# One year with the lawn (pic heavy)



## BurtMacklinFBI (Jul 17, 2021)

I like to think my lawn has come a long way since we moved in 5 years ago. Unfortunately the bug has bit me and I just wanna keep going to get rid of all the imperfections and get it as good as it could possibly be.

Little about myself
My name is Brad and me and the wife live in Southern New Hampshire. Even though we've lived on this property for 5 years I spent the first 3 renovating the inside of the house and other than cutting the crabgrass weekly, I haven't tried at all to get a good lawn or fix up the mulch beds and what not. Spring of 2020 I decided to hit it hard and called around for irrigation to be installed only to be told by every installer that they were booked up solid and it was gonna take them months to get to me. They did finally come summer of 2020 in the middle of a heat wave and drought conditions. I didn't even bother to use the system until fall since the lawn was ruined at that point. Here's a few random pics but since I wasn't happy with the lawn they are mostly pics of my dogs that happen to have lawn in them :lol:

Here's the BY, it's close up but I assure you the whole lawn looks this way



Side of the Driveway also scorched to a crisp



I dont have any front yard pics but again..... its all scorched. 
Once the irrigation was in and I knew I had a fighting chance I addressed the "mulch beds" The original owners probably kept up with these but then the house sold to new owners which let it all go for about 2.5 or 3 years until they sold the house to us. The mulch was so overgrown with crabgrass and weeds we didn't even know it was mulch when we viewed the house.

Here I hammered in New steel edging, made the new mulch beds wayyyyyy smaller than they were and then dug out the old stuff and hauled it off in a dump.





Here in the front yard along the road is a hill. Apparently from the apex down to the road was also a HUGE bed of mulch. You can see how its grown in so bad that it matches the just as horrible lawn. This also had to be dug down and removed.

The start when my back only kinda hurts



Almost done aka my back is now broken



Here's another shot of the upper mulch beds which had to be dug out as well but this section was going to be lawn now.





I brought in 14 yards of top soil to fill everything back in. I didnt get any pics of this because I was more concerned about the 10 years I just took off the life of my spine by this point. Everything was done by hand with a shovel and wheelbarrow :lol: But here's a few pics of the finished rubber mulch beds and drip rocks close up





I seeded all the new top soil and let that grow in. It came in decent and quickly. One day there were a few sprouts, I left for vacation and came back 10 days later to this.





At this point I was content for the time being. My next project was to dethatch all the old lawn, aerate and overseed. This wasn't done till about 5 weeks later when I could get my hands on the rentals and I wanted to make sure the air temps were not going to spike outa nowhere. Apparently I got sloppy with keeping photos of the process because I don't have any of the detaching. Man was that satisfying!!! So much thatch came up. I over seeded and fertalized, and just let the irrigation do its thing.

Winter came and went, I put down crabgrass pre emergent with fertalizer this past spring and again 2 months later. Not sure if thats over kill but thats what I read online. A big reason I joined this forum was to get helpful information from just one place. Bounching from one forum to another and one web article to the next really got my head spinning.

Anyway heres a few pictures of the finished work as of the last few weeks (June/July 2021)





I need to add some FY and side Driveway pics but the grass there is looking just as good. Theres still issues which I'm hoping another round of detaching and overseeding will address this fall. Side driveway has a noticeable line where they pulled in the irrigation line. It never did grow back in decent but I spent most of my energy with the front of the house last fall. In the back theres a couple problem spots from the dogs and I was able to fix them this spring only to have squirrels come and dig them back up. I'd say 75% of the dog spots were fixed though. Not sure why the squirrels feel the need to go for the new grass.

Well thats my journey so far. I'm pretty happy with the results for only being at it for one year (not to mention I have never in my life attempted lawn care other than mowing the lawn to keep the neibors happy........ I don't wanna be that guy in the neighborhood haha)

I'm going to reserve the next few posts for extra room to document my lawn from here out. Sorry if thats against the forum rules but I didn't read anything about it being frowned apon.


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## BurtMacklinFBI (Jul 17, 2021)

reserving this spot for future projects


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## BurtMacklinFBI (Jul 17, 2021)

reserving this spot for future projects


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## BurtMacklinFBI (Jul 17, 2021)

reserving this spot for future projects


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## Fraust (Apr 4, 2021)

Nice progress. It's looking good. You should start a journal in the cool season journals section and keep at it &#128077;


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