# Turf Guy Fitz in the PNW



## Fitz (Apr 6, 2019)

Covid makes a man do funny things. I'll be the first to admit that. Maybe that's just my excuse? This was bound to happen for me at some point. Extra time on my hands at home made me start looking at things. I'd painted the inside of the house already and had set my sights on the yard. You see, we moved into this house about a year and a half ago. The only house we looked at and it check all the "boxes." A big box checked for me was an established landscape with an irritation system! Be still my heart!

The "starter" house we lived in had a jungle for a backyard which I tamed with a chainsaw and renting a chipper. Juniper that were ridiculously overgrown, stinky and out of control. I digress…An irrigation system was on my "to do" list but way down on the list. I rehabbed the front lawn with lots of seed and compost, committed to dragging a hose around and getting results! I did achieve results but it was always a hassle to worry about watering! I've always loved the "set it and forget it" mantra Ron Popeil coined.

I'm used to having all the tools at my disposal. I was a golf course Superintendent. I went to college for turf. Yes, it's actually a Bachelor of Sciences degree! College was hard for me. I didn't care about the details of the Krebs cycle! Yes, I care about photosynthesis and its important, but I just wanted to water grass, fertilize grass and mow grass! In the golf course world, we're always striving for great playing conditions and the "look." What's that "look?" Its when you stand on the tee box and look out across the golf course and see those fairway stripes burned in perfectly to create that diamond look of dark/light stripes. It's more than that though. It's creating as close to perfect playing conditions possible. It's the reason why we mowed greens every day in the growing season and fairways 3-4x a week. The verticutting, topdressing and rolling of greens…mowing as low as 3/32 of an inch.

I left the golf course world behind almost 10 years ago and there are obviously things I miss about it. The politics of private courses, greens committees, board meetings, club tournaments when members whine the greens weren't in good enough shape or some greens were "inconsistent" compared to others…I don't miss any of that. I left golf because I became too invested in the results and if others deemed the results not good enough, that was a crushing blow to me. I had invested too much of myself in the work.

So, where was I? Oh yeah, my yard has an irrigation system! So, I figure this is as good a time as any to reacquaint myself with the tools I used on the golf course! After moving in December 2018, I bought an old used California Trimmer 20", stuck it in the shed and waited for spring. Spring comes, I mow with it, fertilize a little bit, make sure the irrigation system works and call it good. Mind you, I'm probably mowing at like a little over an inch, certainly nothing crazy.

In the fall of 2019 as the leaves started to turn I wanted that "look" I missed on the golf course. I could do a lot now with irrigation! Dragging a hose around to keep your hard work alive from the spring wasn't a chore. So, I begin priming my wife that I'm going to aerate, overseed and topdress heavily in the spring of 2020. Now here's where I'll just call out and blame John Ware. I stumble upon his YouTube videos where he's throwing down stripes with his GM 1600 like it ain't no thang! And I'm like damn dude, that yard is sick! He's aggressively topdressed/leveled his yard, he's got a bitchin little sprayer for his fert spreader and is performing all the cultural practices of a golf course! You mean there are other people out there who actually ARE doing this? I'm sitting here thinking about it and they're DOING it. Okay, I'm in. So, early April rolls around and I'm looking for topdressing sand. Due to Covid and various sources shut down, I end up using a utility sand. Now, I do know better than this but given the circumstances and my lack of patience, I bit the bulled and had 5 yards delivered to the house. Mind you, this was 2 yards too many but they had a minimum delivery so I have 2 yards in the backyard to use as needed to fill in areas and lightly topdress problem areas.

No Turning back...


Sand piles...


Wife is going to hate all the sand in the house from kids shoes...


Granted, the yard was in okay shape before I started all this, never being satisfied with mediocre though, I aggressively thatched and aerated the yard. Well, no turning back now. Lots of sand all over the place. What have I done! My wife thinks I've ruined the yard and it's not going to come back.

Remember what I said about Covid? Yes, it does make you do funny things. I've not only discovered John Ware and his YouTube videos, built myself a backpack sprayer wand, but also joined the Lawn Forum and began scouring various topic threads of interest. Mainly the tools/equipment at this point because I'm used to having all the "proper" golf course tools remember? What are these guys doing though? I mean, I don't see them pulling out the Toro Sidewinder to mow their yards…Wait a minute…who is this Connor Ward fella? Jesus…he's mowing his yard with a sidewinder!!

