# Jack's Lawn Renovation



## he_lives (Jun 12, 2019)

I stumbled on this site while planning out a somewhat unexpected yard renovation on a house I purchased earlier this year (February 2019) and wanted to document my progress.

The house is in Buckley, WA on about 1.4 acres of previously timbered ground with very rocky soil. The yard is terraced with the house on the upper portion and a play set and remainder of the yard about 6-feet lower. The previous owner had several kids who rode atv's throughout the yard, resulting in many heavily compacted bare patches. Talking with the neighbor, the lower portion of the yard was overrun by blackberry bushes until a few years ago when that was all torn out, but never seeded for grass.







In my initial attempts to tame the yard, I caused quite a bit of damage to my walk behind and riding mowers by hitting large rocks. It has been a constant effort to remove potato size rocks from the yard. I also wanted to get grass growing along the front of the house in one of the "atv tracks." My plan was to till up the front side yard and reseed.

In mid-April, I tilled the yard, removed rocks, leveled and reseeded.









At this point I figured I would be done and slowly work on the yard, with the hopes of just getting everything mowed down and staying green...whether that meant actual grass or a combo of grass and weeds. I got married on April 6th this year and had been pretty preoccupied with the wedding up until this point.

A couple of co-workers, who are also great friends, knew that the soil I was working with was very rocky and jumped in to help. This is where things started to get serious. What started out as a conversation about adding some topsoil to the front side yard and reseeding has escalated into a nearly complete yard renovation. See below for condition of the yard before we really dug in:





















Fast forward about two weeks now and we have dugout all the dead stumps on the property, removed 9-trees and brought in about 90-yards of top soil to start grading and leveling. We also reduced the size of the playset area and removed the paver patio in the middle of the back yard (the plan is to move it down next to the playset). This also meant that almost all the current lawn would be scraped up and replaced with topsoil.





I also decided that since the yard was completely torn out, it would be the best time to install some underground sprinklers. This also grew larger than anticipated and I'm approaching 1600-lf of ditches with nearly 40-rotor sprinkler heads.







As it sits now, the upper portion of the back yard and front side yard are graded out with topsoil. Still working on finishing the lower portion of the yard. The sprinkler pipes are buried, connected to the main house, with valves installed. Do to all the grading work, I have yet to install the heads (swing pipes only).

My plan moving forward is to:
1. Complete grading and spreading of topsoil
2. Install sprinkler heads
3. Heavily aerate yard 
4. Drag harrow the yard to break up aerator plugs and further level
5. Apply Lime
6. Apply Scotts Starter Fertilizer
7. Drag harrow again. 
8. Spread Seed (I've already purchased 150-lbs of JB Sun & Shade Mix - 70% PRG, 30% fine fescue)
9. Spread Peat Moss
10. Water like crazy

After reading some threads on here I'm considering spraying glyphosphate the day before seeding and adding soil moist seed coat to the seed. I had also considered spraying tenacity, but they do not recommend it with seed mixes containing more than 20% fine fescue, which mine has.

I'm aware that tearing apart a yard and reseeding in mid to late June is not ideal, but with a wedding and new house, it's how things came together. I'll continue to post my progress and would appreciate any feedback.


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## GMM (Jul 18, 2018)

Are you trying to start from scratch? If so, you're going to need to spray glyphosphate weeks before you seed. My timeline from the first round of glyphosphate to seeding day was 8 weeks.


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## he_lives (Jun 12, 2019)

GMM said:


> Are you trying to start from scratch? If so, you're going to need to spray glyphosphate weeks before you seed. My timeline from the first round of glyphosphate to seeding day was 8 weeks.


Thanks for the comment. Im very new to lawn renovations so it's appreciated.

A large amount of the lawn will be starting from scratch, but I'm not trying to kill the grass to remove slowly. Large portions of the existing lawn and much of the lower weeded area was mechanically scraped off. The sod and top inch or so of soil is now gone, and was then leveled. A few inches of topsoil was added to the top.

Are you recommending that the bar soil be treated 8-weeks in advance of seeding?

