# kds' lawn and introduction!



## kds

I'm Kevin and I'm located in a suburb of Des Moines. Growing up, I always enjoyed mowing the lawn. Actually just the yesterday, I found a picture frame my dad gave to me with the first dollar I earned mowing lawns on April 22, 1998 when I was 11 years old. I mowed my barber's yard for $20. I had to put $10 into savings but the other $10 I was allowed to do whatever I want with.

I'm trying to do more than just mow the yard and have learned a ton so far.

I have a lot of different grass types in my lawn, so beyond calling it a mutt lawn, I'm going to call it turf-type tall fescue since that's what I'm trying to grow here. I'm a first-time homeowner, and I moved in on Memorial Day weekend last year. The house was built in 1970.

The front yard is in decent shape, but could be thicker and greener. There is an area between the parking pad and the driveway where the owners a couple of generations ago had some shrubs and other plants but the previous owners tore those out and it was just dirt when I moved in. I started growing grass there shortly after moving in but it was taken over by crabgrass.

The side yard was in decent shape until I used the truck to pull out a bunch of bushes at the fence line that separates the front and back yards. Now it's a lot of dirt and some tire ruts.

The back yard is where the magic is needed. To preface this: the previous owners didn't like gardening/lawn care so they did as little as possible. The owners before them actually live in the house directly behind me, and the wife enjoyed landscaping... so the pressure is on for me to bring it back to a glorious state.

First, there's a terrace-like area in the very back along the fence line, behind a retaining wall. When I bought the house (winter) there wasn't anything back there. Fast forward to when I actually closed and moved in? It was a jungle. Very bad. My girlfriend pulled all those weeds and sprayed RoundUp (we need to do this again this year). After clearing out the jungle, it was revealed that there are lots of rocks in the soil from previous landscaping efforts I have hired a landscape architect to make plans for this area (as part of a master plan for the whole lot). In the past 9 months or so, I have removed 4 trees/bushes from this area. There is also pea gravel all around the house.

As for the back yard itself, myself and at least the past two generations have had dogs, so this yard is not in the best shape. I have a 70+ lb Chesapeake Bay retriever mix (named Amber) and we just got a boxer mix puppy (named Wednesday) in December and they really did a number on the yard over the winter (plus my neighbor's husky mix, Cooper likes to jump the fence to come over and play). There are some wear spots at the bottom of the deck from dog traffic, some spots where Cooper and Wednesday dug together (Wednesday will only dig if Cooper is over), and a hill under a tree where Wednesday likes to lay and chew on sticks. There are some other unexplained bare spots throughout, and there's a bare spot on this side of the fence where we pulled some bushes out from the side yard.

I'm going to start looking through some pictures I have and update the thread on what I have done so far!


----------



## kds

May 26, 2016 - closing day.




























This is the terrace that was a jungle when I closed.










Garden box full of weeds. You can see the overgrown bushes in the background that are on the fence line.


----------



## kds

Screen grab from May 29, 2016, after the first mow. Notice my retired neighbor's immaculate back yard...










June 17, 2016 - I forgot to mention the deck will need replacing soon, currently slated for next spring or later this fall, dependent on funds. Did I also mention there's an ash tree that runs right through it? It's great for shade but I will probably end up removing it when I replace the deck. The dog is Amber.










July 17, 2016 - Listing photo from Decemberish 2015 to then-present day.










July 20, 2016 - It rained a lot this day. It was a mess.










August 28, 2016 - Vole holes I'm guessing? I've filled these in with top soil and they haven't re-appeared yet, so that's good, I guess. Amber is a good vole hunter and I suspect she may have taken care of this problem for me.


----------



## kds

September 5, 2016 - The bare dirt around the garden box.










October 4, 2016 - A view of the back yard from the terrace.










October 9, 2016 - By this time I had lopped off a bunch from those bushes along the fence and started leveling out the area around the garden box.






October 22, 2016 - I traded my Jeep in for a truck, so what better way to celebrate than ripping those bushes out?


----------



## kds

November 20, 2016 - I haven't really done much with this area yet, but it needs some work. The front steps will be a part of the hardscaping master plan. They are pulling away from the brick stoop and it's a little dangerous. I've seen way too many people get tripped up on that top step.










The south fence line is in pretty poor shape.










You can see the huge ash tree that goes through the deck in this picture. You can also see that there is lava rock mixed with the pea gravel on this end. The paver brick patio near the middle will preferably be replaced with something better in the hardscaping master plan.


----------



## GrassDaddy

Welcome! It looks pretty good and you seem to have a good idea of what needs to be done!


----------



## kds

We removed a few trees in the terrace between then and here, but I didn't get any pictures. One cedar, one bush-looking tree, and another evergreen-type tree was taken down.






December 25, 2016 - The day after we brought Wednesday home from the shelter. This is when our backyard neighbor's dog, Cooper, started jumping the fence. He has an affinity for Wednesday, apparently. It had been raining for a few days this week and between Wednesday, Amber, and Cooper all running around playing, I suspect most of the wintertime damage to the lawn happened this week.

I thought I had gotten a good panorama of the yard at the end of the winter, but apparently not.










March 28, 2017 - You can see the bare spots around the tree and in the southwest corner between the fence and the retaining wall. This is the hill under the tree I was talking about earlier that was a little worn out because that's where Wednesday likes to lay and chew on sticks.



















March 30, 2017 - Around this time I was getting bids to get the chain link fence replaced. This shows the sad state of the terrace in the back yard.










April 8, 2017 - More deforestation is taking place. Took down another evergreen-like tree from the terrace. The power company came through and lopped off the top half of the tree last fall and it just looked horrible. It made more sense to me to remove the tree to avoid that and plant another tree somewhere else in the terrace that would be a better fit.






Removing that tree didn't take very long at all, so we went to the nearest Ace Hardware store and rented a stump grinder. Got 5 stumps ground down within 4 hours. I thought it would be harder and/or take longer than it did, but it is still a hard workout. I was going to hire someone to grind these stumps down, but I'm glad I didn't. I probably saved a ton of money.


----------



## Budstl

Welcome to the forum!


----------



## Redtenchu

Enjoyed the read, glad you're here!

The SlowMo stump grind was awesome!


----------



## kds

April 9 - panorama of the lawn status.










April 22-23 - lawn rehab day. The chain link fence has been replaced with some nice 4' black vinyl-coated chain link so I'm giving the project a green light now that contractors shouldn't be making divots or wear patterns in the yard. Just replacing the old galvanized chain link with the vinyl-coated made the back yard look SOOOOOO much better!

This is the seed blend I settled on. I wanted something blended locally and sold locally. This is Earl May's "Marvel" blend of turf-type tall fescue. I talked to some athletic turf managers (including some who have experience at Wrigley Field!) and city park turf managers and that's how I arrived on TTTF. I wanted something that will look good, be tolerant to moderate drought, and be tough enough to stand up to dog traffic. I don't mind overseeing every year.

I rented an aerator and a slit-seeder machine. Both were made by Blue Bird but rented from two different hardware stores. I double-aerated the front and back yards. What a workout!

