# TimmyBluegrass's ProVista KBG in the Transition Zone Adventure Ride



## timmybluegrass (Oct 19, 2020)

So I meant to start this in the Spring, but hey, six months late is better than never, right? I know a lot of people are interested in ProVista, so here is my experience...

To catch everyone up:
-- *Why ProVista?* A variety of reasons. I'd been messing around with KBG for awhile and liked the challenge of going all in here, in what @osuturfman quite accurately refers to as "the armpit of America." I also liked the idea of doing something brand new and different. But perhaps the biggest attraction was the reduced mowing. Lawn season coincides with my busiest time at work so because KBG is so hands-on in a climate like this one, being able to skip some mows seemed attractive. 
-- *HOW DID YOU GET IT?* I wish I had some insider knowledge to share with you but in the spring or early summer of 2020 I simply called Scotts and asked. I guess I made a decent enough impression that they sold me seed. I have no connections there and haven't talked to anyone at Scotts in about a year. From what I hear from others now, this technique would almost certainly not work today
-- *Reno 2020.* I've done renos both on my lawn and others' lawns and this was the roughest one by far. Work was crazy. My dog of 12.5 years passed away. I took down a 35 foot Bradford pear tree. There were some washouts. And ProVista, yeah, it germinates _slow _and sprout and pouts for what seems like _forever_. There was a point where my sweet wife actually said "are we going to have a lawn next year?"  Weeds came in HEAVY. No joke, I had so much bittercress I pulled it and made an herb butter from it. (If you're reading this and planning on seeding ProVista go EARLY. I seeded my backyard around August 25th and my front yard around September 5th. If I had to do it again I would have gone at least 10 days earlier).
-- *The Rest of 2020.* I think it was around mid-October where I standing in my backyard, looking at my sad-looking reno, feeling very sorry for myself, and thinking, "do I know anything about growing grass?" At that point I figured the only thing I could do would be to start slinging fast release N and mowing. So that's what I did. I sprayed .2#/M of urea - and later on, AS - each week and mowed basically every day. Eventually things started coming together and while the lawn going into winter wasn't looking great, it wasn't too far off what a halfway decent KBG reno looks like.
-- *Winter 2020-2021.* You might have seen or heard that dormant ProVista looks like dormant Bermuda. Strangely I both had this experience and didn't. My backyard, which is fenced in and was planted a few days earlier, turned limey green but never got tan or brown. My front yard, which is not fenced in and experiences very cold winds, did. I am not sure why this is though I am thinking it has something to do with wind.


*September 15th, 2020 -- Backyard TWENTY DAYS after seeding. *


*October 18, 2020 -- Steak with hairy bittercress butter.*


*November 14, 2020 -- Backyard two days before Maryland's nitrogen blackout begins.*


*March 3, 2021 -- Backyard.*


*March 3, 2021 -- Dormant Bermuda-looking Front Yard, with special guests: annua and triv.*

-- *The Dreaded Annua and Triv.* Coming out of winter, I had a lot of annua in both the front and backyard and some triv up front. I was nervous about spraying gly on young grass so, having a small yard, I popped the annua out by hand and painted the triv with gly like one would do with more traditional cool season grass. I am not sure if this conservative approach was necessary - my thought at this point is that it wasn't - but at the time I just figured better safe than sorry. 
-- *Pre-Emergent.* I planned on doing a low rate of Prodiamine and medium rate of Isoxaben. But then time got away from me and I simply didn't get it done. I wish I could tell you this was a well-reasoned decision, but it wasn't.
-- *Spring & Summer Fert.* I applied about a pound of N per M and a pound and a half of K between May 6 and June 13. I've done about .2# per M in two or three foliar apps since then. I probably should have done a little more, particularly on the back.
-- *Fill In. *Maybe the missed pre helped, but ProVista filled in pretty rapidly and I'd guess I was at 90-95% by the middle of May. I haven't planted every KBG cultivar but I've done several of the elite ones and I'd say ProVista's spread is as good as any of them.
-- *SEEDHEADS.* So you're reading this, you're loving it, you're thinking I WANT PROVISTA. _Slow down_. :lol: This grass produces seedheads unlike any other grass - warm or cool season - I have ever seen in my entire life - except poa annua. In my opinion, this - and the slow establishment - are the biggest knocks against it. As you can see in the picture below, ProVista in seedhead mode looks like annua to the point that @JLavoe was cracking jokes about me having an entire lawn filled with it. I didn't try PGR as Scotts recommends against using it on ProVista as PGR, plus PV's slow growth habit, could make it nearly impossible to grow out of disease. Instead I used my manual reel mower at about 1.5-1.75 inches and mowed basically every day for what seemed like forever but was actually probably 4-5 weeks. This worked but it also canceled out the whole reduced mowing thing.


