# Gaddis' 2021 Lawn Journal



## Gaddis (Oct 18, 2018)

*Problems to start the season*

I had hoped to start this journal sooner but it was not in the cards. I did a 100% Mazama renovation on 4K of my 5K yard last fall. I had a major washout but was able to make a decent recovery and when the lawn went to sleep for the winter, I thought I was in decent shape.





Well, sometimes things don't go as planned. The KBG is just starting wake up a week or so ago but the HUGE amount of Poa Annua i ended up with is going gangbusters. I brought in 10 yards of topsoil for leveling last fall so I knew I would have some Poa to battle this spring but I never expected to see anywhere near this quantity. I've spent the past week hand pulling as much as I possibly could. So far I've filled 10-1/2 five gallon buckets with the stuff and I still have 1/3 of the yard to go. I'm trying to do this quickly to prevent as much of the seed heads to reach the soil as I can.









Additionally, we had a relatively rough February here on Long Island and had enough snow cover that the grass didn't see any sunlight for over a month. When it finally melted, I realized that a significant amount of the young KBG had succumbed to snow mold. I think I still have enough good grass remaining to feed my way out of it and let the Mazama spread on its own without an overseed but in some areas, especially those where I had to pull a ton of Poa Annua, I'm going to have to either reseed or plug to help things fill in. I have at least 1 spot in the backyard (the canal side) where the Poa is so dense, I'm going to dig it out with a shovel rather than attempt to hand pull it. Photo is the front after a large rake out of the dead material.



And the final wonderful little surprise I received was seeing a huge resurgence of Poa Trivialis in the test strip that I renovated in the fall of 2019. This strip (on the side of my property) was looking fantastic last season and now it is so invaded that I plan to dig out all the Triv and reseed within the next week. I had glypho'ed this entire 1k strip and was sure I got everything but that damn plant is almost indestructible so no more messing around with chemicals. I'm digging it out.



In short, I'm presented with a frustrating and largely unexpected start to my season. I have to blitz the lawn with a huge amount of "elbow grease" to try and save my season. But I'm going to stay the course and hope for the best! I'll do my best to share any successes or failures with everyone here.


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## Gaddis (Oct 18, 2018)

Well, I've done about as much I can in my battle to break the Poa Annua cycle in my yard. Over a 3 week period, I've hand pulled roughly 86 gallons of individual Poa Annua plants (estimated by the number of 5 gallons buckets I filled). I also dug out a roughly 12 foot long by 4 foot wide section on the back lawn that was so infested with Annua that there was almost no good grass remaining. For anyone considering doing something similar, I can tell you that it's a painful process, at least for those of us in our 60s. I took much of the skin off my knucles, even while wearing garden gloves. My hands feel like those of a greenhorn crab fisherman on the Bering Sea (for those of you who enjoy Deadliest Catch). But maybe it was worth it. I seem to have all but eliminated actively growing Poa Annua plants from my lawn. It left my yard with large, gaping holes that will have to be dealt with. But with my plan to apply Ethofumisate in the fall, maybe I can finally eliminate Poa Annua for next season.

I also have discovered small Poa Trivialis plants sprouting throughout the lawn. This broke my heart to see and may mean that I have a failed reno. I'm trying to pull these as I find them before they can get established but realistically, I'm sure some will be missed. I have to transition over to chemical means of managing the weeds as I just can't continue to spend the amount of time on my hands and knees that I've spent battling the Poa Annua. I saw gman post the idea of using a 1/2 inch pvc pipe with a paper towel dipped in glypho inserted inside to dapple the Triv plants as they are found and I'm going to give this a try.

Overall, the Mazama is just not filling in after the winter kill nearly as well as I had hoped. I've done 5 spoon feedings of 0.2 lbs of N via AMS so far and 2 large applications of K via SOP (I'm very low on K based on a Waypoint soil test). There is some dead material in places that may be keeping the KBG from spreading. I suspect this may be the remains of the huge amount of peat moss piles from the washout that occurred last fall. I've done 4 or 5 passes over it with a Greenworks electric dethatcher but it just doesn't seem to get up much of the dead matter. The ground is literally spongy in places.

I'm very open to ideas of the best way to proceed. I plan on continuing the spoon feedings. I'm going to switch over to urea as the temps continue to rise. I've filled the dug out section with new soil and have seeded it with Mazama. I don't expect to be able to nurse much of the seedlings through the summer heat but at least my wife sees me trying to keep things green and I removed all of the Poa Annua seed bank in that area.


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## Gaddis (Oct 18, 2018)

Sorry I haven't done a good job keeping this journal up to date. It's been about 25 days since my last entry. I continued my spoon feedings of 0.2 lbs of N via urea every 7-10 days but I just wasn't getting the Mazama to fill in very much. Out of desperation, I picked up a bag of Yard Mastery Flagship and applied 0.75 lbs of N via my spreader. About 5 days after that application, the growth finally kicked in, which makes sense since 75% of the N in Flagship is fast release. With all the N I've pounded into this lawn this Spring, I shouldn't be surprised that It now growing at nearly an inch every 2 days. But I'm ok with that for now since it also seems to be spreading fairly aggressively to thicken and to fill in my Poa Annua holes.

One interesting observation I've made about the young Mazama this year is that roughly 25% of the lawn has not yet grown to a height where my Honda rotary set at 2 inches has cut it yet. These seem to be the areas that were the thinnest due to my huge washout event last fall. It seems that Mazama wants to take ground before it spends energy on top growth. I don't know if this is normal for KBG in general but I'm fairly sure this is what I'm seeing and it certainly surprised me. I would be curious to see if other people have seen this in their KBG Reno's. I would have thought that pounding the lawn with 2.4 lbs of N / M already this spring would cause all of the grass to surge with top growth but that has not been the case.

The other observation that surprised me was that the area that gets shaded by my neighbors trees is easily the densest and fastest growing section of the reno. I would have thought that the portions receiving direct sunlight all day would be the happiest but that's not what I've seen. I've interpreted this to mean that I may have been under-watering the lawn a bit and the area under the trees responded better because it is retaining more moisture. We had a very dry May right up to Memorial Day weekend when we got 4.5 inches. I've since cranked up the length of my watering sessions with some zones running for more than an hour. It seems much happier.

I've been holding off on applying any PGR this season until growth really got going. But at the current growth rate, I'll have to start dosing some Anew fairly soon. I have a fair amount of broadleaf weeds showing up every mow but so far, the hand picking I've been doing seems to be sufficient. I haven't used a drop of herbicide on the reno since I sprayed Tenacity at seed down.


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