# Leigh's 2021 Lawn Journal (Southern CT)



## leigh_CT (Jun 24, 2020)

This is my first journal and my first attempt at maintaining the lawn (and any lawn) myself. We moved into this house in December 2019 and had a landscaping company look after the lawn in 2020. I had always intended on looking after it myself when we bought the house but Covid happened, I couldn't buy a lawn tractor in time and wasn't feeling so confident about any of it…

We have ~32,500sqft of lawn. The previous owner remodeled the house and renovated the lawn, planting 100% KBG. He maintained the lawn himself when he lived here and very kindly provided a summary of his steps (below). Having done a bit of reading on this forum and elsewhere, I'm not sure about everything he did (I've seen that spring overseeing isn't the most worthwhile), but it's at least my starting point as I keep reading and learning.

Previous owner's program:

Spring Aerate lawn _(already completed March 2021)_
Tenacity treatment
Overseed and fill in any patches
Fertilizer (he recommended Scott's Turf Builder)
Water (with sprinkler system)
Fertilizer every 30 days
Fall Tenacity
Overseed

Our landscape company last year did perform some patching up in the spring and then overseeded the whole lawn in the fall (I'm pretty sure they didn't stick to our KBG request though). We did have a lot of weeds pop up throughout last year (mostly crabgrass, nutsedge and some clover). They felt this was because the seller of the house very likely let things go that final year once he knew he was selling and while it was on the market etc, leaving room for weeds to settle in - which makes sense to me. But I do want to be a lot more pro-active with the weeds this year! There were some pretty bad areas of the garden last summer.

The major issues I know I will need to contend with this year:


We got a new dog last fall and so I need to work out a plan to stop his pee from ruining an entire section of the lawn! 
The weeds - mostly crabgrass and nutsedge (I'm hoping the fall overseeding will have helped a lot)
The patch of the lawn where we had a big tree and its stump removed, leaving us with a big hole full of bark and wood chips
We removed a vegetable garden last fall, which now needs to be weeded and reseeded. 
Shallow soil depth

That final point was a big issue for us last year. Soon after we moved in, a neighbor told us that the previous owner buried all of the good top soil underneath the rocky soil and debris when he remodeled the property. In addition to that, we had big patches of grass that turned brown last summer and when the landscaper inspected the areas, they discovered that the soil is very shallow, probably because very large pieces of debris from the remodel are buried under there. When I looked at the old sprinkler water schedule, it looked like the previous owner got around this by soaking the grass for hours every night to keep it hydrated. Over the coming week, I need to dig down and properly inspect different areas of the lawn to find out just what is going on.

My X350 lawn mower arrives next week and I'm about to order some other things I'm going to need, such as:

Tow-behind boom sprayer
Tow-behind spreader
Tow-behind aerator
KBG Grass seed
Tenacity
Fertilizer
Surfactant for post-emergent weed spraying

Additional steps I'd like to research and learn more about this year:

Fungicides
Sedgehammer for the nutsedge
Soil wetting agents

*Some sections of the garden now:*






*Some of the bad patches last summer:*


----------



## M32075 (May 9, 2019)

I'm having a slight anxiety attack on the size of the property, you have your hands full but I will say it's beautiful.


----------



## leigh_CT (Jun 24, 2020)

M32075 said:


> I'm having a slight anxiety attack on the size of the property, you have your hands full but I will say it's beautiful.


You and me both! I'm just trying to mostly relax about it and if I manage to at least keep the lawn alive this year, I'll take it as a win! Having a company take care of it last year and watching them has helped give me some confidence.

We've actually decided to have a fence installed to portion off part of the garden, like having a garden within the garden! So that will at least create two zones - one I can try to spend extra care on within the fence and the outer zone I can just worry about maintaining it (and perhaps experiment on it a little if need be...).

Right now I'm mostly focused on trying to purchase and receive my mower....spending $$$ with a dealer should not be this difficult :|


----------