I was not a fan of the slit-seeder machine. I don't know if there was something wrong with it, but I had to go back to the nursery twice to get more seed. I quadruple-checked my math and according to the label on the seed and the settings on the seeder, but it seemed like it was still putting out a lot of seed. It especially dumped a lot of seed at the beginning of my passes when I engaged the tines. I also couldn't see a lot of slits in the dirt, possibly because my yards are a little lumpy. If I were going to do it all over again, I would probably aerate like I did and just seed with a broadcast spreader.

After I seeded, I spread Scotts TurfBuilder Starter Food For New Grass Plus Weed Preventer mainly for the mesotrione to avoid the problem I had last year in bare spots with crabgrass taking over. Then I spread Milorganite.

I don't have pictures for a lot of this. I didn't think I would be journaling everything. Pictures were going to be my girlfriend's responsibility but she spent most of the weekend sick and sleeping.

I fenced off half the yard to keep the dogs out (especially the puppy, she can get into anything). I had the fence company keep the longest portion of the old chain link for this purpose and went out and got 10 T-posts from Tractor Supply. It was supplemented in some areas by the green Tenax fencing available from Home Depot and some shorter U-posts I had laying around from previous failed attempts to keep dogs out of the bare areas.

The next day (Sunday) I spent time laying down peat moss on the bare areas and the areas that need just a little more attention. I used about 20 cu ft of the compressed ProMix Premier Sphagnum peat moss. I especially laid a bunch down around the trees.

Then I put together an above-ground sprinkler system like this. I did order some of the parts off Amazon, but most of the parts can be found cheaper elsewhere. I found the cheapest 50' hose at Mills Fleet Farm, the flow-through sprinkler bases at Mills Fleet Farm, Hunter sprinkler bases from Home Depot ship-to-store, the Hunter MP rotator heads from the Sprinkler Warehouse and the risers from Rain Bird. The price for a lot of these parts were up to 3x higher on Amazon if I didn't shop around.

I'm using six sprinkler heads in the back yard, three sprinklers in each zone due to water pressure. Currently watering 20 minutes three times a day, give or take, depending on soil moisture. I'm hand watering some areas of the front yard since I rain out of hose to put two more heads up for the front.



http://imgur.com/1Uocihn











And now I wait. It has been rainy but the temps have been low so there's not much germination happening.


----------



## kds

Thanks for the welcome everyone! I'm glad to be here.

One thing I enjoy after working in the yard is a nice cold #lawnbeer, preferably something light, local, and one I haven't had before. Here are the two lawn beers from the second day of the lawn rehab: a Sierra Nevada Sidecar orange pale ale,










and a Peace Tree Kiss from a Gose, which was very good and I don't even like tart beers!


----------



## Ware

Excellent. Be sure and visit the What's in your Glass? thread.


----------



## Virginiagal

That's a lot of work. Especially clearing out trees and bushes and "the jungle." What parts did you seed? Any particular reason you're doing this now instead of in the fall? In the July 20 picture it looks like you have a lake. I hope it doesn't pool like that every time it rains. The dogs look like they really enjoy the yard


----------



## Virginiagal

It is definitely a good decision to take down the tree that goes through the deck. It is way too close to the house.


----------



## kds

Virginiagal said:


> Any particular reason you're doing this now instead of in the fall? In the July 20 picture it looks like you have a lake. I hope it doesn't pool like that every time it rains.


Great question! No reason in particular other than I wanted to try to get grass growing so it's not all mud when the dogs are outside and it's wet. I know now isn't as good of a time as fall, but I'm treating the backyard as an "intensive care" case and plan on overseeding in the fall as well.

I can't remember how much rain fell on July 20, but it was extraordinary. I've since leveled out that area and haven't seen any ponding occur, but we haven't had a torrential downpour like that since then to really test it.


----------



## Virginiagal

Ok, I can understand the mud problem. I would have been inclined to just let the weeds have it (may the strongest weed win) in the bare areas until late August and then kill them and seed the good grass, but you will have grass coverage, at least for awhile, with your seeding. It's going to be hard on it in the summer because the roots will not have developed much. So, did you seed just the left side of the back yard? You mentioned the front too. Was that the whole thing or just some bare spots? What is your plan for the terrace area? What sort of things are you going to plant there? Has your neighbor told you why they did the terrace years ago? Were they fixing an erosion problem or what? In general how does rain water drain from the neighbors' and your property? Which way does it flow? Why is that tree in your left hand back corner on a little hill by itself? Since mud and dogs are a concern, you could cut down on mud (and weeds) on the terrace with mulch (like chips from some of your deforestation projects).


----------



## kds

Virginiagal said:


> So, did you seed just the left side of the back yard? You mentioned the front too. Was that the whole thing or just some bare spots?


I seeded the entire back yard, but the left side has the most bare spots so that's what I fenced off from the dogs and put peat moss down. I figure I can do the other half in the fall. I didn't do much to the front -- I did aerate and overseed but that's about it. There is an area where my driveway meets the sidewalk that was pretty bare where the previous owners pulled out some bushes and plants, so I tore it up, seeded, and laid peat moss down like the back yard. The front yard is generally in good shape, but could just be a little thicker.



Virginiagal said:


> What is your plan for the terrace area? What sort of things are you going to plant there? Has your neighbor told you why they did the terrace years ago? Were they fixing an erosion problem or what? In general how does rain water drain from the neighbors' and your property? Which way does it flow? Why is that tree in your left hand back corner on a little hill by itself? Since mud and dogs are a concern, you could cut down on mud (and weeds) on the terrace with mulch (like chips from some of your deforestation projects).


I'm not much of a "plant" person so I hired a landscape architect to come up with a master plan including the terrace area. They're going to design it but I'm going to plant everything. My neighbors aren't the ones that installed the terrace, but it seems whoever built it was using it as a drainage solution. When it rains, I can see the storm water rushing down everyone else's hills and ponding in people's backyards on this side of the block while I don't have that problem. The only time I have an issue with ponding is with a torrential downpour and that water didn't all come from uphill.

As for that tree, I'm not sure why it is on the hill like that. We suspect it was here before the house was built (there are some trees on my neighbors' lots that have been evaluated as 100+ years old!).

I am going to use mulch on the terrace. The previous owners used rock but I'm not a big fan of rocks. So many rocks all around the yard right now. SO many.


----------



## Virginiagal

Glad you don't have ponding. Maybe the terrace is slowing down whatever is coming from the neighbor behind you. In the Christmas picture there is standing water on the terrace. If you have concerns about drainage, bring them up with your landscape person. They need to know about it. You might also get their advice on the tree in the deck. It needs to come down. Who knows what's it's doing to your foundation and what it could do to your roof in a storm. The roots are bound to go under your house. When they decompose, will there be settlement issues? The landscape person may know. I hope they are coming up with plants that will hold up to dog traffic. Ask your neighbor (who used to live in your house) about what they know about the tree on the little hill (it's​ not a natural thing) and erosion and drainage issues for the neighborhood. Was dirt excavated from the yard? It looks like the neighbor to the left of you (looking out to the back) has erosion in the corner right next to you. I'd guess water collects in that corner (where Wednesday chews bones). Does it drain okay? I agree with you that rocks make a poor mulch. Hope you will be seeing grass seedlings soon, if you haven't already.


