# knotweed_king 2022 front yard full reno



## knotweed_king (5 mo ago)

Moved to this house a few years ago. Had some construction with heavy equipment that annihilated the front yard. The contractor put down some unknown grass seed. Probably got a 50% coverage. I knew nothing about grass at the time. After 2 years of overseeding failures, I had started to learn more about grass.

The grass that is there is not great. I have clay soil that is like concrete during the summer, so luckily I really don't have many weeds at all. But that means it's difficult to overseed, the existing soil doesn't hold seed, even with a covering like peat moss.

It's time for a full renovation.

I've been experimenting with grass projects over the past year or two. I'm looking for something that is going to be low maintenance. I'll be mowing to 3.5" or so.I don't have irrigation beyond the temporary setup to get the grass established. I don't want to use pre emergents and only use herbicides in the case of weeds that can take over, like creeping Charlie.

Maybe I'm in over my head, but that's why I'm here starting a log. *Any advice, feel free to share!*


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## knotweed_king (5 mo ago)

Aug 13

First application of gly to kill the existing lawn. I portioned off the lawn in 20x20 sections to ensure I applied the correct amount. I used ~2oz/gal with blue turfmark. The overall area to be renovated is about 3,200 sqft.


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## knotweed_king (5 mo ago)

Aug 20

7 days after first gly application. Looks like I got 95% or more. I left two strips unsprayed because I wanted to see what would happen. Because of how much I was spraying would those small strips survive? The answer appears to be yes.

There's quite a bit of blue tint on the grass from the dye. We haven't really had any rain since I started. I spot sprayed anything that looked green, included my two test strips.


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## knotweed_king (5 mo ago)

Aug 21

It has been hot and dry. Even compared to yesterday this grass is brown and crispy. Today I did a scalp with the mowers. I took the push mower and bagged it, I set it basically as low as I could go. Then I took out the Z-Turn and set the deck on the ground and did another pass.


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## knotweed_king (5 mo ago)

Now the question becomes, when do I put down seed? I was thinking of targeting around Sept 1.

I'm brining in 5 yards of topsoil to lay down to give the seed something to embed in and germinate. I'll run the dethatcher over the lawn this how much of the dead grass I can pick up.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

I would cancel the 5 yards of topsoil and drop the seed today. Run the dethatcher and mow/bag, drop seeds and run the dethatcher again to help the seed get deeper into the ground.


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## knotweed_king (5 mo ago)

g-man said:


> I would cancel the 5 yards of topsoil and drop the seed today. Run the dethatcher and mow/bag, drop seeds and run the dethatcher again to help the seed get deeper into the ground.


Wish I saw your comment sooner, soil was delivered yesterday. But, I've struggled in the past to get seed to embed. I have clay, so the surface is like concrete, the seed doesn't embed, even using a covering like peat moss. I do think that leaving the dead grass would help hold it in place… but soil is already here. I saw in your journal it looks like the dead grass helps hold the seed, which would be helpful during rain.

The plus side of clay is that I get very few weeds to germinate.


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## knotweed_king (5 mo ago)

Aug 28 - 2 weeks after killing lawn

Existing lawn is completely dead and crispy. I scalped it last week. Today I sprayed anything that even had a hint of green.

Ran the electric dethatcher over the entire lawn. This ripped up a decent amount of dead grass, but there's still a lot in place. This is probably okay because the dead grass that's there may act as a "net" to hold things in place.

After dethatching today I started spreading the topsoil. Spreading 5 yards by hand definitely going to take a while. Have potential T-storms next two days, but after that the weather looks clear. Hopefully be dropping seed in 2-3 days.


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## knotweed_king (5 mo ago)

Today is the day. Had to wait out some t-storms the past few days. Next 10 days look warm and cloudy with no rain.

Finished spreading and raking the topsoil. Used a 36" rake with tines down to smooth things out. Put seed down. separately. Reno area ~3100sqft. Spread 30lbs of TTTF and then 3lb of KBG. Lightly raked it in with a metal rake. Spread peat moss as a covering. Set up sprinklers. Now we wait.

Seed:
90% TTTF - RK blend: 33% traverse 2 srp, 34% rhambler 2 srp, 33% titanium 2ls
10% KBG - Stover Royal Blue blend: 25% bewitched, 25% bedazled, 25% Skye, 25% Blue note


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## knotweed_king (5 mo ago)

DAS: 1

I didn't anticipate how hard it is to wait for the seed to come up! I made some sod plugs inside to get a feel for how long it would take seed to germinate. The fescue started at 3-4 days, and by day 5 most of it was sprouting. The bluegrass started popping up at day 5, by day 7 most of it had started to germinate. Obviously this was under perfectly ideal conditions inside, so it may be slower outside.

After the first water, so areas looks like the peat moss disappeared. Other areas are still covered. Not sure what that's about, I only did two very light waterings so far, maybe it sort of incorporated into the loose topsoil. I'll see if certain areas germinate faster.