So, here's where we're at. Well, me and anyone caring enough to read this diatribe. The California Trimmer has been good to me. $300.00 well spent and doing its job mowing at about 3/4" (.750 for you golf course peeps). I've built a brass wand with CF valve and Tee Jet nozzles for the old Roundup 4 gallon manual backpack sprayer that employed much death and destruction at the old house killing blackberry, ivy, thistle and quite frankly anything that grew on the horrendous ill shaped/sloped meaningless landscape I tried to tame. The backpack sprayer is now delivering goodness to the turf! I've got more liquid fertilizer via N-ext and Floratine than I know what to do with! I'm kidding…I know what to do with it! THROW ER' DOWN! Credit Allyn Hane.

Seriously though, I'm finding myself absolutely loving turf care again. Not that I necessarily lost my love for it, I've just found people who are just as nuts as I am about it which is comforting especially in times like these. I mean, we're all clinging to something to help us survive the surreal time of Covid. I find comfort in my landscape and making it better. Having an outlet after working from home, walking out the door and being in my landscape and tending to it.

Stay tuned as I'll have more shortly on a new piece of equipment, I acquired that makes me giddy and scares the crap out of me all at the same time. Thanks for reading.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

The WFH is making the lawn obsession go into overdrive. @Ware this is on the cool season side, but it is a great read.


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## Ware (Jan 28, 2017)

Agree. Great read. That was as good as a Mike Leach story. :thumbsup:


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## PNW_George (May 28, 2018)

Great to hear from a fellow Coug! Your side bar mentions Poa and PR. Is that typical Coug humor or are you mixing Perennial Rye with Two Putt? I spent some of my High School years as a worker bee mowing greens and working on a Crew myself but while being a Business Major at WSU, the lawn bug I caught never went away.

Just topdressed and seeded myself, look forward to your results.


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## Fitz (Apr 6, 2019)

PNW_George said:


> Great to hear from a fellow Coug! Your side bar mentions Poa and PR. Is that typical Coug humor or are you mixing Perennial Rye with Two Putt? I spent some of my High School years as a worker bee mowing greens and working on a Crew myself but while being a Business Major at WSU, the lawn bug I caught never went away.
> 
> Just topdressed and seeded myself, look forward to your results.


Thanks George. I seeded in a lot of PR but as you know Poa is inevitable here and I don't fight it. I've been out of golf for about 10 years and don't remember Two Putt Poa Triv back then. I think @Rule11 has had some awesome results and definitely given me something to think about for the future. We just used to use PR to overseed or establish fairways on a renovation then watch the Poa take over. I'll be posting some updated photos later today since I'm over one month post "lawn devastation."

I just learned how to post photos on here last night so that makes this much more enjoyable!


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## PNW_George (May 28, 2018)

I haven't used anything for Poa since I planted Fine Fescue and Colonial Bentgrass. My lawn still would have looked great this year but like you, with the lock-down it gave me something to occupy my time.

Golf Courses are using Two Putt to over-seed the perennial type of Poa Annua that eventually takes over every PNW green. Even Chambers Bay I'm sad to say.

http://www.sroseed.com/Files/Files/SRO_USA/Tech_Sheets/Turfgrass/Specialty/Two_Putt_ts.pdf


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## Rule11 (May 5, 2018)

Fitz said:


> PNW_George said:
> 
> 
> > Great to hear from a fellow Coug! Your side bar mentions Poa and PR. Is that typical Coug humor or are you mixing Perennial Rye with Two Putt? I spent some of my High School years as a worker bee mowing greens and working on a Crew myself but while being a Business Major at WSU, the lawn bug I caught never went away.
> ...


This is a great Read, I recently expanded my 2 Putt project. Another 600sqft. I am also think it about mixing in some 007 Bent with the 2 Putt. I am trying to make sure I get it all where I like when I decide to completely Reno the Back yard.

I love to hear the Love is coming back. I have been a golfer since early age and I always wanted a piece of the course at home. Since when I was in school I wasn't driven to study Turf. I am now for as much as I have time to study.


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## Fitz (Apr 6, 2019)

So I'm about 34 days post thatching, aerating, overseeding and topdressing. Before I get to the photos everyone is dying to see (okay probably only me) I'd like to share a few photos of the "evolution" of my mowing equipment...


Left to right: Husqvarna rotary mower- I bought it brand new in 2012 at a box store and proudly mowed with it until last year. I mean, I still proudly use it to suck up leaves and post thatching. I've only changed the oil once. Bad owner! I dropped it down as low as it would mow on the new house lawn and knew the lawn was capable of more. Next up is the California Trimmer 20". Purchased in December 2018 used from Craigslist. $300.00 and it works great. I added the solid front roller in March. Little did I know the Cal Trimmer would be pushed to the back of the shed in a matter of weeks. The Toro Flex 21...I found this mower through the western Washington Golf Course Superintendents Association http://wwgcsa.org/They have a classifieds section where I found the Flex's listed. Another local resource for the PNW is https://www.turfstar.com/. Used equipment there looks to be in pretty good shape.

