# Biting the bullet... Tier 2 Lawn!!



## Reaper (Jul 11, 2017)

This is the third summer in our first house and the during the previous two summers the grass has come in quite well for not watering too often and doing the basics for Prem/Fertilizer. I figured this year I would put in more effort and start to really learn about lawn care (see my "Tier 1 Lawn Maintenance" thread) to get it looking even better.

However, what I forgot to take into account was the 6 trees I had taken down around the house that removed a lot of shade that we had the previous two years. 4 of these were taken down for exactly that reason, I wanted more sunlight in the backyard. The other 2 were in the front/side and were about to fall so they had to be taken down.

Because of this, my front yard is about 70/30 brown to green, and the back yard is either brown or crabgrass/other weeds. I tried watering as much as I could in the spring/early summer, but once we had about 2 weeks straight of sun/extreme heat with barely any rain, the brown just took over.

So, with that being said, I have decided to install a sprinkler system. Now, my front yard basically has no weeds at all and maybe a few bare spots that I can easily top dress and seed. Other than the brown it's a nice lawn, I'm sure with the irrigation and basic spot filling and seeding it will look great.

The back yard is a completely different story. It's incredibly uneven, has countless bare spots (some very large), INSANE amount of crabgrass (barely had any crabgrass the previous two years!!), some others weeds, and is mostly brown. How should I approach this? My first thought was to kill the whole thing, power rake, top dress, hydroseed. Then I got quotes for power raking and 3" of loam (6k sqft) and quickly ruled that out. Now I am thinking just to kill it, mow at the lowest setting, fill in the bare spots and top dress, then seed.

Is killing everything necessary? Should I just use a post-emergent on the weeds, mow it down, and then top dress? It might be worth noting that my back yard slopes off quite a bit in some areas, so much so that it is basically unusable. So I'm not sure if that will affect how to go about this. I will get some pictures tonight.

Any help is greatly appreciated. I am a big DIYer, I just don't have the proper knowledge (hence why I went straight to killing/power raking), so I am down to get dirty. I am looking for the most cost-effective way to get a nice even lawn that my kids can play on and have a swingset. Granted, I only have 1 kid right now and she's 4 months old.


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## Reaper (Jul 11, 2017)

I just briefly went thru "Williams Renovation" thread and I'm thinking killing everything off might be the way to go. I already purchased RM "Compare-N-Save" with 41% glyphosate to do it before I started second-guessing.


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## alpine0000 (Jul 25, 2017)

Killing everything isn't necessary as long as you want to keep the same grass type. But it is a quick way to get a new lawn, and it's relatively cheap and easy. Otherwise, it can take a couple seasons to go from a weed-infested to a thick lawn.

If you're looking to change grass types -- for example, going from Tall Fescue to Kentucky Blue -- then you most certainly will want to kill it off with Glyphosate.

You're right about doing it before you started second-guessing. I wasn't sure if I was going to do mine again or not, then 5 days ago I was feeling frisky and figured I'd better hurry up and spray it before I changed my mind.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

Before applying glyphosate, get the seeds you want at hand.


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