# Noclss Lawn Journal



## Noclssgt (Apr 6, 2018)

It appears a lot of people on here keep their lawn journal stored up here. Probably a great idea in my case because I forget what I did and when.

Lawn Overview
I've owned the house for almost 5 years now. I've been struggling for the past few years to get the weeds under control and get the grass thickened up. This is a satellite image of what the yard looked like right before I bought the place:

I used the Scott's 4 step program, I used local lawn companies, none of it seemed to work. My grass seed that I was throwing down didn't seem to germinate much either. I am sure a big part of the issue was lack of knowledge. With that, I did manage to make a little progress compared to what it looked like when I bought the place. This was roughly 2 years ago:

After finally getting some decent knowledge from some of the more known YouTube channels, I've switched to Milorganite, my grass is greener, the weeds aren't as bad, and the grass seed actually grew in, thickening up the lawn quite a bit. There's still some bare spots to work on though from where I removed a Spruce tree in the late fall.

Lawn Size
I'm estimating that I have roughly 15000sq/ft
I've marked the property into 4 sections
the main front yard area is ~7800
the side yard by the garage is ~5000
the backyard is ~2000
the small section on the side of the house by the a/c is ~1000
I take into account the flower beds, the above ground pool, shed, etc.

Weed Problems
Last year my main problem weed was crabgrass along the driveway, along the road (mainly hotter areas) and a few spots here and there that were a little bare. I did have some clover here and there and a few dandelions. I was using a local lawn care company at the beginning of the year so they were supposed to have put down the pre-emergent. They sprayed for most of the weeds but I ended up cancelling them as I wasn't seeing enough progress and I started doing it myself. This year I've seen some chickweed, dandelions and some strange grass that I have yet to identify that is predominantly under a large oak tree. I've tried spraying the weeds a couple times, but the temps are back and fourth in Cincinnati so it may have gotten too cold to take affect.
Prodiamine was put down on I believe 3/11(see, I should have written this down sooner!)

Soil Sample
This is the first soil sample I've done. This was taken on 4/2 from my front yard.

So it appears that I was still low on Nitrogen and Potassium even though I put Milorganite down about a week prior (3/24 I believe). The numbers it's calling for I believe would be a perfect fit for Ringer. However, the amount I would need would cost me almost 2x that of Milorganite. I'd have to do the math to see if it is cheaper to do Ringer or crank up the dosage for Milorganite to meet the need.


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## Noclssgt (Apr 6, 2018)

Photo from 4/1
this was taken Easter Sunday. The grass was getting tall because it had been raining/snowing and nature was just trolling the crap out of me.


4/7
I finally managed to accomplish two things.
1. I was able to get a new push mower. Toro Recycler 22" Stow Away.
2. I was able to get the first mow in for the year and used the new Toro. I will have to work on my stripe game with this guy.


4/12
managed to get another mow in before the rain sets in this weekend and temps evidently dropping to the 30's again after it's going to be in the 70's on 4/13 and 4/14. I mowed perpendicular to the stripes on 4/7 and they looked much better. didn't take a pic. Also went through the yard and dug up a lot of the dandelions as they were killing me.


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## Ware (Jan 28, 2017)

Noclssgt said:


> It appears a lot of people on here keep their lawn journal stored up here. Probably a great idea in my case because I forget what I did and when.


And it's great to see what other folks are doing with their lawns. :thumbsup:


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## Noclssgt (Apr 6, 2018)

Ware said:


> Noclssgt said:
> 
> 
> > It appears a lot of people on here keep their lawn journal stored up here. Probably a great idea in my case because I forget what I did and when.
> ...


truth


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## ericgautier (Apr 22, 2017)

Welcome to TLF!


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## kevreh (Apr 3, 2018)

Noclssgt said:


> So it appears that I was still low on Nitrogen and Potassium even though I put Milorganite down about a week prior (3/24 I believe). The numbers it's calling for I believe would be a perfect fit for Ringer. However, the amount I would need would cost me almost 2x that of Milorganite. I'd have to do the math to see if it is cheaper to do Ringer or crank up the dosage for Milorganite to meet the need.


I used SOP from kelp4less to get my potassium levels up. With the amount you need that may be the better route. Last time I ordered if you get it from their website you don't pay shipping. For some reason you do if get it through ebay.