----------



## Virginiagal

Check out this page on designing a yard for dogs:
http://www.mnn.com/family/pets/stories/how-to-build-the-perfect-backyard-for-dogs
There is other stuff out there if you search for "dog friendly yards."


----------



## kds

Well I guess I had a little bit of a setback today










1.17" so far today. I may have to throw some fresh seed down next week.


----------



## kds

Update time!

Up until a few days ago, I was a little concerned about some spots. The seed was germinating in areas where I spread peat moss, but not so much in the bare dirt areas. I went to Home Depot on Saturday to get some more peat moss (and got a huge bag of it for 50% off since it was already opened) and spread it where maybe the peat moss was a little more thin or it was bare dirt.

I spread the peat moss in the morning and by dinner time, I had some really nice seedlings sprout up in those spots and they were just about as tall as the seedlings that were more established. I was amazed. I swear by peat moss now.

The area in the backyard in the northwest corner (top right in most photos) where I had cut down a cedar tree wasn't growing despite peat moss. As luck would have it, there was a thread on Reddit last week about someone who cut down a tree and grinded out the stump that couldn't get grass to grow in that area. Someone suggested a nitrogen imbalance, so I spread some high-N fertilizer and now I'm getting some more seedlings in that area.

I had to change my strategy and retreat a bit. Previously I had two sections in the back yard: one half that was fenced off from the dogs, and the other half was available to them. The fenced-off portion was my "intensive care" area, and the other I seeded and fertilized like the other half, but just had to hope for the best on the dog half. I irrigated both halves, and that worked against me. On the dog-accessible half, it was so easy for them to make divots and cause other damage with the soil being so moist. So I did kind of abandon that part and whatever happens happens.

I moved the sprinklers to focus on the other half which isn't all bad since it's now being irrigated much better.
















April 23, top, and May 8, bottom

Today, against my better judgement, I mowed the backyard. I was hoping to wait until at least this weekend. The older established grass was getting so long that it was starting to lay down and I was worried about the seedlings underneath getting enough sun and water, so I cut it about 3.5-4" high, tried to avoid the bare spots and ripping up the yard when turning around, and then went around the sensitive areas with a trimmer.










Man, it is so fresh. I already notice a huge difference in the look and feel and I can't wait for the seedlings to get longer. It's very lush.



















So far, I'm happy. I am still concerned about some spots but I'm going to give it time to see how it all does before I go and touch up.


----------



## Budstl

Looks good man. Good work.


----------



## GrassDaddy

Wow! That looks great!


----------



## HoosierHound

Looking' good! :thumbup:


----------



## ericgautier

:thumbup: Starting to look good!


----------



## kds

Exciting news today! Next Friday I am meeting with the landscaping company to get the master plan for my lot (particularly that dreadful back terrace)! I can't wait to see what they come up with. I'll try to post the plan on here when I get it. I have a feeling they are recommending a crap ton of work and I'll have to dial it down a bit.

I did a real mow today. Cut everything to 3". Things are coming in pretty nice. There are some spots that need some work but overall I'm in a much better position. Even the front yard, which I didn't do much except seed with the slit seeder and throw some occasional water on, is thickening up like whoa.

The back yard was a little squishy. Might need to cut back on the irrigation a little bit. Could have been because the yard is thicker or the blades were long (I let it go a little too long). We have a heat wave coming (relative to this early in the season -- 85 degrees the next few days) so I'll have to keep an eye on things.










I couldn't find a "before" picture but this was previously all crabgrass and dirt after a failed attempt to fix it after moving in last year. A couple of homeowners ago had some bushes and railroad ties and some other weird things going on in this area.










The front yard is a lot thicker and a lot greener. For whatever reason, I'm not getting good stripes (or any stripes at all, really) like I was last year. I should plan on buying a striping kit soon. I was going to go get some mulch tomorrow at a 20% off sale but some Mothers Day plans nixed that idea -- mulch for the flowerbeds will be happening soon.










Progress of the dog-restricted area in the backyard. Things are real nice. Some spots need work -- some of those pockets didn't have peat moss so I reseeded and covered with peat moss. Some other areas are just a little more sparse for unknown reasons.

















April 9 vs. today.


----------



## Budstl

That's a big difference on the backyard. Looks good kds.


----------



## Virginiagal

Looks good! What is your watering schedule like now? You should doing it less frequently as it becomes established. With hot weather on the way, you need to keep an eye on watering as the roots are small and may need water but at the same time if the leaves stay wet too long in hot weather, brown patch can develop. How are you cutting grass close to the trees? It might be easier if you had some mulch around the trees. Mulch would also protect the trees from your mower or trimmer.


----------



## kds

I'm currently watering 4 times a day for 20 minutes each although we have had some rain lately so it's been more like 3 times a day.


----------



## GrassDaddy

wow looks great! be careful with all that water on 3in.. ripe for disease


----------



## Virginiagal

Yes, decrease the frequency gradually. Let it dry out a bit between waterings. Hot weather is going to be your challenge. You will have to monitor it and you want to let the leaves stay dry as much as possible while giving the roots what they need.


----------



## kds

I just mowed last Friday and today I was already past the point of cutting off 1/3 of the blade. I haven't been so good about keeping up on it. I can't believe how fast the grass has been growing now.


----------



## Virginiagal

So tell us about the landscape plan you got yesterday.


----------



## kds

I'm hoping to get a digital copy of the prints so for now this crappy cell phone picture will have to do. I met with the designers yesterday for about two hours, wow! For the plants they chose, they wanted to focus on the foliage instead of blooms. They also chose plants that were mostly native to Iowa (my preference) and plants that kind of went along with the house's age (1970s). A lot of woodland plants due to the shade.










For the back terrace, they are proposing planting three Canadian Hemlocks, three Blue Muffin Viburnum around the weather station (although the girlfriend wants a lilac bush so I may plant a Sensation Lilac or Monge in place of that), one Pagoda Dogwood, and three Limelight Hydrangeas. I would have plenty of room to plant some perennials or other plants in that area.

They also proposed creating a flowerbed around that tree on a hill to include the following: Old Fashioned Bleeding Heart, Raspberry Splash Lungwort, Snow Drop Anemone, and Goat's Beard. I'm not sure if I'll go with the recommendation to encircle that corner tree with a bed, I'd rather have more lawn. The terrace area is already large enough to keep me busy.

Around the back deck, they are proposing a circular paver patio with Limelight Hydrangea, 7 Marmalade Coral Bell, three Irish Luck Hosta, 3 Abiqua Drinking Gourd Hosta, 3 Karen Azalea, 8 Ostrich Fern, 4 Blushing Bride Hydrangea, 2 Ivory Halo Dogwood, 2 Japanese Varigated Iris, 2 Johnson's Blue Geranium, 3 Gold Heart Bleeding Heart. Around the box garden they have many assorted plants proposed, but I think this is up in the air because I want the garden to get plenty of sunlight and depending how well our (yet-to-be-planted) vegetable garden does this year we may want to expand. This is the only area in the back where we can grow vegetables since it gets the best light.










