# Starkus's Centipede Lawn



## starkus (Mar 12, 2018)

Staring this late but figured since I like other people's content I should contribute.

A little History:
A few years ago I followed the Scotts My Lawn App's plan. At first, the grass was so thick my mower would stall out. Unfortunately 2 years ago I started dealing with "centipede decline". Probably due to the excess N. Bermuda started creeping in. Poa Annua became a big problem each spring.

Last year, I switched to my version of LCN's Hybrid organic. Synthetic app in May then organics in June, July, and September. Killing the bermuda patches and then pushing the centipede to fill in the brown spots caused me to want to push my grass again. My thought was I could grow my way out of the problem. Again, way to much N. Results were decent, but not great as I had fungus problems for the 1st time ever.

Last winter I found TLF and started off the year with this thread 1st Soil Test. The take aways were try to lower my ph using 2 apps of 4 lbs per thousand in my first app and use ammonium sulfate as my fertilizer. Sourcing all of the products I planned on using this year was a big challenge.

Here is a pic of what I started with on April 15. I applied: 
4lbs per 1000 of Tiger 90 Elemental Sulfur. 
1 oz per 1000 Iron Sulfate 
Eagle 20EW on my lawn and Indian Hawthornes.
1 oz per 1000 of Bifenthrin



As you can see I had a good bit of winter kill and I had a big Poa Annua breakthrough that isn't really visible in these pictures. Not sure why my fall/winter pre-emergent app didn't stop it.


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## starkus (Mar 12, 2018)

By May 1st I thought my grass had finally greened up all the way and I had gotten some ammonium sulfate. I messed up and the Potassium that I ordered online was not prilled so that would led to some confusion on how to "spread" it.

On May 5th I applied:
5 lbs per 1000 of ammonium sulfate on all of the lawn 
2 lbs per 1,000 of SOP in my back yard
3 oz per 1,000 of RGS
2nd app of Eagle 20EW Fungicide



Yard looked basically the same. Loropetalums against the house really started to grow and the maple in the front yard put out a lot of growth.


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## starkus (Mar 12, 2018)

May 13
I applied 
-Fertilome Over the Top II Grass Killer to kill the bermuda that remained in small patches in the front.
-1 bag of Scotts GrubEx and 
-Sprayed the Knock Out Roses with Bifenthrin to kill Japenese Beetles that start showing up this time of year.



The grass is starting to pick up from the ammonium sulfate, but lots of brown spots remain.

I did my first round of trimming on the maple to raise the canopy. Tree looks a little better.


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## starkus (Mar 12, 2018)

May 19th - Bermuda Finds a Way

The left side of my lawn has battled the neighbor's wild bermuda. They had a St. Aug lawn but killed it and bermuda naturally crept in. Last year I spent a lot of time trying to get rid of it in my front yard. I sprayed multiple rounds of Fertilome Over the Top II Grass Killer and dug out the larger patches and replaced with centipede sod.

This year it was back but in smaller quantities. The blue-ish areas are where i sprayed Sethoxydim.

The dead spots are getting smaller.


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## starkus (Mar 12, 2018)

June 3 - Aerating is hard work

My soil is red clay and had gotten pretty compacted over the years. Here is a look at it from some pop up drain line repair I had to do. I have created (or at least retained from the initial sod) a pretty nice layer of top soil though.


Earlier in the year I sprayed Greene County's Air-8 at 9 oz per thousand. Who knows if that stuff actually works. So, I decided to mechanically aerate my yard. Split the cost with 2 other friends, so it only cost $20 a piece.

Since, I had never done this before I watched some youtube videos and thought it looked easy enough. I was wrong. It was the hardest thing I have done in a long time. As you can see from the pictures my yard is small, sloped, and contoured. As soon as I got the thing going it was time to turn it around. Doing a 200 lb Base Jammer up hill at an angle every 10 seconds is hard work.

Bushes also got trimmed. First time I used the Power Scythe attachment for my Stihl weed eater. I will never use the small electric powered trimmer again.


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## starkus (Mar 12, 2018)

June 11 -

Earlier in the year I had put down some Iron on the lawn. At the time I didn't have the ammonium sulfate to make the Ferrous Sulfate from the thread on here. By that point it seemed the consensus had shifted to trying FEature and I was lucky enough to grab some of it before it went out of stock. I sprayed FEature at 2 oz per 1000. Got a little bit of a color response, but nothing to drastic.

