# Filling Out A Neglected Lawn



## 12620 (Oct 2, 2020)

Last October we moved into our new home. Unfortunately, it wasn't until May that I had the equipment to maintain my lawn and the lawn had only been serviced twice during that span. From older photos, it looks like the previous owners mowed the yard short just to give it a clean appearance, but weren't paying attention to their grass types and mowing accordingly.

After identifying the common Bermuda and Pensacola Bahia in the back yard (1400sqft), I started mowing it at 3''. I plan on going a bit shorter next year, but I don't want to kill off the Bahia just yet. Over the late spring and early I've fed it a mix of Milorganite and Scott's Southern Turf Builder. There's a slew of weeds - crabgrass, purslane, globe sedge, doveweed, old world diamond flower, FL pusley, and even ground cover shrubs. I started to get after the globe sedge in September with some Sedgehammer+, however, I used a fan tip like an idiot and seemed to bronze a few areas in the yard. The Sedgehammer+ was effective against the globe sedge, but I didn't get it all by the time I finished spraying. Next time I plan on using a different tip for spot spraying and making a more consistent stride. First time jitters mostly. The $30 Husqrvana sprayer from Lowe's seemed to work fine for it's first go-around. Next year I'd like to have the back yard leveled. *The soil test from UF in August showed my soil is at a 5.5 pH and deficient in potassium and some phosphorous. Its recommendation is 3lbs/1000sqft/year of potassium and .5lb/1000sqft/year of phosphorous. *These were almost the same results as my front yard as well. I bought 30lbs of 0-0-50 SOP from Kelp4Less and have been dosing .5lbs/1000sqft/month in both the front and backyard. I will be putting down granular Dithiopyr in the front and backyard come November at the max rate. I plan on using pelletized lime in December to increase the pH to a 6-6.5.

The front yard is a mess of various grasses, and even more so on the left side. On the front right side (1000sqft) is St. Augustine, Centipede, Zoysia, Bahia. I want the St. Augustine to thrive in this section and have been mowing at 3.5''. This year I had an issue with TARR and it wiped out about 25% of the St. Augustine in this area. I fed it .5lbs N of Scott's TB in May and .7lbs N Milorganite in early June and I'm not sure if that compounded the TARR. I tried using a curative rate of DiseaseEx and then some peat moss after reading a Neil Sperry article, but the damage was already done and the area was overtaken with weeds. My lesson learned in those few months was to have a better plan for next spring - watch out for the late night May showers when the humidity begins creeping in, be on the lookout for bugs around this same time, use potassium and micros to help reduce disease and insect stress, and finally use a fungicide in rotation to get through the damp periods. 
Throughout the summer I planted a few new sprigs of St. Augustine which thankfully started to take some ground as summer was drawing to a close. There still is a mess of weeds which will need to be addressed with Weed B Gon (safe on Floratam) and pre-emergent come November. There is also a large oak tree that is producing oak saplings throughout the yard. I've pulled a number of them, but they keep growing back in other spots. I'll seek out suggestions for this another day.

To wrap things up, the front left side (600sqft) is PRG and Bahia further back. I'm not sure what the thinking was for the PRG in this area to be honest.This side is a hidden nightmare because beneath the grass is around four inches deep of pea gravel. What to do? I'll write out ambitions for this area another day and include some photos of everything.

Here's to a fresh start.


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## dubyadubya87 (Mar 10, 2020)

Sounds like you have a well thought out plan of action going forward.
Post some pics when you can.


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