# CCC Lawn Journal



## CrackedCornCrack (Jan 25, 2020)

Hey All!

Long time listener, first time caller. I enjoy everyone's lawn journal and certainly learn a lot from reading them. Here's the beginning of mine, starting in Spring of 2020.

First, the back story:

Bought a new construction house in July 2018 and the builder laud an unknown TTTF sod (it's usually black beauty in this area) over bumpy, horrible red clay and rock. The front yard (approximately 2500 sqft) gets full sun and the back (10k) is moderately to heavily shaded.

Due to the Sod being laid in July in Tennessee the yard was stressed during fall of 2018.

I overseeded with Super Turf 2 from United seeds and it turned out great.





The grass held up great through the summer of 2019...then tragedy struck.

I went to "practice" cutting my lawn short in preparation for the 2019 overseed. I cut the lawn WAY too short, scalping in maybe 30-40 % of the yard.

Then I left town for two weeks.

Which happened to be the hottest two weeks of the year... AND the two busiest work weeks for my wife. So the yard got brutalized, and was never watered.

It turned out to be a pretty solid 85% kill off in mid September 2019. (I have no pictures.... it was a pretty dark time, figuratively speaking).

Then after aeration and slit seeding in 2019 we are here:


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## CrackedCornCrack (Jan 25, 2020)

The Good: my seed from 2019 (Snap Back RR) from United seeds is extremely dark and fine bladed... it looks nice. The yard is 90% + filled in with thick grass and looks passable.

The Bad: I panicked when I had bare spots in fall of 2019 and added a suboptimal fescue blend in places. It has come in light green (I'm concerned it's annual rye) and grows almost twice as fast as the snap back. Also, I've put down a mix of average quality KBG, Elite fescue, and some PR in the back. I feel like I'm going to pay for this when the Tennessee Summer gets here.

The Ugly: there are 4 or 5 (relatively)large areas in the back that didn't get filled in last fall. They are prevalent enough to keep me from putting down preemergent in the back yard. More to follow on that &#128556;&#128556;&#128556;.


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## CrackedCornCrack (Jan 25, 2020)

2020 so far:

Feb 15: mow at 2.5in HOC

Feb 18: spot treatment of winter weeds (and a little pre-m application where I might spring seed) with .5 tsp/gal/m tenacity.

Feb 22: Granular application of Sta-green 30-0-4 w/prodiamine mixed with granular dimension. This is obviously a weird app but there were quite a few external circumstances. 
1. I didn't have time to measure, mix, and spray my prodiamine WDG.
2. Weather is pretty ideal.
3. I did not want to fertilize.
4. I very much wanted 1st round of pre m down before March 1.

All of that being said, I put essentially a half application of the sta green bag rate and a half application on the dimension bag rate. More to follow on how it turns out. I'll do a 1 April ish prodiamine and tenacity app regardless.

Next step: sand level when the grass starts growing well... maybe around late March/ early April.


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## CrackedCornCrack (Jan 25, 2020)

Ok so for the leap weekend I got another mow in and plugger a bare area in the front.

Post mow at 2.25 inches:







Plugged area:


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## CrackedCornCrack (Jan 25, 2020)

Ok a little behind but I've done 2 mows at a 2inch HOC. The latest one being today, March 10.

The little lighter areas in the picture are scalp marks... I'm looking forward to leveling in about a month to hopefully reduce it.

This is gonna sound willlllld to all you northern folks but I applied PGR yesterday (tnex) at .4oz/m. (It's not growing insanely fast but I need to cut 2 times a week to stay in the 1/3 rule)

I also applied FEature, at the low end of the suggested rate... I don't remember it off the top of my head.

The Chapin 24v backpack sprayer is pretty amazing. It makes spraying fun.


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