I'm surprise how green your lawn looks with the colder temps you've had.


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## Noclssgt (Apr 6, 2018)

kevreh said:


> Noclssgt said:
> 
> 
> > So it appears that I was still low on Nitrogen and Potassium even though I put Milorganite down about a week prior (3/24 I believe). The numbers it's calling for I believe would be a perfect fit for Ringer. However, the amount I would need would cost me almost 2x that of Milorganite. I'd have to do the math to see if it is cheaper to do Ringer or crank up the dosage for Milorganite to meet the need.
> ...


Thanks, I will look that up.
Yeah, our temps have been across the board the past month. We get a few days of 50-60 temps and then snow. Its 76 today and supposed to be 78 tomorrow. They're calling for snow and 39 monday.


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## Noclssgt (Apr 6, 2018)

4/18
I went ahead and bought 100lbs of ringer lawn restore to try out. It has higher nitrogen and has potash so thought it would be worth a try before I do an actual potash treatment.
I put it down at roughly 6lb/1k. I just finished up and put a little extra down at the property lines when it started raining. Perfect timing 


Before picture so I can compare in a week or so


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## Noclssgt (Apr 6, 2018)

4/19
Got a chance to go outside and spot spray the weeds I was seeing. As I walked through, I quickly realized I had a much bigger problem. The whole yard is filled with this junk and I just saw them carrying seeds today (was dark and rainy when i fertilized yesterday)





I made up a mixture of cco and wipe-out and ended up doing more blanket spraying than spot spraying. Going to bag now tomorrow to try to get the seeds bagged up


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

^ grasses go to seed in the spring. It is normal and it does not mean a weed. Some could be weed (mainly poa annua). I dont see poa annua in your images.

When the grass is going to seed, it is really important to have a sharp blade. The seed stalk is thicker and it looks ugly when cut. The seed head period normally last 2 weeks (but this year nothing is normal).


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## Noclssgt (Apr 6, 2018)

oh really?
I guess I just blanket sprayed for nothing then, lol. I will just call it preventative measures  I do have some big nasty patches of either annual ryegrass or quackgrass. I made sure to especially spray that stuff down real good.
This is the first time my grass has ever seeded, that's kind of exciting.


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## Budstl (Apr 19, 2017)

Annual ryegrass will die out in the summer and proper mowing. Glyphosate is the only thing that will kill quack, but it kills good turf too. They both have clasping auricles, but quack has rhizomes.


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## Noclssgt (Apr 6, 2018)

So the lawn has thickened up pretty nice. Some neighbors are starting to compliment and say I'm in competition with a neighbor down the street for nicest lawn (one that I have always been envious of). Of course as soon as things get nice, the garbage man runs his truck through my yard, making a 12" deep rut


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## jessehurlburt (Oct 18, 2017)

Looks great! Do you find the Ringer locally, or have it shipped to you? I've been waiting to give it a try this year.


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## Noclssgt (Apr 6, 2018)

jessehurlburt said:


> Looks great! Do you find the Ringer locally, or have it shipped to you? I've been waiting to give it a try this year.


I have yet to find it locally. The cheapest place I found it was through safer brands directly. They have a 2 bag deal that saves a bit per bag, plus orders over 50 bucks was free shipping. For 4 bags it ended up being almost 10 bucks cheaper than amazon.


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## zeus201 (Aug 30, 2017)

Soybean meal from a local feed store is a good alternative to Ringer. $14.50 / 50 lb bag in my area.


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## Noclssgt (Apr 6, 2018)

zeus201 said:


> Soybean meal from a local feed store is a good alternative to Ringer. $14.50 / 50 lb bag in my area.


interesting. I will look into that. That is definitely MUCH cheaper


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## Noclssgt (Apr 6, 2018)

Update 5/28
Put down a dose of hi yield ornamental weed and grass (dithiopyr). I put 4lb/1000sq ft around d the road and driveway and 3lb/1000sq ft everywhere else as I didnt have enough to do 4lb everywhere, but wanted to get the crabgrass that was coming in already.
I am seeing some brown spots in the lawn. At first I thought it was the poa annua dying off since I have so much of it. Upon pulling some blades, this is what I'm looking at for the most part. Lots of other spots are full brown.


