# NateClark's 2017/18 lawn renovation/landscaping improvements



## NateClark (Oct 30, 2017)

Hey all! I was hanging out one night having a couple beers and watching YouTube on my smart TV when one a video popped up in my suggestions... MOWING REEL LOW by a one Connor Ward. His video led me to this site, and I've been inspired ever since.

My lawn situation:

I bought my house at the end of September 2016. It was a brand new builder lot with poorly-graded and uneven sod, but spread to take deep root in the first year. I hardly mowed the lawn at all, as the growth looked minimal- til I realized how thick the thatch layer had become. These pictures are from September 29th- a bit late to be starting on my lawn renovation, but looking back I realize I've made decent progress in the last month.


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## NateClark (Oct 30, 2017)

Dethatched three times and gradually moved the mower height from the highest setting to the lowest setting. I threw down some annual ryegrass (mistook it for perennial) shortly after the above photos were taken, and snapped this picture on October 15th. The ryegrass is terrifically soft and looks great, but grows very fast and is a nuisance to cut (fills the deck of my cheap rotary mower with WET clippings in one pass.) I've recently sprayed most of the ryegrass with glyphosate and am looking at it as an interesting experiment for my logbook.


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## NateClark (Oct 30, 2017)

These pictures were taken October 21st. You can see from the grill pic (sorry, it's one of the closer pictures I have of my lawn!) that the grass canopy is a lot thinner from the dethatching. It's good to see the grass starting to recover (albeit slowly this close to dormancy) because the dethatching did rip up the grass a lot when I did my passes.

Next up: big plans for irrigation, installation of a patio, beds, and privacy trees!

Nate


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## MasterMech (Sep 24, 2017)

NateClark said:


> Dethatched three times and gradually moved the mower height from the highest setting to the lowest setting. I threw down some annual ryegrass (mistook it for perennial) shortly after the above photos were taken, and snapped this picture on October 15th. The ryegrass is terrifically soft and looks great, but grows very fast and is a nuisance to cut (fills the deck of my cheap rotary mower with WET clippings in one pass.) I've recently sprayed most of the ryegrass with glyphosate and am looking at it as an interesting experiment for my logbook.


I hear ya on the annual rye clogging up a rotary mower. I now have 20,000 sq ft of the stuff, but I'm managing to keep it looking decent by running a lawn sweeper over the mess once I'm done mowing. It would be interesting to see how a reel works on it. Maybe I'll find out soon enough!


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## Colonel K0rn (Jul 4, 2017)

Welcome to TLF Nate! I'm sure you'll find plenty of helpful people here that will be able to aid you with your reno and irrigation and anything else you might want to do to your lawn. Look forward to see what you plan to do. I swear I've cut ARG before with a rotary and had no idea what it was, but it sure made a mess.


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## jayhawk (Apr 18, 2017)

Ward's got an aspirational lawn for sure! I hope you didn't damage your Bermuda w/the app of 'roundup'. the good news is that you've got one of the aggressive and resilient cultivars out there.

RE: privacy trees - you'll want to consider the sun positions, expected tree size and the implications of shade. be on the look out for poor drainage areas or moss...may then want to determine if that can be remediated with gutter drainage solutions -> if you want lush grass throughout the property.
welcome to the forum!


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## wardconnor (Mar 25, 2017)

jayhawk said:


> Ward's got an aspirational lawn for sure! I hope you didn't damage your Bermuda w/the app of 'roundup'. the good news is that you've got one of the aggressive and resilient cultivars out there.
> 
> RE: privacy trees - you'll want to consider the sun positions, expected tree size and the implications of shade. be on the look out for poor drainage areas or moss...may then want to determine if that can be remediated with gutter drainage solutions -> if you want lush grass throughout the property.
> welcome to the forum!


Nate... Glad you found us and I am happy to see that people are actually watching my videos and leading people here to The Lawn Forum.

