did its thing and filled in nearly all of the damaged areas.

I think it is extremely unlikely that your Bewitched will be developed enough to need mowing before winter. However, at this point, I'd stay the course and wait until spring before trying to seed anything else.

The one potential question, though, is if the Bewitched can get established enough to have roots help retain the soil against erosion. It's not clear to me where the water from your roof goes. It seems like you have gutters on the front and back of the house, but I can't tell where the downspouts come out and discharge after the regrading. You need to keep that water off of the bare dirt somehow, or late fall / early spring rains will carry a lot of it away.

I was fortunate, in that my side lawn renovation, in which I successfully seeded Bewitched on Sept 9th, benefited from a side lawn that was practically flat, with the exception of the edges, with no water running across it from anything higher. As a result, erosion wasn't a concern for me through the late fall and early winter, even though there were only Bewitched seedlings there to hold the soil in place.

Personally, now that you have the Bewitched seeded, I'd stay the course with that until spring, provided that you have a way to deal with the water from the roof of your house. The problem with seeding a faster establishing grass, like PRG, into the Bewitched is that (a) the other grass will compete against the Bewitched this fall, reducing the ability of the Bewitched to get established, and (b) it will be basically impossible to eliminate the PRG in the future if you want to have a KBG-only lawn unless you do a complete kill and renovation.


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## b0nk3rs (Aug 21, 2017)

I'm a little south of you in Bloomington/Normal and I seeded Bewitched on 9/13. Hope we turn out ok!


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## Mrotatori (Aug 13, 2018)

good luck on your germination. I hope you get some grass to grown in before the cold weather sets in.


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## goblue4016 (Jul 26, 2018)

Hey All,

wanted to catch up and post about the reno while im bored out of town for work. I never did get a chance to post the seed down pics so below was the homemade 9' level drag I built for a final grade. I figured the longer the width the better the level so i went 9 feet haha it worked great.



Also some other pics of the seed down. I did roll it but it never burried too far into the ground and sort of still stayed on top of the soil. the real work was spreading all that dang peat moss. I first tried to grab a pile and spread with my hands until I laughed at how long that would take. so instead I dumped each bag out and spread with a rake. I think it worked out pretty good because even testing raking the bare seed they pretty much stayed in place and never moved around.













I wasn't able to fully set up my irrigation system because I ran out of time but I am still able to use the rain birds just with hoses to water:



there was starting to be some germination about a week after seed down, just barely some. But then another lovely rain storm hit us pretty good and honestly im not sure how much seeds survived. im sure where all the water drained they are probably gone but I cant really tell anywhere else. because not much has germinated since that storm last Friday. now I haven't been home since Sunday so im hoping more germination has occurred. a lot of the peat moss washed away so im hoping seed is still there.







thanks to everyone for their encouragement and comments and I really thought long and hard about what @g-man and @Pete1313 said about seeding some PRG but my end goal will always be at the very least next year have a full mono bewitched yard. so im going to hold off and just hope for the best this fall/winter and reevaluate this spring. I know I am pretty much TLF's red-headed step child and will probably be booted from this forum for all the errors and mistakes I have done lol but I have definitely learned a lot of lessons about this whole process.

I figured at the very least, whatever happens at least there will be another documented case of seeding KBG very late at the end of September good or bad. And from the looks of our rain storm again, i will have to re think and possible re grade to get that river gone from the middle of my backyard. @ken-n-nancy O do have gutters and did have french drains, but during the re grading I removed all of them because of where they were, they were a big reason i was having mini lakes in my yard. I now have all of my gutters draining to 1 side of my house where a steel decline is which then drains to the street/sewer drain. So that has helped a lot, but i still have a mini bowl running the length of my backyard, which you can see from 1 picture then runs right into my neighbors yard. Luckily they are very nice and are ok with it for now as they know I am trying to solve that problem.

this last pic was from this past weekend before I left of what the remaining seeds look like after the storm



I pretty much know I will need to reseed in the spring, and might have to reseed the entire yard, so as a precaution im already beginning to do research on spring reno's just in case. I don't really want to have to wait until next fall but if my research shows it will be a lost cause in the spring i might have to seed some random grass in the spring and then just kill it and seed bewitched in the fall.

So if anyone is ever reading this and thinking about rushing a whole yard reno, think twice because unexpected things will always happen. and this is coming from a guy whose not married and has no kids yet!

Ill be home Friday and will update and post more pics then.


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## goblue4016 (Jul 26, 2018)

And now as I re read what I wrote, before the storm I was going to let it ride but post storm Maybe I'm not thinking straight and should just go buy some PRG and throw it everywhere on Friday when I get home and hope it takes to at least get some grass. Then just kill it and reseed in the spring.

A little waste of money but at this point I have absolutely no idea what the best route is. My head hurts


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## ChadStokes (Jun 21, 2018)

Your reno looks identical to mine...seriously! I've had about the exact same scenerio, but I was about 5 weeks ahead of you.


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## goblue4016 (Jul 26, 2018)

ChadStokes said:


> Your reno looks identical to mine...seriously! I've had about the exact same scenario, but I was about 5 weeks ahead of you.


wow I just went through your Journal. first, awesome journal very detailed! wow you did really get hit with some rain and yea your front and mine looked identical, you were smarter and seeded much earlier than me so you had some time to recover, well done!. im glad to see your your grass is coming along though!

this gets me wondering that maybe I should throw some more Bewitched KBG (I have about 8lbs left) and overseed with that. I was going to save for the spring but i guess I could just buy more next spring... great now i have to think even more thanks a lot lol.

Maybe at the very least I'll try and lightly rake everything to spread it some more. I'm almost 2 weeks into it though


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## ChadStokes (Jun 21, 2018)

I was honestly surprised how much seed was caught in the peat moss....you might be okay if you rake it back out and overseed it, but like others said its getting late in the season so it could be hit or miss. I've been cutting back my watering a bit and noticed growth actually speed up. I was hoping to get at least 3-4 mows in before the end of October so I'm on track at this point. I ended up buying another 25lb bag so I have extra for springtime to fill in and then keep for some future work on the side yard.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

I would do prg now and kill it in July for a fall kbg Reno.


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## ABC123 (Jul 14, 2017)

You have a bit of shade and with seedlings this young it's going to be difficult to do a pre-m for winter. I would just wait and see what survives this winter, dormant seed before the first snow storm and do a few tenacity sprays this spring after the first mow. It's not an ideal approach but it should still have acceptable results.


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