So here's the story with the Flex21- I never really intended to buy a golf course greens mower! Really! I actually wanted a Swardman https://www.swardman.com/us/ or I was looking at an Allett https://allett.us/. But by the time I added up the cartridge options I would like to have I would have had to sell one or both of my children to afford them. I knew my wife wasn't going to go for any of that anyway. So, I ended up scouring the interweb looking at used equipment and found the local source of the wwgcsaa mentioned above. I purchased that mower for $1000.00 and many will probably think I paid too much. Now I had convinced myself I was mowing at roughly 3/4" currently and the 14 blade reel the mower was equipped with was not going to work for that HOC (height of cut). So I order a high HOC kit from R&R products and 8 blade reel, new bedknife and HOC gauge. A hefty investment for all this stuff which tacked on about $800.00 to my initial investment. Some of the items were a "one time" cost so that's how I've justified it in my head.

Another photo of the Flex21

Cutting unit

Accugauge


A funny aside regarding the HOC gauge I bought. Like a kid at Christmas when the brown UPS truck pulled up in the driveway (he was Santa Claus to me okay!) I bust out the gauge and go running back to the shed to see what the HOC I was mowing at with the Cal Trimmer. Granted the Cal Trimmer has a lever with slots that correspond to different heights and pending on which hole your front roller bar is in..blah blah...I put the gauge up there and it says .365! Whoa...I"m under a half inch and I don't even know it! I try to explain this startling revelation to my wife and she just looks at me like I'm a mix between crazy and I don't know what. C'mon fellas..you know the look!

So fast forward to today! May 26, 2020, I"m about 34 days post apocalypse in the yard. For some context I started spraying PGR on 4/8/20 and was going every 18 days until this week. I'm switching to 14 day interval and going to up the rate from .5oz/m to probably .75oz/m as a test. I've also been using Milorganite basically monthly at bag rate plus I've been goofing around with Floratine products and have also used N-Ext overseed liquid package. I'm also dropping the HOC on the Flex21 to .425 (did this tonight) and I've been mowing 3x week. Overall I'm very pleased with the results. Thanks for reading.

Front Yard Tonight



Backyard Tonight



More Backyard


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## rob13psu (May 20, 2018)

This is great. Sounds like you've got your turf mojo back. Had I known more about Penn State's turf program while I was there....forget meteorology! Looking forward to following your lawn journey!


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## weirj55 (Apr 13, 2020)

You seemed to have missed your ever-important Melissa and Doug Frog mower from your lineup! I know that baby well. It seems to follow me around for a few passes every other time I mow!

Yard is looking great. I am working my HOC down and hope to pick me up a nice reel mower soon. Thanks for your inspiration and keep it up!


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## Fitz (Apr 6, 2019)

@weirj55 I was wondering if anyone would notice that bad boy in the background :lol:. That thing needs to go to the boneyard. I love how quiet it is and its great on gas but the quality of cut is horrible. My son doesn't seem to care though. Thanks for reading!


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## Fitz (Apr 6, 2019)

@Rule11 if your next 600 sq. ft. turns out anything like your initial strip next to the street, it will be phenomenal. Very nice work on that! I saw a photo of the VIP perennial ryegrass and chuckled a little bit. Did you acquire that from Puget Sound Specialties by chance?


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## Rule11 (May 5, 2018)

As a matter of fact yes. Mr. Curan was a old friend of my late Grandfather. Some funny guys from New York.


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## Fitz (Apr 6, 2019)

Rule11 said:


> As a matter of fact yes. Mr. Curan was a old friend of my late Grandfather. Some funny guys from New York.


Small world sometimes. Mike is definitely a character! We did enough business with him one year that I ended up with a Cleveland driver as a "thank you." Still have it in the bag today


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## Fitz (Apr 6, 2019)

Well I finally got around to swapping out the 14 blade reel the Flex21 came with to the 8 blade I ordered from R&R. Not really too hard at all given the YouTube videos out there as tutorials. Given I'm at .400 height of cut, the 14 blade was not suited for this. Just a few photos of the reel on the bench and the first mow with the 8 blade. Happy Friday and hope everyone has a good weekend.

14 Blade



8 blade installed



First mow with 8 blade and .400 HOC



Tough to tell from the photo but the quality of cut is better with the 8 blade.


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## CarolinaCuttin (Sep 6, 2019)

@Fitz What are you currently using from Floratine? I love those orange jugs...great products.


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## Fitz (Apr 6, 2019)

@CarolinaCuttin Per 4 Max, Protosyn and Fights On. Friend is a distributor and I used to use the products on the golf course. It is expensive but with the "friend pricing" and small amounts I'm using, I think its worth it.


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