An awesome lawn is easy... The trick is to give it TIME and patience. By time I mean spend a lot of time in the lawn caring for it and mowing it. Whatever you put your heart soul and time into will inevitably turn out for the better. All the info and more is found within this forum.


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## NateClark (Oct 30, 2017)

Thanks for the kind words! Beds have been fully installed, as well as privacy trees (though I'd like three more) and a palm tree in my front yard. Have successfully killed a large portion of the ARG out back with glyphosate, but everywhere else it's growing incredibly strong. Also irritating to deal with the green stain from mowing and edging.

Beds:


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## NateClark (Oct 30, 2017)

Bringing in some topsoil to grade up the portion of the rear bed nearest the fence. 


You can see the glyphosate hard at work, but thankfully the Bermuda is surviving underneath (in most parts)





Finished product:


Those are skyrocket junipers that should grow to 12-15 feet. Also have the triple trunk Mexican fan palm out front. Anybody have any experience with these?


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## Redtenchu (Jan 28, 2017)

I don't have any experience with them, but I love the Fan Palms!


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## NateClark (Oct 30, 2017)

Busy week so far! Finishing up the three beds in the back of my house has hardly felt like work compared to the minimal amount of digging I've done for the patio. My roommate broke his back five weeks ago in a skydiving accident, so his help has been restrained primarily to moral support and watering (pictured). 


Putting in Spanish Dagger Yucca and rosemary transplanted from my front bed:

The planting on the left is a triple-trunk Pygmy date palm which should grow to a full height of 10-12 feet and look great. It'll be just visible over the fence.

All finished! 


A friend I've made that works at Lowe's saw me looking at a palm tree while buying top soil and offered to take 50% off... I swear I wasn't going to buy it!




Starting to dig for the patio. I need to make a retaining wall 15 1/8" above grade which will be done out of brick and mortar, then will fill with pavers. 






Sorry for the dump of non-lawn stuff... once the construction is complete and we're back to full growing season, domination will commence. Thanks for stopping in!


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## Suaverc118 (Jul 28, 2017)

Looking great so far! Sorry for your friend and hope he has a speedy recovery. Keep posting your progress


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## Ware (Jan 28, 2017)

Enjoying the progress pics. :thumbup:


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## Iriasj2009 (Feb 15, 2017)

Ware said:


> Enjoying the progress pics. :thumbup:


Same here! Keep the pics coming


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## NateClark (Oct 30, 2017)

Suaverc118 said:


> Looking great so far! Sorry for your friend and hope he has a speedy recovery. Keep posting your progress


Thank you! Endless summer hydrangeas have been installed in the beds. These should give beautiful big blue blooms throughout summer. I planned them so they'll fill the whole bed at their mature height (5' tall and 5' wide.)





Installed the final 8 skyrocket junipers for a total of 14. Spaced every 3 feet, they should grow to form a solid 12-15' tall wall. The Mexican fan palm in the left corner will grow over 80' tall.



For the piece dé resistance, I found two windmill palm trees on Craigslist. I didn't even have to pay for them, just remove them from the ground... which happened to be over an hour from my house. My '93 F250 also decided not to start on me at the gas station a mile after I pulled out of my house. All I ever use it for is running to the hardware store, but of course the one time I actually have to drive an hour away and have stuff to do (I also set a meeting with a client when I realized I'd be in the area) is when it decides to give me grief.

But, an hour and a half and a new battery later and I was staring down the two palms I had to extract. The owner of the house was convinced I wouldn't be able to dig and load them myself. They were only transplanted a year prior so I could literally push them over, but the root balls each weighed a ton. A bit of chipping away with a pickax and I was able to get them to a much more manageable weight.



After forty minutes I had them both loaded in the truck and started the drive back home. Not easy to haul and transplant in the dark, but I think the results were well worth it. I'd estimate these trees to be worth several hundred dollars each. I clipped several fronds for transport but am expecting these windmill palms to make a healthy recovery.







