# modrakv's Lawn Journal



## modrakv (Apr 17, 2019)

April 23rd 2019

2019 Lawn Journal:

I have an ever growing list of landscaping and lawn care projects on the slate for this season. Will be fun to document the process along the way and perhaps fuel motivation needed to follow through on everything. The goal being having the best lawn in my neighborhood. Right now my motivation is fueled by pettiness. The house directly behind mine is actively trying to compete. It's owned by a retired couple that rents it to their daughter and son-in-law. Two weekends ago they were all outside raking the yard (which shouldve been done last November). Then this past weekend I spied TruGreen spreading some Pre Em down. So it's all hands on deck for me.

I try to stick to the organics. I'll spot spray weeds here and there with Spectracide but other than that I'm purely organic. Perhaps not the best approach but this is my starter home and I'm still cutting my teeth on lawn care; which is why I'm here! I have a small enough lot to experiment with different things and not waste too much money.

Weeds: 
I don't have a bad weed problem at all. It's been easily manageable with zero Pre Em the last five years. I would just patrol the yard every couple days and spot spray anything I saw and didn't like. This year I'm going to attempt to cut the weed killer out and just purchased a Fiskars Xact 4 Prong Weed Puller. I got mine on Amazon for about $35. I'm sure HD sells this too. My wife enjoys pulling weeds and I think this will be great for her. 

I tried it out yesterday, April 22nd 2019. It was awesome. I can tell you it definitely works best when the soil is moist and not hardened over like it would be during the throws of Summer without irrigation. Just center it over the weed, step down, rock it back on the foot plate at the bottom; which pulls the weeds out as the four prongs grab hold of the plant, lift up and cock it like a shot gun to eject. It's really fun. If weed pulling could ever be fun this is the tool needed to facilitate that!

Large overgrown backyard bush:

I'm not sure what it is/was really. One neighbor told me it was "buckthorn". Which sounds right to me. It was a thorny tangled mess. Way over grown. Nearly touching the power-lines over head. I attempted to trim it down to a aesthetically pleasing size BUT I soon realized it was too thinned out once I started trimming. It was Earth Day after all. I had to try. The birds are going to hate me when the wake up today. I also liked that it blocked out the unsightly yellow house behind me with their oddly placed deck and exposed storage area. OH WELL.

Back yard hill and low lying water problem:





I have an active thread open regarding a water issue in this location. 
You can find that discussion here. https://thelawnforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=8934
If you notice the lighter green area between the hill and the left side of the pics. Thats the problem. Its a spongy, soggy, squishy mess. This is my public enemy number one this year. 

So I'm pretty pleased with the way the lawn has bounced back this year. I still haven't cut it yet. I cut it short last November. I'm probably a week away from the first mow. Mind you eight days before before these pics were taken we had 6 inches of heavy, wet snow dumped on us here in Milwaukee, WI.

April 14th 2019


That's it for now! I have a big list that I'm trying to complete by end of May. Maybe I'll post that up for everyone to see so I can hold myself accountable to it. :?

Thanks for reading. I'm excited to learn and talk with everyone.


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## mribbens (Jul 13, 2018)

Welcome, I am in NE IL, only about 50 miles or so from you, got the same 6 inches of snow on Palm Sunday, this community is great.


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## modrakv (Apr 17, 2019)

mribbens said:


> Welcome, I am in NE IL, only about 50 miles or so from you, got the same 6 inches of snow on Palm Sunday, this community is great.


Thanks for the welcome! Yeah, we went into church and came out an hour-ish later to a completely covered car. My wife put her snow brush away the day before so she took the blame for that. :lol:


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## modrakv (Apr 17, 2019)

Not much happening in the yard yet! We received a couple inches of snow late Saturday. It was still there Sunday morning but 100% vanished by noon. I was able to get into the front yard (northern exposure and has a hill sloping from the house toward the road so it doesn't get as much direct sunlight as the backyard). It usually takes a couple weeks longer to get going versus the backyard. So I try to give it a little juice before my normal Memorial Day-ish Milo app. I raked/fluffed up the grass that was matted down and went over it with my leafblower for about an hour. It's 1500sq ft. So it got a healthy blowing. After the blow I sprayed down two bottles of Dr Earth Super Natural Lawn Food. It's a combination of fish emulsion, kelp, humic, etc. Smelly stuff. It smells like you're at the lake. That kind of stagnant rotting fish smell. I love when the neighbor shuts their window because of it! The bottle says its good for 5000 sq ft. But that isn't realistic. 2500 sq ft is more like it. I usually put one bottle down but this year I put two. You can get kinda willy nilly with organics of this type so why not. We have a good soaking rain going on right now too and some good sunshine and temps later in the week on the forecast. I hope to see some strong POP by next week!


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## modrakv (Apr 17, 2019)

A little feedback on the Fiskars Xact 4 Prong Weed Puller. It works great. With dandelions it'll pull the entire plant and taproot up in one attempt. I've used it on some clumping type grassy weeds as well and that also works great but if they're larger it may take a couple stabs to get the whole thing removed. The hard part of this is bending over to pick up the discarded weeds if you decided to eject them onto the ground. You could carry a trash can with you and drop them into there or do like I do and make a game out of it with your kiddos and have them racing eachother to grab and pile up weeds where you want them. LOL. This process will leave small holes in your lawn. I just step down on the pulled up soil and we'll see how well the grass fills it in on its own or if I need to re seed those small spots. I don't think it'll be an issue though since I don't have too many weeds. My goal is to go all year without any chemical weed killers. I already accept the fact that I will have ground clover; which I'm somewhat of a fan of now. It's good for the lawn and once my HOC is back up to where I want it it'll be shaded out and kept in check.


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## modrakv (Apr 17, 2019)

Just put down 14oz of Penterra on 3k sq ft. Got a little loose with it. Via hose end sprayer with approx 25 gallons of water. I also started the app right as a 12 hour period of rain began with a forecasted 1.5 inches of rain due between now and tomorrow morning. It should be very well watered in. Worst case scenario I destroyed my back yard... &#128517;


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