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## Noclssgt (Apr 6, 2018)

so it has been a little bit since I posted updates in the lawn journal. I actually started up a youtube channel and had been using that instead. However, I feel that I should probably keep this updated as well for others that it might help that ultimately don't see the youtube videos. anyways...

6/15/18 - I started spoon feeding milorganite. I was aiming for .5lb/1k but ended up around .35lb/1k. I know for next time to dial up my spreader a bit to get closer to the .5lb/1k. I ended up using roughly 2.5 bags.

6/20/18 - got prime source quinclorac and prosedge in the mail. My checkmate lawn striper also showed up for the toro push mower (hooray!!!) Very easy install and stripes nicely.

6/23/18 - Sprayed the quinclorac and pro sedge. The nutsedge that I sprayed mostly went away. I didn't have MSO for the quinclorac but I did use baby shampoo as a surfactant. I didn't really see much result from the app.

6/30/18 - Seeing more visible results with the nutsedge dying off.

7/11/18 - humic acid (teravita sp-90) and sea kelp showed up. did an app in the backyard

7/14/18 - humic acid and sea kelp app on the side yard

7/15/18 - humic acid and sea kelp app on the front yard.

7/28/18 - I have a patio going into the backyard to replace the deck that I'm in process of tearing down. With that, I feel that the backyard is mostly going to get torn up so I think this is an opportunity to nuke the backyard (2k sqft) and reseed with gci tttf. Waiting on the start date for the patio to determine when to nuke the yard and put seed down via slice seeder.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

FYI, your youtube channel link in the profile is not working.


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## Noclssgt (Apr 6, 2018)

g-man said:


> FYI, your youtube channel link in the profile is not working.


thanks, fixed. apparently it didn't like the way I had the link in there and wasn't saving.


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## Sandi (Apr 3, 2018)

Noclssgt said:


> Update 5/28
> 
> I am seeing some brown spots in the lawn. At first I thought it was the poa annua dying off since I have so much of it. Upon pulling some blades, this is what I'm looking at for the most part. Lots of other spots are full brown.


Hi!

I just wanted to write my own topics, when I saw your picture. My desease is very similar. Did you identify desease? It is spreading, I've lost 40% of the lawn.


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## Noclssgt (Apr 6, 2018)

8/7/18 - I mowed the front yard with some single-doubles but this time I flipped them so the doubles were light facing the road. This made one of the stripes flip from dark to light. Those particular stripes weren't as light as the ones that had been lighter previously. I'm sure if I went over it a few more times the same direction it would get better. But, I'm not too worried about it.
I was planning on nuking my backyard on Sunday, but after over a month of talking about it, the wife shut it down. She was worried about kids and the dog running around the backyard while there were chemicals on the backyard. The dog sometimes eats the grass, so a legit concern. I'm rather glad she did ask because the grass/weed killer I've been using is the Spectracide instead of Roundup. I found that the Spectracide has zero glyphosate in it and instead uses the diquat dibrombide which according to the discord guys is extremely bad news. I found that glyphosate is safe around kids/animals so I will be getting that instead. With that, I've also made a compromise with the wife that I will glyphosate the backyard (with a shot of tenacity) when I go to reseed so there is less time between dead grass and new grass germinating. This will most likely be done around 9/1.

no pics after the mow, but there is some video in my "lawn update august 7, 2018" video on my channel.


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## Noclssgt (Apr 6, 2018)

8/9/18 - so over the past couple weeks instead of using quinclorac to spray the crabgrass and having no effect due to later stage of crabgrass, I've spent a few hours in total pulling it by hand. Very tiresome and I would still have a long way to go to get it all pulled, there's just too much of it. I'm not sure where I went wrong on the pre-emergents, I used Barricade when the temps started to warm up and came back through a little later with dithiopyr. Still got lots of crabgrass.
Anyways, I feel I've reached the point where I should cut my losses pulling crabgrass and just try nuking it out with glyphosate.

I hit all the areas near my driveway with glyphosate, which after spraying I realized is going to look horrible in a few days for as much crabgrass that there actually was. I didn't throw down seed yet since I sprayed so much I wanted to see what was actually killed off so I can seed appropriately. Will upload a pic in a few days of the aftermath.


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## Noclssgt (Apr 6, 2018)

8/24
I waited it out for a while and not all the crabgrass died. I did a second round using diquat, triclopyr and tenacity. I waited it out another week to try to kill off anything remaining. To my dismay, there was still some crabgrass living in this "kill zone." Stuff was tough. But it was mostly dead so I decided to move forward.