What do you guys think??


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## Colonel K0rn (Jul 4, 2017)

Hey, I just stumbled on this thread, mainly because I haven't been as active lately, and I think that might be the case for the holiday week season for warm season grass folks. You've got some nice landscaping themes going on. Love those junipers in the back, and that one palm that gets 80' tall :O I was trying to figure out what kind of plants I'm going to put on the South side of my house, because I just don't like the one that is in front of my AC condenser, and I want to extend the bed across the front of my house, around that side as well. I think I'm going to go with a hydrangea.

I feel you on the truck that is used a few times a year. I have my Blazer that gets driven to the junkyard every so often. Call your insurance company and put it in storage when you're not driving it during the year. It'll save you money on the insurance, and you can just call them up the day before you're going to drive it, and they'll re-add the coverage. That's what USAA does for me anyway.


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## NateClark (Oct 30, 2017)

Colonel K0rn said:


> You've got some nice landscaping themes going on. Love those junipers in the back, and that one palm that gets 80' tall :O I was trying to figure out what kind of plants I'm going to put on the South side of my house, because I just don't like the one that is in front of my AC condenser, and I want to extend the bed across the front of my house, around that side as well. I think I'm going to go with a hydrangea.


Nice! I'm excited to see how these bloom up.

The last month has consisted of an ongoing glyphosate Ryegrass kill, with a mow followed by a dethatch and mow this past week. The bermuda has started poking through the dead ryegrass so I'm currently watering it fervently to help fill in the patches. Pictures to follow.


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## NateClark (Oct 30, 2017)

Lawn full of ryegrass:


A few days after the glyphosate spray: 


Death out back (I sprayed the back a week or so earlier than the front):


You'll notice my Pygmy date palm and larger juniper bush didn't make it through the winter- the Pygmy is way out of its proper climate and froze. The juniper didn't survive transplanting/winter:


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## NateClark (Oct 30, 2017)

Dead lawn! 




Palm is starting to throw up some new fronds!


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## NateClark (Oct 30, 2017)

March 21st: 


March 27th:


Thickness of the annual ryegrass has negatively impacted the Bermuda more than I anticipated. The front yard had much thicker ryegrass and was killed about a week and a half after the back yard, and is lagging noticeably. If you look closely you can see the Bermuda starting to spring up, but there aren't thick growth patches like in the back yard. I've been trying to water lightly every day to force some grwith, and tossed down an app of milirganite last week.

Bermuda starting to poke up:


I dethatched and mowed a second time, and this seems to have improved the growth of the Bermuda. The ARG was ~8-10" tall when I killed it, and some of the grass became wet and laid sideways so it's taking a bit more dethatching and raking than I anticipated.


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## Colonel K0rn (Jul 4, 2017)

Curious, why would you let the ARG get that tall?


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## NateClark (Oct 30, 2017)

Colonel K0rn said:


> Curious, why would you let the ARG get that tall?


Easier to spray the ryegrass with glyphosate without hitting the bermuda. It was also an incredible pain mowing the ARG, that stuff grows ridiculously. I'm quite happy it's gone even though the lawn looks pretty terrible right now. On the plus side (aside from looking lush all summer), I did some reading that indicates ARG root systems can be beneficial for soil quaility. We'll see I guess.


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## Colonel K0rn (Jul 4, 2017)

Just my $0.02, but there's a much safer(to your bermuda) way to get rid of the ARG, both of which wouldn't call for the use of glyphosate on it. You could go with MSM, which is safe for bermuda, or high doses of Nitrogen with hotter weather to facilitate the death of the ARG and spur the bermuda on. Spraying glyphosate on "dormant" bermuda is pretty much asking for a harlequin patchwork of a lawn when the bermuda comes into full green that will take a while to grow out of. I've got the mantra that I only use glyphosate on stuff I intend to kill, whether I think it's dormant or not. Just call it the ounce of prevention.


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