*May 23, 2021 -- About 95% grown in.*


*June 3, 2021 -- New member of the family, Eddie, wondering "is this KBG or poa A?" (Note: this grass was mowed at most 48 hours before this picture was taken). *

*Fungicides + Disease* -- I'm not going to go through each and every app but I used Azoxy, Propiconazole, Xzemplar and Cleary's 3336. I did 3 soil-applied apps for Summer Patch - May, June and July - and maybe 3-4 foliar apps to prevent Dollar Spot and Leaf Spot. I did not treat for Pythium as I have not had too many issues with it on KBG here in Maryland but I did see a tiny amount arrive in August so I will probably add something into the rotation in 2022. All in all, my hard work here has been rewarded and disease has not been a major issue this year thus far. 
*Crabgrass and Spurge and my biggest F up *-- I had basically zero crabgrass show up in the backyard. I hand pulled the three or four plants I found. Much more crabgrass - and a healthy amount of spurge - arrived up front. And this led me to my biggest boneheaded mistake of the season: after weeks of stress-inducing highs in the mid 90s, in late July we got two days where highs dipped to the low 80s and I thought it would be a bright idea to apply a full rate of Quinclorac with MSO and a bunch of iron to the front. This was a _very_ bad move. It turned ProVista the color of canned green beans for three weeks. It also killed a small amount. Why I thought applying a full rate of herbicide to a completely stressed grass was smart is beyond me.
*ProVista in the Summer*. -- I don't think there is any cultivar of KBG that is going to like Maryland summers. Despite my mistake ProVista did as well as anything else I have grown. In the backyard, which is partially shaded, it held up almost perfectly. In the front, which is non-stop full sun, it showed much more stress, even before the aforementioned Quinclorac app.


*July 4, 2021 -- Backyard.*


*July 4, 2021 -- Front Yard. (At left is the HOA's fescue, mostly KY-31).*


*Mid July -- Front Yard. Feeling the HEAT.*


*August 9 -- Eddie is happy that he doesn't have to see seedheads again until next year. Also, some summer stress on the left.*

Some last thoughts on stuff you might care about if you are considering ProVista:
-- *Color*. The jury is still out on this one. If you've read this far, you've seen all the pictures above. The grass went from infancy right into a searing hot summer so it'll be interesting to see what things are like this fall. 
-- *Reduced Water Needs* At one point or another Scotts was suggesting that ProVista needs less water than other KBG cultivars. It seems like they have backed off this claim and, honestly, I have found it needs a bit more, not less.
-- *Reduced Mowing*. Scotts claims ProVista needs 50% less mowing than other KBG cultivars. My experience is that this claim is spot on. I mowed twice a week during spring flush, a lot more during the seedhead stage (see above), and then about once per week for the rest of the summer. I surely could have mowed less and still had an attractive lawn.
-- *Mowing Heights. *I have f'ed around with all sorts of different HOCs at various points of the year. This is not advisable but, hey, I like to experiment.  Honestly, ProVista seemed to do fine at everything from 1" up to 3" My manual reel doesn't go below an inch without some modifications but I have very little doubt that this grass would do just fine reel mowed at sub-1". li_lawns_fka_striperman on Instagram is about to lay ProVista sod and presumably reel mow it, so you can follow him and see how it does. Also, while I'd worry about disease pressure at anything above 3" in Maryland, I am nearly positive this would do fine at 4" if you are somewhere a little less muggy and wanted to go that route. 
-- *Gly Tolerance.* This is also as advertised but I am still messing around with rates. Whatever you do, don't be like me, and spray a reno rate on young ProVista a month or two after germination. This will kill it and you will look at bare spots all winter and feel stupid. A better rate - at least for mature ProVista - would be something like 2.75 ounces of 50.2% per M. But your mileage may vary and this could probably be cranked up a bit. You also might want to crank it down on stressed grass. As an aside, I had some ProVista in a garden bed that I painted with 50.2% gly, NIS, AS and a splash of water. It turned brown and ugly for about a month but it survived.
--* Shade Tolerance. *Scotts claims this does very well in the shade and I agree. I would say it is equal to the exalted Mazama in terms of its shade performance. I have a tiny bit in quite heavy shade, it took a long time to establish in the spring and has thinned just a tiny bit this summer but basically looks great. If anything, the shade has kept it out of summer stress.

This is approaching a War & Peace-length first post so I'll stop here. More updates to come!


----------



## jrubb42 (Jun 20, 2019)

Wow. Great write up. Those seed heads are no joke. Holy shit!! I guess the question is do you regret not using a normal elite cultivar instead of provista? Or are you happy with your choice thus far?


----------



## timmybluegrass (Oct 19, 2020)

@jrubb42, thanks for the nice words.

I'm sure if you asked me that question in late May I'd have said "hell yeah I regret it." But if you ask me next April when I am laughing at any triv that dares show up, I surely wouldn't. It is a grass with a lot of pros and a couple of cons but it has been a fun experience.

I don't know about you, but while I obviously want a nice lawn, part of the fun of the hobby is learning and trying new things. Honestly, if I didn't have a nice lady living next door who really likes her fescue - a lot of which I planted for her - I might have gone with bermuda and just painted it green when it was dormant. :lol:


----------



## JLavoe (Jun 8, 2020)

Nice write up.
Only commenting to say Eddie looks fabulous in the yard.


----------



## bernstem (Jan 16, 2018)

timmybluegrass said:


> *October 18, 2020 -- Steak with hairy bittercress butter.*


Holy raw meat batman! I love it. Nothing drives me crazy more than overcooked meat. The herb butter is just stepping the whole thing up to another level.

Oh, and the lawn looks great. Being able to kill any weeds with gly would certainly be nice.


----------