I'll try to take some photos tomorrow morning to clarify better.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

Topsoil has weeds. The best approach is to water it to make them grow and then kill them with round up. Tenacity is another option, but it doesn't not treat all weeds. Do both if you can.


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## MassHole (Jun 27, 2018)

he_lives said:


>


Wow, that view...


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## he_lives (Jun 12, 2019)

Here are some photos of my current progress:











You can see that the paver patio has been pulled up, filled in, and pavers stacked on pallets next to the playset waiting to be rebuilt. The hill next to the stairs is too steep to mow, so a timber toeboard has been installed at the base of the slope and I have 15-yards of rock next to the shop waiting to be spread in this area.

The plan for this weekend is to get the sprinklers installed and tuned in the "upper" yard area. Once I get some water down I plan to start plug aerating, dragging flat and removing any of the additional debris in the soil.

Here is what I have left to do. This area needs to be leveled and spread still. Also, the hill by the propane tank will be scraped, leveled a bit, and covered in rock.



And a photo of one of the larger stumps I removed.


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## he_lives (Jun 12, 2019)

With some of the background out of the way, I was hoping to rely on your experience to critique my plan moving forward.

With any luck, I'll get my sprinklers installed, aerate, and drag back to being level by the end of the weekend. With some moderate weather next week, I'm hoping to get my seed down toward the end of the weekend or early next week...at least in the upper portion of the lawn.

As stated earlier, my plan is to:

1. Apply Lime
2. Apply Scotts Starter Fertilizer
3. Drag harrow again. 
4. Spread Seed (I've already purchased 150-lbs of JB Sun & Shade Mix - 70% PRG, 30% fine fescue)
5. Spread Peat Moss
6. Water like crazy

I had considered spraying glysophate a day or two before seeding, but may skip that based on comments here.

I'm also seeing that tenacity is not recommended when the seed mix contains greater than 20% fine fescue. Are there any other products I can apply immediately after seeding to help control the weeds?


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

1) only apply lime if your soil test indicates it, otherwise it could cause more trouble than help.
2)you will save $$ using tenacity via a sprayer. But only if you have the sprayer and are calibrated.

I think you should do gly today, water the area every day to grow weeds and then do more gly the day of seed down (yes it is safe).

Check the label for tenacity. I think it is safe at seed down on fine fescue. It may cause injury to FF as a post emergent at above 4oz/acre rate.


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## he_lives (Jun 12, 2019)

g-man said:


> 1) only apply lime if your soil test indicates it, otherwise it could cause more trouble than help.
> 2)you will save $$ using tenacity via a sprayer. But only if you have the sprayer and are calibrated.
> 
> I think you should do gly today, water the area every day to grow weeds and then do more gly the day of seed down (yes it is safe).
> ...


Thanks for the advice!

1. The manufacturer recommends apply like at a rate of 50#/500 sf. Since I do not have a soil test, do you think I should skip the line alltogether?

I will do the gly today and day of seed down like you mentioned. The tenacity does recommend against using while seeding of the % of FF is greater than 20%. I suppose I'll use it as it's worth the risk vs having a field of weeds after a couple weeks.


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## he_lives (Jun 12, 2019)

I've continued to chip away at this yard renovation and have completed all the seeding after about a week of effort. I ended up seeding the yard in 5000 to 10,000-sf areas per day as this was about all I could tackle after getting home from work each evening.

I ended up foregoing the gly and instead did the following in each area:

1. Apply Lime (25# per 2000-sf)
2. Apply Scotts Starter Fertilizer (15# per 5000-sf)
3. Aerate
4. Spread Seed (5# per 1000-sf)
5. Roll with roller half full of water

I got my first seed put down on June 17th:



And here is the progress as of June 24th in the first area seeded:





The front area in the pictures seems to be growing the quickest, but I am seeing areas of the other sections beginning to sprout as well.



Of course I will continue to water, but any tips on how I should proceed from here?


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## ericgautier (Apr 22, 2017)

@he_lives nice work! Looking forward to seeing the progress.


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## he_lives (Jun 12, 2019)

Any advice on when i should be adding some small doses of nitrogen?


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