Most of the winter damage has grown in, but a few spots remain.


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## starkus (Mar 12, 2018)

6-12- The Backyard

The front yard was looking good so I decided to give the back yard a little attention.

The back yard has it rough with 3 kids and a small dog. A couple of years ago I built my kids a play set and the traffic during construction killed a lot of the grass around it and the playing killed the rest. There were some other spots near the tree on the right that died over the winter and never came back.

This is a panorama so the perspective is a little wierd...


I did the unthinkable and tilled up the soil. I wanted to incorporate some elemental sulfur into the soil and add some sand and top soil. The ground was basically a brick so i figured I needed to do something to give the roots a chance. I lightly tamped the soil down and made sure it was all level then added the sod. I borrowed a sod roller and gave everything a nice final leveling.

I took the swings down so the grass could have a chance to establish itself.



I also fixed a spot where traffic and our small dog had killed the grass over the years.


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## starkus (Mar 12, 2018)

June 18 -

Each year on Mother's Day weekend we plant about 75 caladium bulbs in our front beds. We get them in bulk and always buy the rainbow mix so we get a bunch of different styles. Experts would say, the front gets to much sun, but we've never had a problem. Our house faces south so its not direct sun. The all white ones can burn a little but the red ones hold up just fine. I hooked up some misters to the irrigation line last year and they looked great until it gets a little colder in Sept/October at which point I just pull them up.

Here they are starting to pop up....

At this point most of the bare spots have filled in but are a little thin still. The temps are in the 90 - 100 degree range and the grass loves it.


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## starkus (Mar 12, 2018)

July 1st - 2nd Round of Fert

The effects of my 1st round of fertilizer were long gone. I felt like spreading a small quantity like 5lbs per thousand was hard to do evenly with a spreader, and I had screwed up and bought powdered potassium sulfate. Luckily there had been a bunch of content on liquid fertilizer.

I decided to go the spoon feeding route this time based. I mixed 1 lb of ammonium sulfate (.2 lbs N), 1 lb of potassium sulfate , and 6 oz of Green County's Microgreene in 2 gallons of water per 1,000 square feet. I let the fert sit on the grass for 3 or 4 hours then watered it in.

I also did another application of bifenthrin to help with the gnats.


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## starkus (Mar 12, 2018)

July 7 -

I have a rotary motor. I set it on the lowest setting. Until this weekend I never really knew what my HOC was. I measured my grass prior to mowing and it was about 4 to 4.5 inches tall. Despite the fert app last week I felt like this was a pretty standard amount of growth for me in a week.



After the mow I'm at 2 inches. So I'm a "rule breaker". The lazy man's grass is doubling in height each week.

I also need to learn how to sharpen my mower blade or get a new one. I can see a lot of damage to the leef blades.



Here's a pic of the lawn. The fert app last week seemed to have filled in a lot of the thin spots. In other parts of the yard I'm seeing a lot of new runners.

Temps were abnormally cool 81 degrees and overcast so I sprayed .45 oz per 1000 of Trimec Southern to kill some Virginia Buttonweed, Chamberbitter, and Garden Spurge.


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## Crabbychas (Apr 25, 2018)

Wow, nice lawn! As for the mower blade, it is probably fine. Cutting off that much material in one go can bog down the mower and cause tearing in my experience.


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## TigerKnight (Apr 13, 2019)

starkus said:


> July 1st - 2nd Round of Fert
> 
> The effects of my 1st round of fertilizer were long gone. I felt like spreading a small quantity like 5lbs per thousand was hard to do evenly with a spreader, and I had screwed up and bought powdered potassium sulfate. Luckily there had been a bunch of content on liquid fertilizer.
> 
> ...


Do you have any tips on dissolving the AS and SOP in the water? I used one of those mixers attached to my drill in a 5 gallon bucket, but was not able to dissolve it as well as I would like. The solution stopped up my 4 gal. Lesco backpack sprayer at the filter prior to the trigger. I read that using warm water may help and I will try that next time.

Also, were you happy with the results of spoon feeding with AS last season?

Thanks!


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## Jrich (Jul 9, 2018)

How many lbs of AS were you trying to dissolve? SOP will not dissolve, unless you are using the special kind of SOP and even then you can't dissolve that much.


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