The front proposals will likely see some great reductions. The end of the yard by the sidewalk has a lot of plants and flowerbed proposed but I think I would like to keep it mostly lawn. In one corner, 6 Dark Reiter Geraniums, 5 Brookside Geraniums, 6 Visions in Red Astilbe, and 3 Rosy Lights Azalea. In the other corner next to the driveway and front steps, 4 August Moon Hosta, 4 June Hosta, 6 Relft Lace Astilbe, 7 Paradigm Hosta, 1 Empress Wu Hosta, 6 Georgia Peach Coral Bell. Lots of hostas here, with the reasoning I can buy one or two of each and then divide them in subsequent years to fill everything out. But these beds will probably be the first to get the axe once I move forward.

Along the front walkway, the steps will be rebuilt (I will find a concrete contractor to pour). There will be some planters built out of Iowa buff stone. At one landing will be a Phantom Hydrangea or Crimson Queen Japanese Maple. Other plants include 3 Berry Smoothie Coral Bell, 14 Raspberry Splash Lungworts in a planter along the steps, and 6 First Frost Hostas between the steps and the driveway.

Along the side of the house, 6 Green Velvet Boxwoods, 8 Plum Pudding Coral Bells, 5 Pandora's box Day Lilies, 6 Snow Hill Salvias, and 3 Miscanthus Fire Grasses.

The beds would use 4x6 Iowa buff stones for edges.

As I suspected, they started off pretty heavy-handed with the number of plants but said it would be easy to reduce the number of plants. Example, the planter of 14 Raspberry Splash Lungworts can have half the number of plants and still be acceptable. It certainly is a thoroughly ambitious plan but it can also easily be revised and done in stages. The back terrace would be my first priority, and then either the area around the back deck or the front steps. The front steps will need to be done in the nearer future since it's also a little bit of a safety issue.

I'd like to keep a lot of my lawn. I haven't gardened much, but I think I'd enjoy maintaining my lawn more than taking care of flower beds. I love a nice, clean-cut lawn and I honestly just about couldn't care less about colors and plants, but the lot does need some additional landscaping to make it look better.










The neighbor's dog (Cooper) got into the yard yesterday when I was inside repainting some walls. He got into some of the fenced-off areas of new grass. My heart stopped when I walked out and saw that one of the plastic fences was totally obliterated, way more than necessary just to get in.










It seems Cooper just rammed the fence and ran in and out of the area, creating divots and destroying this area of new grass because the roots are still so shallow and it's been raining a ton here for the past few days.

Warning: rant -- to say I was pissed off was an understatement. This isn't the first time it's happened. Once before, early in the morning, Cooper was already in the yard before I let my dogs out. He was in the fenced-off area. His owner was standing at her door watching him. She didn't seem to concerned about it until I opened my door and stepped out. Then she acted concerned.

It's super frustrating that I have to supervise someone else's dog from getting in. I don't really want to spend more money to replace another section of plastic fence. Everything I've had to repair so far was from the neighbor's dog. Some of the fences I had to mend with copious amounts of zip-ties and grading stakes. My dogs know to stay out of the fenced-off areas. Cooper knows he's not supposed to be in there because he runs away and jumps out when I approach him when he's being bad.

I don't know if I'm going to try to fix this part. If I re-seed this area then it's about a month behind from everywhere else and it's going to start getting hotter soon. If it hadn't been raining so much, the roots probably would have been deeper and the ground wouldn't have been as soft and this probably wouldn't have happened.

I texted them last night after it happened asking them to either watch Cooper while he's out or tie him up if he's going to be unsupervised. They apologized and offered to reimburse me for the seed (I'm not concerned about seed cost so much as the time involved in getting the grass going, and now possibly repairing it and delaying taking down the temporary fences). They also said once it dries up they'll bury a new invisible fence wire (they had another dog that was a jumper).

Anyway, my striping kit came in the mail yesterday and the sun is finally starting to come out as I type this, so I'll get the kit put together and hopefully later today or tomorrow it will be dry enough for me to give it another mow. I'm also planning on putting down the second (and likely final) application of the Scotts Turf Starter with mesotrione to keep the weeds in check and I will probably put down an application of Milorganite as well.


----------



## Budstl

Cool man. Can't wait to see the finished product. Sucks we can't choose our neighbors. Has to be frustrating as hell.


----------



## Virginiagal

Nice landscaping plan. Did they recommend taking down that tree that goes through the deck? One way you might acquire perennials is through neighbors. If they have something you like, you could offer to help divide and replant them (probably in the fall depending on the plant). Perennials​ do better if they are divided every few years so they aren't so crowded together but it's a job that often doesn't get done. So it would be a win-win. They would get help with the dividing chore, you'd get free plants.


----------



## kds

That tree wasn't accounted for in the plans because I plan on taking it down when I rebuild the deck.


----------



## kds

Here's a pic from yesterday. I was cleaning out the area where Cooper destroyed the new grass.










This turf died so young and so needlessly 

Got a call from the water utility today. They wanted to make sure I didn't have a busted water line somewhere. 10k gallons used this month. Last month was about 2400 gallons. Will be interesting to see the bill.


----------



## Redtenchu

Sorry to read about this, that is pretty grass that was ruined. You'll get it fixed, no doubt!

Those landscape plans are great!


----------



## Ridgerunner

Nice plan.


----------



## kds

Thinking about taking the fences down and only putting them around the areas that were previously bare.

Roots still seem shallow. It rained for 6 days straight (with breaks in the precip). I haven't watered for more than a week. I might take the sprinklers down.

Noticed some mold growing in one of the corners where it wasn't even being irrigated. But I noticed some mold in this area last spring after I moved in, too. I should fix that. How do I do that, just scrape it away?


----------



## Redtenchu

kds said:


> Noticed some mold growing in one of the corners where it wasn't even being irrigated. But I noticed some mold in this area last spring after I moved in, too. I should fix that. How do I do that, just scrape it away?


Good question, I'm not sure either. I would attempt to scrape it and see what effect it has.


----------



## wardconnor

Bleach in a hand can sprayer.


----------



## kds

Can I do a checkerboard? Ehhhh not really...


----------



## wardconnor

Don't kid yourself. I see a checkerboard pattern there.


----------



## GrassDaddy

Better than my checkerboard =P


----------



## kds

I think I'm going to take the temporary fencing in the backyard down this weekend. The roots are going deeper but not sure if they're deep enough to hold up to the dogs, so we'll see. I'm giving it a 20-minute watering right now to help it along since we haven't had rain in almost a week.

I'm also seeing some of the grass start to thin out, but I think it's from the wheels on the mower over the new grass. It's mostly in tight spaces like between the fence and the garden box and the trees and the fence.


----------



## kds

It's been a while since I posted an update...

















April 9 vs. June 4. You can definitely tell which area was off-limits to the dogs.

The temporary fence came down last weekend. The grass blades were looking pretty mature and I was ready to have the yard back after a month and a half. There is still one section that's fenced off where the neighbor dog destroyed fresh grass, so I'm giving it a little more TLC still.










Looking into the "new" portion after taking the fences down and a fresh mow. I forgot to adjust the deck height after mowing the neighbor's yard, so it was accidentally a little shorter.










Here are some things I learned:

 Cutting a dog's yard down to one half will wear out the other half a lot quicker. I knew this going in, but I really underestimated it. Especially where the dogs jumped up/down from the terrace since the steps were in the fenced-off portion.

