# Flood-Lawn Journal



## ergray3 (Jun 2, 2020)

Creating a journal for my 3500sqft chronically flooded lawn.

History: My back yard is down grade from the neighbor both behind and behind/left my house. I bought in 2015. Best I can tell, from when the back-left house was built in the early 1990's by the owner, they dug out a part of their hill and destroyed the intended water drainage pathway. My next door neighbor built a solid brick bottom fence to prevent washout into his back yard but the original owner of my house apparently allowed the runoff to flood the lawn for years. I noticed shortly after purchasing the house that the back yard stayed soggy for days after even 0.25" of rain. I had a French drain professionally installed at the low point and it drains into the city storm drain system. They used excess dirt from the project to build a 3-4" berm at the back border of my property to channel the runoff to the property edges to drain.



The berm did an ok job, but the grade wasn't enough for harder rains (~1" or more) and the runoff poured between the berm and the brick fence and continued to flood the yard, particularly the side-strip.







I added a length of solid corrugated pipe and a 12 inch square surface drain to the end of the French drain and put it right here:



Finally, after about 2 years the runoff seemed to be under control, funneled into the storm drain system. I waited through a fall and spring rain season to make sure, and I haven't had any flooding since! (pats self on back). Time to get to work!


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## ergray3 (Jun 2, 2020)

The strip that was trenched for the French drain went to weeds where it grew anything at all. There is a lot of white clover, virginia buttonweed, and of course yellow nutsedge everywhere.

This is the first property I've ever owned and I've spent the last little while learning the basics. I got the front yard into tier 1.5 shape TTF with big box store stuff but I was never able to get any success in the back. I decided to put more effort into learning about lawn care and eventually found myself here. It seemed pretty clear that I was in need of a full renovation.


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## ergray3 (Jun 2, 2020)

In mid-June I began with a mix of trimec, triclopyr, sulfentrazone, surfactant, and glyphosate. This was a mad scientist attempt to get a good kill for the buttonweed as well as the nutsedge where gly alone won't work. I used this to spot spray the worst of the weedy sections and left most of the grass. It made for a pretty funny picture:


I started early to try and get a handle on these difficult perennial weeds. I'm gonna fallow for a while to try and coax as many out as I can.


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## ergray3 (Jun 2, 2020)

Just before spraying the first round of weed killer I took a soil test. I used a regular plug puller. Took a significant amount of force to get it in, and in some plugs I couldn't pull it out without twisting it like a screw.

Results:


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## ergray3 (Jun 2, 2020)

Got in a near-scalp and another spray about a week ago now and got a good die down. Keeping an eye out for germinating weeds.


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## ergray3 (Jun 2, 2020)

Ol gal's ticker finally gave out. Glad I caught it before seed down. This thing must be at least 25 years old. It's easily double the diameter of its Rainbird 42SA replacement, which covers the exact same area.


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## ergray3 (Jun 2, 2020)

Put down a little over 7lbs of P with 11-52-0 and 3.5 lbs of K with 0-0-50 SOP. Also 33lbs of 90% Elemental sulfur, then did a 5-6 inch deep tilling of the entire yard to distribute the phosphorus and sulfur as well as to break up the lumpy hard soil. Managed to tag my fiber optic internet line, but fortunately the local company repaired it the same day for no charge, I guess they can't be located when tagging buried lines according to the guy that fixed it.


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## ergray3 (Jun 2, 2020)

Followed the till with lots and lots of raking, using a 36" landscape rake to move material around a bit and then tried to smooth the best I could with the flat edge. Caught a summer pop up storm and got a little washing at one end. Had to wait for it to dry out to finish. It isn't perfect but it's noticeably better. Finished with a half-filled roller at around 250lbs to compact back into a more rain tolerant surface.


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## ergray3 (Jun 2, 2020)

Fallowed for a week without much weed germination! Hope this means fewer weeds in the future. Rented a slice seeder to groove the surface and make a better seed bed. Also replaced two more old sprinkler heads, one had a leak and the third was old like the first two so I went ahead and got a new one in before seed time. After the slice seeder, I put down ~4-5 lbs/k of GCI Blue Heat KBG, [email protected]/k, [email protected]/k, and Tenacity at the 4oz/A rate. Then I rolled again a and covered with 6 bales of Peat Moss since it's pretty early to be seeding here and I wanted to prevent too much dry-out between sprinkler runs.

It was probably a questionable idea to seed on August 2nd in the transition zone, but I had a week with little to no rain in the forecast. I figured that would decrease my chances of washout as long as I was careful about watering. I also have plenty of extra seed and I'm certain I'll have spots I need to overseed before winter, so this gives me about 4 extra weeks to play with. We will see if I regret this decision soon haha!


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## ergray3 (Jun 2, 2020)

I've been carefully monitoring the moisture and the soil has stayed damp all week. We had one pop up storm and I have a low spot which held water for an afternoon. I feel certain I'll have to add soil and seed there again, but it's less than 500sqft. Had little to no washout elsewhere.


Grass babies today on 8/10, 7 days, 12ish hours after seed down! This part is nerve wracking!!!!


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## ergray3 (Jun 2, 2020)

5 days later, lots of germination in the shadier parts. We've had several light rain showers, and I'll have to top dress with soil or sand in the future to smooth it back out. There's some germination everywhere but it clearly prefers the slightly lower air temperature under the trees. Some scattered clover and VA buttonweed weedlings are popping up too , but I'll just have to deal with them in the spring.


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