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## knotweed_king (5 mo ago)

DAS: 2

Weather forecast keeps changing. Last night said we might get light rain at 4am. So I turned automated sprinklers off. Woke up this morning, no rain, said we would get sustained rain starting around 9am. Now supposed to get showers and light rain from 10am-5pm. I've never watched the forecast so closely. It keeps changing, I'm hoping just for light showers, but if the storm blows north I could get some brief heavy rain.

Edit 840pm: The weather people really got it wrong. We got mist instead of rain. Very light showers here and there. It was damp enough that I didn't need to do any supplemental watering. It was mid 50Fs with dense cloud cover so I wasn't losing any surface moisture. Next few days look cloudy.


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## knotweed_king (5 mo ago)

DAS: 2.5

Do we have liftoff?! I saw one green stem emerge. Could be a weed or something. But the seed next to it has definitely germinated and will be sending up a blade of grass by end of the day if I had to guess. I'm surprised to see it happen so quickly. Should have lots of seeds popping by day 4-5.

Edit: pretty sure on closer inspection that is in fact a weed. Oh well.


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## knotweed_king (5 mo ago)

DAS: 6
And finally today I see a ton of seeds popping. They starting poking up yesterday throughout the day, just barely breaking the surface. At night with a flashlight I could see the tips of the blades. This morning there was widespread germination. This is all the TTTF, the *** is probably 1-3 days behind this in terms of popping up. Today has got a lot of sun so it should help keep the seed bed warm. Now I've just got to keep things moving along and make it through fall.


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## SeanW78 (6 mo ago)

@knotweed_king If your blend of TTTF is anything like my monostand, the next week is going to show a lot of growth. I had solid coverage in spots in 8 days, and now 28 days post seed drop I've moved 3 times and only had some smaller areas that didn't germinate. Take pictures to look back on and relax. This is the fun part.


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## knotweed_king (5 mo ago)

@SeanW78 That's good to hear. I've been watching this basically non-stop since I put seed down. To see everything popping today was really good. The weeks of preparation and all the work to get it right, finally paying off. And this is my first reno so I was a bit anxious. I'll be taking pictures probably through the first month to track progress so that when I do this again I'll remember what I went through.


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## knotweed_king (5 mo ago)

DAS: 7

The past 36 hours have gone from nothing happening to grass everywhere. It looks like I'm going to have pretty good coverage. There are a few spots here and there that might be fine. Areas that were light on peat moss appear to have lower germination rates so far, but hard to say for sure. Exciting to see the full reno area covered in seedlings.


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## knotweed_king (5 mo ago)

DAS: 10

At this point I think all the fescue that is going to germinate has. It's approaching 2inches. The Fescue has been up since day 6, but I've been continuing to water every 2-3 hours for the KBG to germinate. I'm starting to worry that this may put the fescue at risk since it's always wet. The weather is calling for rain and thunderstorms all day today and into tomorrow. Going forward, I'm going to reduce the watering and have my last watering be earlier in the day to allow the plants time to dry off. I may shift down to only 1 watering per day in the morning, and add a supplemental watering at midday if needed based on weather (if it's sunny and hot).

Overall I think my coverage is going to be really good. I'll have a few spots I need to go back and seed. I'm probably looking at my first mow by this weekend. It's really interesting to see that the seed germinated in long straight lines that resulted from the light metal rake I did after spreading the seed.


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## knotweed_king (5 mo ago)

And the thunderstorms arrived. Had a lot of water pooling and started to get some washout. I don't know how much of the KBG had germinated and rooted. If it wasn't rooted I'm probably going to have a number of spots that got washed out. It's supposed to rain through the rest of the night so I won't be able to assess the damage till tomorrow. Luckily we've got some sun on the way later in the week to hopefully dry things out. I just hope it can make it till then.

The washout looks worse than the pictures show, but this was the best I could do for taking pictures.


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## knotweed_king (5 mo ago)

Hard to watch the heavy rain just wash everything out. They just issued a flood warning as rain has intensified. It's coming down heavy, I can't watch.


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## knotweed_king (5 mo ago)

The washout carnage continued. Flood warnings continued. Lot of dirt roads washed out and watering pooling up in fields. I got to watch a river of my freshly spread topsoil wash away. When the rain let up a bit I was able to see that most of the topsoil was washed away. It's amazing how easily the rain can take 5 yards of soil away. Probably means I'll need to drop a bit more of the 12-12-12 I was using for starter fert.

In this picture the hoses are acting like a path to steer the water from the top part of the lawn. It was like a river.


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## knotweed_king (5 mo ago)

Exactly 1 month after seeding. Have mowed twice. Last week did a 3lb application of 12-12-12, or 0.1lb N/1000. 

Decent coverage. Some areas with wash out that I reseeded last week. The seed came up pretty uniformly in my rake lines which is interesting. I'm hoping that I got enough KBG germinated and that it will survive the winter. Picture below of one of the thin areas that I have since re-seeded.


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