 The neighbor dog doesn't give a shit about your lawn care projects.

 My water bill was 5x the normal cost this month.

So, with all that said... I think I might have cut back on the watering too early or there's some other issue going on. There are some areas that are yellow. I suspect this is either from foot traffic on sensitive new grass, mowing when it was a little too wet a couple of weeks ago, or it was too dry. So, I'm going to water some more to see if I can help it a little bit. I also have a rabbit issue but the dogs have already reduced the population by two in the last week.

The front yard also is not looking as green today, it looks like it does when it goes dormant but it hasn't been that hot lately (although temps this weekend and into next week are expected to almost touch 100). So I'm going to irrigate the front lawn as well to see if maybe I can perk it up a bit.









Where the back meets the front... you can see some yellow patches around the garden box at the bottom and on the other side of the fence in the upper left.

Speaking of the front... I'm starting to get a domination line but I definitely need to make it a bit more defined.










Someone's dog is definitely peeing pure acid in my front yard. I'm not going to put up one of those "no dog pee" signs, dogs are gonna dog. I can't imagine making my dogs hold it on walks so I don't expect others to either.


----------



## ericgautier

kds said:


> It's been a while since I posted an update...


Nice progress! :thumbup:

How tall are you cutting the front? Those "brown" areas/circles look like matted down grass.


----------



## kds

ericgautier said:


> How tall are you cutting the front? Those "brown" areas/circles look like matted down grass.


I'm cutting everything at about 3.5". I noticed the "new" TTTF lays down much much easier than the established grass and that's bothered me since it's germinated. Makes me second-guess my choice of TTTF.


----------



## GrassDaddy

I would drop it a notch and wait for it to thicken a bit. Then go up again.


----------



## kds

I'm wondering if I should overseed with KBG this fall? Maybe TTTF isn't the best choice for my yard.


----------



## Virginiagal

Why do you think tttf may not be right for your yard? KBG generally needs lots of sun and you have a fair amount of shade. It is hard to overseed KBG because it is so slow to germinate. It would probably work better to renovate than to overseed KBG. Much easier to overseed tttf.


----------



## LIgrass

Virginiagal said:


> Why do you think tttf may not be right for your yard? KBG generally needs lots of sun and you have a fair amount of shade. It is hard to overseed KBG because it is so slow to germinate. It would probably work better to renovate than to overseed KBG. Much easier to overseed tttf.


+1. My thoughts exactly.

Except for maybe the freak Bewitched, KBG needs a lot of sun to be happy (even BW needs a fair amount). It looks like you've got quite a bit of shade there. It might not hurt to maybe try overseeding BW into it but it takes a while to get established (and that's without any competition).

Also, my experience with shade is any stress to the grass will be much worse than in sunnier conditions (by like a factor of 5). You really have to sort of 'baby' grasses growing in shade to keep the stand from thinning. The shade could also be why it's flopping over. Grass just doesn't grow as vigorous with shade like that. I feel your pain.


----------



## kds

It's just that it lays down so easily. That's the first thing I noticed, and where it laid down a lot is where it's yellowing. It also seems to take a long time to establish good roots.


----------



## Virginiagal

Did you lower the cutting height? That will help. When I plant grass, I cut at 2 inches and gradually raise the height as the grass matures. Don't lower the height drastically now but work it down some. Cutting at a lower height encourages tillering.

You may have been watering excessively. Try to lengthen the time between watering. You want those grass blades as dry as possible as long as possible to ward off fungal diseases.

Your roots are small and that is normal for any newly planted grass. It will be challenging to keep them alive when the hot weather arrives. TTTF has long roots when it is mature but it's going to take a year or more to get long roots.

I did a spring planting only one time and that was because I had a large bare area after a huge tree was taken out. The grass grew well and died in July. I had done no weed prevention and, if I remember correctly, crabgrass took over. In August I killed weeds and in early September planted grass.


----------



## GrassDaddy

My backyard has mostly shade and the KBG is doing fine at 1in. Just food for thought.


----------



## LIgrass

GrassDaddy said:


> My backyard has mostly shade and the KBG is doing fine at 1in. Just food for thought.


It takes a good year or two to really know for sure. At least that was my experience with BW. I had some shady moderate-high traffic areas that looked great the first 10 months but thinned out over time.


----------



## ericgautier

kds, I definitely agree with everyone. The lawn could use a lower mowing height. My KBG+TTTF backyard stays mostly around 2.5"-3" year round (maybe 3.5" in the heat of summer but I usually bring it down when the weather breaks). When it was young, I tried to keep it at 2.5" as long as I could.


----------



## kds

I'll cut it short the next time I mow (may not even be until later this week -- it is hot and dry here!).


----------



## Virginiagal

Shorter, not short. Just go down one notch. If that doesn't get the grass standing upright, go down another notch the next time. Don't make drastic changes and don't cut off more than 1/3 of the blade at a time. Make sure your blades are sharp.

With the weather getting hot your grass may suddenly need water. If it changes color (gets a grayish or bluish tone) or footprints don't spring up, water asap. How much? See how long your roots are now and see how long it takes for water to penetrate to that depth. Then try not to water again for a while. But you may have to water again soon. Your roots are close to the surface and the soil may dry out quickly. The​ shade will help lower the heat. Try to do the watering early in the morning.

How many lb/k of seed did you plant?


----------



## kds

Thanks, Virginiagal.



Virginiagal said:


> How many lb/k of seed did you plant?


I did 1 lb per 200 sq ft. But a lot more than that went down since the overseeder dropped a ton of seed in random places.


----------



## Virginiagal

Okay, that's a reasonable amount for an overseeding (except for a ton of seeds in random places). Next time you can just use a broadcast spreader like you use for fertiizer. In those places where too much seed went down, you likely have crowding and it will not do well there.


----------



## Virginiagal

Hope the grass is upright by now. I remembered another way to see if the grass needs watering: if grass blades that are normally flat are rolled into a tube shape, you should water soon as you can. This morning I noticed an area that looked strange and went out to look closer. There were rolled up blades. And it was in an area which was on the edge of sprinkler coverage. I had watered yesterday. Anyway, I handwatered the section with rolled up blades and in a few hours the grass was looking normal again. I had gone away for the weekend and returned Monday morning to stressed grass. I did some emergency watering Monday afternoon but did the deeper watering on Tuesday morning.


----------



## kds

It's been a while, so I guess it's time for an update, but be warned: this will probably be more of a vent as I'm sitting on my back deck after a fresh mow drinking a Boulder Bump 'n' Rind (rated it a 3.5 on Untappd, by the way, not my favorite but I give them credit)...










It's probably pretty hard to see in this picture due to the light, but what you're looking at is disencouragement. We're in a moderate to severe drought right now, and the area it's hitting me hardest is the half of the back yard I spent the most time on during my overseeding project this spring. I am pretty confident I'm right back where I started this spring.

I don't know if the grass is dead or just dormant, but it's certainly discouraging and I feel that I wasted time, money, and effort with this spring's project. I suspect it's the drought, some fungus, and the dogs that are working against me. There is a section between the two trees where it's heavily trafficked by the dogs that looks very similar to the turf in a park after a large festival or concert just took place over the course of a weekend.