(Mid mow the other day)


I got a garden weasel and a dethatch rake and went to town breaking up the dirt and removing all the dead grass. There was a good amount and filled up most of a garbage can.

Once that was done, I bought some Scott's top soil and did a little top dressing. I had to make an extra trip because I didnt have enough. Bought 10 bags in total, 7.5cu yard.




My daughter wanted to help some.

I had leftover Scott's tall fescue seed so I used that on most of the area because I want to save my gci seed for the main reseed of the backyard and general overseed. I did run out of the Scott's seed so I used a little bit of gci seed on the 4 spots closest to the road. I guess I will be able to compare the Scott's seed and gci seed as they start germinating.

I ran out of daylight but had just enough time to give a dusting of pest moss on top of it all. I watered it all this morning. Will take a pic of that when I get home.
Edit: pic of completed job


Overall about 5 hours of work tilling, dethatching, top dressing, seeding and adding peat moss.


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## Powhatan (Dec 15, 2017)

How do you like that Scotts Topsoil? Some reviewers say they found foreign items in the bags.


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## Noclssgt (Apr 6, 2018)

I would agree with the foreign items. I found a nice sized rock in one of the bags, about half the size of a golf ball. other than that it was ok.



Powhatan said:


> How do you like that Scotts Topsoil? Some reviewers say they found foreign items in the bags.


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## Noclssgt (Apr 6, 2018)

8/28/18
I finally got around to putting down some starter fertilizer on the newly seeded areas. Also, while going through my shed, I noticed that some mice got into my leftover 1/2 bag of Ringer. So, since I was about due for another spoon-feeding and humic acid/sea kelp treatment, I went ahead and put down the rest of the ringer in the backyard and applied the humic/sea kelp there. I had a little left over so I hit my domination lines with the ringer.

8/29/18
I was getting worried about not hearing back from my concrete company about my patio that's supposed to go in. I pretty much decided on 8/28 that if I didn't hear back from them by today, the backyard reno wasn't going to happen this year. Behold after I left them a voicemail (wife has been texting for a while with no luck getting answers), they text my wife stating they will be out on 8/30 to start. hooray! This means once they are complete with my patio, I will nuke the backyard and overseed everything.
Also, I noticed that the GCI seed is starting to germinate decent, quicker than the scott's fescue mix (I figured as much). will take some pics tomorrow.


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## Noclssgt (Apr 6, 2018)

9/5
The grass is growing in nicely. The GCI is growing a tad faster than the Scott's fescue mix.





I did a small project in the backyard by the pool pump as well. Salt water would splash out by the basket and would keep grass from growing. Fixed that. Reused the 4x4s from the deck railing.


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## Noclssgt (Apr 6, 2018)

9/15
did a plug aeration on the whole yard. I loaded up the weight this time to get a little bit bigger plugs. My backyard patio still is not finished, they had to take the forms off, stain and remove the dirt piles still.
So, since I can't do anything else to the back and side yards, I did overseed the front yard with my GCI seed.
I weighed everything out so I knew I was putting down 2lb/1k. 
My front yard is about 8k sq-ft so I measured out 16lbs. I wasn't sure what my spreader would need to be set to, so I did 2 perpendicular passes with the Scott's spreader set to '2' and I still had quite a bit left. I then did 2 more passes diaganol to the other 2 passes with the spreader set to 2 1/4. I had just enough so I can say I definitely had it very evenly spread out.

9/22
hard to see any germination yet through all the other grass. I did a good watering on 9/16 and we had some good rain early in the week. I didn't water on wednesday, and I ran out of daylight on thursday so I only got half the front watered. I didn't get a chance to water on 9/21 and weather-guessers were calling for rain...of course it never happened. I will probably try to water today even though there's a chance of rain. Since it's been a week, I think it's also time for starter fert and I still need to put humic acid/sea kelp down that I already applied to the backyard a few weeks ago.


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## Powhatan (Dec 15, 2017)

Progressing nicely :thumbup:


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## Noclssgt (Apr 6, 2018)

large update (finally) 10/11/18
The patio in the backyard is finally complete. the multiple dirt piles in the backyard were hauled off and dirt was back-filled around the patio. Unfortunately the patio guys didn't even it out very well...even when I had jumped in and was helping back-fill (so I could remove rocks). I tried to level things out a bit better. I then went through and sprayed glypho on the whole backyard, even what was already straight dirt.