The aforementioned dog festival space between the trees.

The most frustrating part of this is that it's not necessarily _my_ dogs causing the damage. The neighbor's dog that I mentioned previously, Cooper, can jump any fence no matter the height, and he is free to come and go from his house as much as he wants through a dog door. It's problematic because he starts playing and chasing my puppy around the house and that's where I'm seeing intense traffic wear on the turf, especially where they chase each other around the trees. Even this morning, he came up on our back deck and peeked into our bedroom with his two front paws on the window sill to see if we were still sleeping since the dogs weren't out yet.









Even one of the areas that had the thickest grass, like the raised garden box where I ripped out bushes last fall, fell victim to heavy dog traffic and what I suspect was some kind of fungus.

If I want to continue trying to improve the back yard, I'm going to have to ask the neighbor to put in an invisible fence or start tethering him up, which is not a conversation I'm looking forward to having because I don't want to be a ****, or seem like one.

I've considered giving up on the back yard altogether, but if I do, it's going to be reduced to a dust bowl. I noticed I have spent less and less time on the back deck this summer just because the yard looks so awful.

There is one bright spot in the back yard. The area in the northwest corner of the yard where I cut down a tree, the grass is growing pretty well. It's definitely the best part of the yard. I don't know why it's so great compared to the rest of the yard, or even ten feet away. The only thing I did differently was throw down some high-N Vigoro fertilizer because I needed to offset some of the cedar chips left over in the soil from grinding the stump down.










The front yard isn't so great either. The end of the driveway that had new grass had some kind of fungus, although I'm not sure what exactly it was. It doesn't seem much thicker, if at all, compared to this spring, except the end of the driveway is doing better with the notable exception of the fungus spots. The side yard is dry and needs a lot of work.

I have a 25-lb bag of TTTF sitting in the garage and I was planning to overseed again this fall but I am so discouraged. I spent so much time reading up on forums and websites about how to improve lawns and I'm right back to where I started. I don't know where I went wrong. Hopefully we come out of this drought and things start looking better, but I've been irrigating and it's just been tough.


----------



## Virginiagal

So sorry it didn't turn out better. It's very hard for a spring seeding of a cool season grass to be successful. The roots don't have sufficient time to develop much before hot weather hits. Summer weeds are a problem. Fungus is a problem. Drought is a problem. The heat is a problem. All of those things are much less of a problem in a fall planting. You have some additional issues: the dogs and the trees. It can be hard to have grass where dogs play and under trees. I would mulch around the trees instead of trying to grow grass there. As for the dogs, have you considered a dog run? It could be fenced off from the rest of the yard and mulched. If you make the fence for the dog run high enough, it may take care of the neighbor dog problem. I know you are discouraged. Don't give up on grass. The fall planting will have much better results. Give some thought to how you might reduce grass area where it's always going to a problem.


----------



## kds

The trees are so big I would end up mulching so much of the yard. They just like to run around them. If I made a mulch ring, I think they would just run around those and wear the turf down there. I don't know where I would put a dog run that would be big enough for them to enjoy and not be totally unsightly.

I'm going to go at it again this fall, I just feel there has to be a better way. I'm trying to figure out the worst spots and fence those off, and then I need to figure out the irrigation system, if I want to do the whole yard or just the fenced-off areas.


----------



## social port

You've got a very good and informative thread going here, kds.

Is there any reason to think that you might have an issue with the soil?


----------



## g-man

kds:

I'm went back to your thread to get more background. Did you ever drop the hoc as virginagal suggested? In the images I see a lot of fine blades. Those are normally not very strong against drought and the heavy traffic of a dog.

I think you first need to get the dog situation under control and that has to start with a conversation with the neighbor. You cant renovate the area with dogs running around. I would use the "chemicals" approach. You will be dropping chemicals in the yard to get the grass to grow and it is not pet safe. That should scare them to do something.

Dogs weight with running and sharp turns, due put a lot of pressure into a small area and could damage an established lawn. It might also lead to compaction issues in their main running areas. I think you might need to aerate those areas and follow the practices used by soccer (futbol) fields near the goal area. I would suggest a ***/TTTF blend (one for recovery and the other for it robustness).


----------



## Virginiagal

The "putting chemicals down" probably won't fly unless you keep your dogs out of the back yard too. Could you keep the dogs out for a couple of months? Maybe they could use the front yard instead? Or could you take them on walks?


----------



## kds

social port said:


> Is there any reason to think that you might have an issue with the soil?


Shouldn't be. All of the cores I had tested late last fall showed everything was great so I didn't try to mess with it too much.



g-man said:


> I'm went back to your thread to get more background. Did you ever drop the hoc as virginagal suggested? In the images I see a lot of fine blades. Those are normally not very strong against drought and the heavy traffic of a dog.


I did. I think it might have been a little too late at that point, and we got hit with the start of the drought right then.


----------



## kds

We had 2.65" of rain between Sunday and yesterday, so things are starting to green back up around here.

I have had landscaping on the brain today. The nursery that created my landscaping plan is running 25% off any trees and shrubs in stock, so hopefully they have some Canadian hemlock trees and a pagoda dogwood, so I can plant those in the terrace. I'll need to rake back some of the rock first and find a place for it to go.

I'm also planning to finally mount the weather station permanently. It won't be too far from where it's sitting now. I'm going to rent a fence post auger, pour cement, and insert a base for a 4x4 post. The bottom of the post will eventually be hidden with a lilac bush or ornamental grasses.

As for overseeding... I'm still going to do it but I'm going back and forth with whether or not to do the whole backyard, or just small sections I can fence off. I'll be doing the entire front yard. I will probably need to order a few more sprinkler heads for the front.


----------



## kds

I went to the garden nursery "just to look" and ended up buying four trees!










One pagoda dogwood (pictured poorly above) from the Hy-Vee garden center, and then I also bought three Canadian hemlocks from the nursery that made my landscape designs. 25% off at each place! I was going to wait but the plants are becoming relatively limited in number.

I still have to pick up the hemlocks but I won't be able to plant until (hopefully) Labor Day weekend so with them being in burlap, the nursery is going to keep them for me until then.


----------



## kds

One thought... is it possible my TTTF is being pushed out/out-competed by the established turf?


----------



## kds

Do you remember the terrace I posted about when I bought this house? Full of weeds, trees, and rocks.

Got some trees planted this weekend...










All of the old river rock was raked up and moved to a pile. Lots and lots of rock. Lots and lots of weed-blocking fabric, too.










Amber approves of the new, cleaner-looking terrace.










This was the first test of whether or not the pickup would fit through the new gate with the air conditioner condenser obstructing part of the way. Luckily, it did.

I had to pick up the three Canadian hemlocks individually, so this sucked up most of my time on Sunday.

Everything tilled and re-graded. I re-graded by hand, so I didn't really move a lot of earth and make it perfect, but it's a lot more even than it was.










After I dug the first hole, Wednesday claimed the first dirt/clay pile as hers. This was the biggest pile we got out of this project. It was the deepest hole (too deep). The second tree hole was just the right depth. The third tree hole was too shallow.










All four trees in place now. Two Canadian hemlocks on the left, then a pagoda dogwood, and then the final Canadian hemlock on the left. A limelight hydrangea will go between the two left hemlocks and a lilac bush will go far right where the rock pile is once I pour the concrete for my weather station.

I wasn't bluffing when I said my backyard turf is in awful shape!

I only picked up 1.5 cu yds of cedar mulch so I would have enough to mulch around the trees/dikes, and then some. The guy running the skidloader actually loaded me up with closer to 2 cu yds, and I wasn't going to turn it down. I could probably use 3-4 cu yds more. I'm going to wait until the bulk mulch goes on sale, or until next March when they run their "mulch madness" promotion.










Closing thoughts: It's a work in progress, for sure. I don't think we have any large trees left to plant, but if there is, I'm going to have them deliver and install it. It was a lot of work, so I hope I didn't mess this up and they all die. I can't wait for these to mature and get a privacy screen out of them. There's also a lot more rock to remove in other places, plus that big pile. I hate rock mulch. I'm never going to do that and I'm never going to buy a house that has it.


----------



## kds

September 10, 2017

Overseeded the front lawn. Also tore up the unsightly circle thing in the corner of the lot. A large boulder, surrounded by day lilies and sedum plants, encircled by pavers. I always forgot it was there and it seemed like it was constantly overrun by weeds, so I got rid of it. You can see the boulder in the right-hand side of the picture.



















September 11, 2017

I'm coming back to the back yard a little more focused this time. I don't want to do the whole yard, or even half of it, because I want to focus on one area and with some more landscaping to do, a large tree to cut down, and a deck renovation all in the plans, it wouldn't make much sense for me to spend so much time, money, and effort on the eastern half of the yard (closest to the house) that will likely be torn up.










Since I have less space to fence off, I have more posts to make the fence stronger.

For those following along, I did address the dog issue with the neighbor. They agreed to put up an invisible fence, although so far it seems like the neighbor dog just ignores the zaps and jumps over. So they have been tethering him for now. Hopefully it won't be an issue.

I am wondering if/when I get seed to establish, if I will be able to take the fence down after it's gone dormant for the winter or if I'll have to keep it up all winter to keep the dogs from tearing it up again. I have one chance to get this right since the girlfriend was complaining about having more "trashy" fences up again...

Used: Earl May Marvel turf-type tall fescue seed, milorganite, Scott's turf builder with mesotrione, and peat moss.


----------



## kolbasz

Looking good. I too never understood the intrigue of rock mulch.


----------



## ken-n-nancy

kolbasz said:


> I too never understood the intrigue of rock mulch.


Absolutely agreed that rock mulch beds using rocks that are too small or with too little depth to the rock mulch bed are maintenance nighmares.

However, if the rocks are big enough and deep enough, rock mulch can be very low maintenance -- much lower than bark mulch.

I've had bad rock mulch beds, and they were a royal pain. I now have a few good ones, and they are really easy to maintain by just blowing the leaves off on an occasional basis.

Depends a lot upon climate, too. Nothing better for low maintenance than rock mulch beds in desert areas like most of Nevada. In a really lush vegetative environment like Florida, they could be really difficult to keep free of greenery.


----------



## zeus201

Read the whole thread, keep up the good work. Lawn care requires an unfathomable amount of patience. I'm hoping we finally get some rain this weekend!


----------



## kds

Some germination is officially happening. Getting some good green whiskers around the boulder in the front yard. :thumbup:










I have yet to see some germination in some places, but patience...

We have some thunderstorms rolling through the area currently, so hopefully we get some good rain this weekend.


----------



## kds

Getting caught up on updates...

Things are coming in really well. I am surprised at how well things are coming in and how consistent it's all looking. There is a spot around the end of the driveway that died earlier this spring that I have been watering manually that isn't coming in so well, but that can be a project for next year.

I did have some red thread in the front yard that showed up in the spring and has been pretty persistent even when not watering, so I sprayed some Immunox throughout the front yard and oh my gosh just doing that made the lawn look so much healthier.










September 16 - the area around the boulder that used to be landscaped. This is going to make it so much easier to mow and I don't have to worry about weeding or adding plants here.










September 16 - things are starting to thicken up. There is a pocket front and center where the sprinklers didn't reach, but oh well.










September 22 - The area under the tree in the backyard is a few days behind the front yard, but it's starting to thicken up too. May need to keep the fence up over winter. Surprisingly, no dogs have breached the fence, yet.










September 23 - first mow. You can really see here where the sprinklers don't reach all the way.



















I didn't mow here -- the roots were too shallow. It's filled in even more since this picture.










It's hard to tell here, especially in the front, but there is some domination going on.

We got almost 2" of rain yesterday so things got a pretty good soak. Tomorrow I'm going to reprogram the sprinklers to start reducing water and hopefully encourage some better root growth. After yesterday's ran, the grass already needs to be mowed.


----------



## social port

kds said:


> It's hard to tell here, especially in the front, but there is some domination going on.


Not hard to tell at all -- there is definitely domination there. 
Love to see those little beauties coming up.
Looks great, kds :thumbup:


----------



## kds

Thanks, SP!

I feel a lot better about this than I did after my spring overseeding. As long as I get the irrigation and fertilization right over the next few weeks, I think this should be good.


----------



## kds

I'm overdue for an update, so let's wrap this up for the season...

I'm still having some trouble growing grass at the end of the driveway where I had some fungus in the spring. I will probably dig that area out, replace it with clean top soil, and try again in the spring. The front yard is still going strong, although the TTTF is having a hard time maturing in some spots. Slowly but surely, I will get things dialed in and make it plush and a beautiful deep green.










This area of the side yard was all torn up from when I tore out a bunch of bushes with the truck last fall. I probably should have torn out that bush on the right, too, before I started seeding again.

As for the backyard... still a mixed bag. Not sure whether to keep trying or to just let the dogs have it. I took the fence down around Wednesday's tree today, where it was completely bare and I overseeded this fall. I left the fence up longer than I did in the spring, hoping it will give the grass more of a chance to mature and take root before the dogs trample it.









April 9, 2017 -- before the spring reno started.









April 23, 2017 -- spring reno in progress.









May 8, 2017









May 12, 2017 -- peak of the spring reno









June 4, 2017 -- after removing the fence on the left side of the picture









August 12, 2017 -- the summer death









Today -- November 12, 2017 after taking down the fence around Wednesday's tree










You can see the hill around Wednesday's tree and the northwest corner of the lot (in the upper right-hand corner of most pictures) are doing well. I'm not sure if the northwest corner just doesn't get very much dog traffic or what, but the TTTF is doing very well over there. I definitely need to work on the middle section of the yard in the spring.

For the season as a whole... I can't say I didn't put in some work, and I'm proud of what I've done. Took out a bunch of trees, removed landscaping rock, planted even more trees, tried to do two renos. But I have learned a lot. I think there's a good foundation here for next year and I want to spend more time learning about herbicides and fertilizers so I can be more effective. There's still a lot for me to do -- in addition to turf care, I'm hoping to take down the ash tree that goes through the back deck and replace the deck after that's done. I also have to put some plants and more mulch down on the terrace and mount the weather station more permanently. The turf and landscaping may not be anywhere near where I want it, but I'm pleased that I'm making progress.