I waited 4 days before moving onto the next step to make sure the grass started dying off. The next step I went through was trying to get this more even and level. there were lots of large chunks of clay since this dirt came from a dirt pile that wasn't getting any humic acid/nutrient love. I had 2 yards of top soil delivered which was a lot finer to help level things out better









Now that it was a bit better, I then came in with 30 bags of compost/manure and a lawn roller to spread out and make things even more smooth and give some nutrients to the soil. The wife was NOT happy about the smell. I rolled the lawn after top soil, spread the compost, rolled again.

















This got things looking pretty good. I started running low so I didn't get the compost in all the existing grass, but did get the bare dirt areas. The next step was putting down the seed, lawn rolling again to get the seeds pushed into the dirt and then peat moss. I ran out of light but did manage to get the peat moss down on the bare dirt and some grass areas to hold down the seed as it was supposed to rain on wednesday. I did also manage to purchase the right amount of peat moss by eye-balling usage for one bale compared to how much yard I had left (7.5 bales for my 2k sq ft.)







we had a good rain yesterday into last night and I saw 2 spots by the patio that puddled up really good. However, the peat moss held things down it looks like.


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## Noclssgt (Apr 6, 2018)

To add to this: This renovation was supposed to take place almost a month ago. However, the patio guys kept getting put behind due to weather. There really wasn't any point in me trying to reno the backyard when they're going to be going through tearing it up again. my risk of frost is 10/23 and guaranteed frost is I believe 11/5. I'm thinking I might be screwed, especially since the temps decided to start dropping after all this work...dipping into the 40's and high 30's over the next 5 days. But, I couldn't let my backyard just be a huge crap mess of lumpy dirt, I had to still give it a try to get something to come up.


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

What seeds are you using?


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## Noclssgt (Apr 6, 2018)

g-man said:


> What seeds are you using?


Gci tttf


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## samjonester (May 13, 2018)

@Noclssgt are those just your overnight lows? You will hopefully be fine with TTTF. My reno is about a month old and most of the TTTF plants have developed at least one tiller. You've likely still got time for them to mature before winter. Your concern will be a freeze with very young seedlings. The low temps kill seedlings when their roots are still shallow enough that they freeze when the temps dip overnight.

I would watch the weather and if it's going to get cold _and_ you've got young seedlings, run your sprinklers at night. The water temperature will be much warmer than the freezing air, and also releases heat more slowly than young grass tissue.

Good luck!


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## Noclssgt (Apr 6, 2018)

yeah, overnights have been pushing toward that freezing mark. We did get a frost last night.
I went ahead and put down some starter fert today since I saw quite a bit of germination coming up. Some spots in the yard where the dead grass is had some grass that looked like might be 2" tall. Just noticed that since I've been staying out of the yard. Theres quite a few other spots that had maybe 1" tall grass. I watered the whole back yard down real good after the starter fert so maybe not all hope is lost. :fingers crossed:



samjonester said:


> @Noclssgt are those just your overnight lows? You will hopefully be fine with TTTF. My reno is about a month old and most of the TTTF plants have developed at least one tiller. You've likely still got time for them to mature before winter. Your concern will be a freeze with very young seedlings. The low temps kill seedlings when their roots are still shallow enough that they freeze when the temps dip overnight.
> 
> I would watch the weather and if it's going to get cold _and_ you've got young seedlings, run your sprinklers at night. The water temperature will be much warmer than the freezing air, and also releases heat more slowly than young grass tissue.
> 
> Good luck!


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## Noclssgt (Apr 6, 2018)

11/12
had some decent Halloween domination for the front. put the striper back on and attempted some single-doubles. They weren't as defined since I hadn't used the striper in a while.
I'm going through trying to keep the leaves up now. I have neighbors with large oak trees so it's difficult right now. I took the striper back off to go over the backyard and get those leaves up. The grass seems to be OK back there, just not very thick. I will definitely need more seed in the spring.
I've also been fighting a mole in the front yard. I went all year without a single mole and here in the past few weeks I had one tearing up the front area where a tree was taken down. I got him today! That's 13 confirmed kills in the past year.


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