----------



## social port

kds said:


> he turf and landscaping may not be anywhere near where I want it, but I'm pleased that I'm making progress.


I like it, kds. It sounds like you are going to be coming back with guns blazing next year. I'll be riding along for sure if you post your work. 
That side yard is looking good to me, especially the color.
The backyard was looking so good during June. What a dramatic change summer temperatures made.


----------



## kds

Thinking about the property waiting for winter to get here...


 Front: Steps need to be re-poured.
 Front: Flowerbed around the house needs to be re-bordered. Landscape architect called for limestone edging, but that's a little pricey and won't be as easy to DIY. Also may not really match the house. Thinking about using the black plastic edging (on the low end of things) or using the plain grey concrete retaining wall bricks (in the mid-range compared to limestone) to match one of the retaining walls near the front stoop. Also under consideration is DIY poured concrete curbing.
 Front/side: Need to tear out a couple more bushes in the front, and I'll likely do this with my truck, which means probably tire marks.
 Rear: Need to finish removing rock from the last section of the terrace (so my truck will be on the turf to haul away). Will plant a bush in this area and permanently mount the weather station.
 Rear: After removing the rock, will need to throw mulch down and re-do the tree berms (my truck will be on the turf to haul in the mulch).
 Rear: The terrace retaining wall needs to be power-washed, at a minimum. It's dirty and green in some places. There is an older section that's almost black and some ties are needing to be replaced. Would love to replace this wall altogether.
 Rear: Would like to remove the ash tree going through the middle of the deck. Will cost around $2600 to remove. Need to remove it due to decay and fall risk.
 Rear: Need to replace the deck surface. It's getting really worn out from the traffic. Would like to use Trex composite boards.
 Rear: Need to re-shape the flowerbed borders, and like the front, the architect called for limestone but I need to figure out if I want to use a different material.

Making things a bit more difficult is that my household changed last October-ish. I now have a lesser financial resource for these projects, so it's going to be an extended timeline.

So, I'm not sure if I'm going to do anything turf-related this year, except for maybe fertilizing the piss out of the yards and see what happens. I thought about just shutting the back yard down completely to the dogs for me to re-seed and allow the turf to mature for the entirety of the summer, but then it would suck to not let the dogs play while I'm BBQing. Also that could be difficult with some truck traffic coming in and out of there in the future and also tree limbs dropping on the turf when the tree is being brought down. So then I also thought about just focusing on the front lawn, and that's problematic when I take into consideration needing to rip the bushes out, pouring new steps, and re-shaping the flower bed.

It sucks, because I found myself spending less time enjoying being out on the back deck because the backyard looks so trashy. I want to renovate it, but I feel like if I renovate the turf in any way it's going to be a waste of time, money, and effort if limbs are going to cause divots, and trucks are going to wear the grass down in the future. It's like putting the carriage before the horse.

Any thoughts or recommendations? I want to be smart about this.


----------



## jessehurlburt

Hey KDS-

I just read through your whole thread. I feel your pain with trying to balance the desire for a nice lawn and a place for the dogs to play. I too tried a spring renovation that while successful in a few areas, was mostly a waste of time and money. I did a different section in the fall and had much better luck. It looks like the grass under Wednesday's tree is well established and should come back well in the spring. Your approach of doing it in sections is probably the best way given your circumstances and is what I plan on doing in the fall. I also have a 5 year old with more energy than my 2 y/o lab, so making the whole backyard off limits during the nicest time of the year is a non-starter.

I think the lesson learned is spring renovations/restorations of cool season grasses is just not worth it. I completely understand the desire to want a nice lawn to enjoy in the spring and summer- With the winter blues I've been trying to convince myself to try again in the spring! The bottom line is even though you did everything right, you're up against a lot of odds. Save your time and money in the spring and focus on other projects you have- that is my plan. Take care of the trees, steps and beds in the spring and summer and then you can focus all your efforts on an awesome overseed in mid- late August. I'll be following along!

Jesse


----------



## gene_stl

I also just read the whole thread. I am in a similar boat down here in St. Louis. I moved about a year ago and nothing had been done for a long time. I an going to watch your pull out videos because I have some things on my lot I would like to try that with.


----------



## kds

I have been thinking about my lawn and landscape a lot lately. I don't have the financial resources that I did last season to throw into the turf, but I still want to help it along and do things smart.

I've been reading up on nutrients, chemicals, and other things, and in the last few days I think I've come to the conclusion that my reno last April was not as successful as it could have been because I probably overloaded it with nitrogen. Lots of top growth, but not much root growth. When I planted, I threw down some Scotts Turf Builter with mesotrione plus lots of Milorganite, leading to some unhealthy top growth. Lesson learned.

Not much on the agenda for this year, I'll just be taking it as it comes. Certainly no renovation this spring, as tempting as it is. I will be putting down a granular pre-emergent for the first time, and then nurturing the existing turf as much as I can with nutrients, especially in the front yard. We'll see how much of the new TTTF makes a return appearance in the front yard this spring and how it fills in.

I can't stand the shape the backyard is in right now -- a lot of bare spots, and it's been a wet late winter/early spring so far -- so I have spent a lot of time wiping the dogs' feet. There may be a reno in the cards for this fall, dependent on resources. I already have a plan to keep the dogs off the young turf if that's the case.

The pressing issues at the moment are more landscaping. In the backyard, we have that terrace where I need to finish removing the rock, then lay mulch down (at least 9 cu yds worth by my calculation) and plant some plants if I'm lucky. I should also permanently mount the weather station. The large tree through the deck is also a pressing issue.


----------



## kds

So these ugly plants I tore out last year at the corner of my lot and planted grass... looks like I didn't dig down deep enough because they came back with a vengeance this year 



















Gonna have to dig out a deeper and wider hole as soon as it's done snowing and re-seed. It seems like I'm never going to be able to get ahead on this lawn...


----------



## kds

The work on the terrace continues!










Hauled 3100+ lbs of dirt, dirty rocks, bricks, pavers, and other rubbish from the terrace. As it turns out the truck is only rated for about 1900 lbs of payload. Oops :?

I wasn't able to get it all cleaned up, but progress was made. I have less than one truck load of rocks left in the terrace, then I should probably till/re-grade, dig a hole/pour concrete/relocate the weather station to a better-looking and more permanent home, and then figure out what to do with the mulch. I need about 27 cu yds of mulch, which I did find a decent price for bulk mulch delivered but there's no way for the dump truck to fit through the back gate to dump on the terrace. I may have to have them dump it in the driveway in front of the house and then rent a Bobcat shock and just shuttle it back there with that.

I'm pretty much letting the backyard go this year. I'll do some weed control, but not much fertilizing or seeding. After last year's reno and the dogs destroying it, I figured it will be best to just wait. In addition to hauling mulch back there, I have at least one tree that needs to come down and the deck needs to be rebuilt and then new landscape beds to be drawn and cut. It doesn't make much sense to me to spend all that time, money, and effort on making it look nice and then having to fix whatever the machinery leaves behind. I'll just have to stick it out this summer!


----------



## kds

Yesterday...

Dug up those ugly perennials around the boulder in the front yard, filled, seeded and then top-dressed those spots.

Laid down Tenacity and fertilizer on the front lawn.

Laid down Barricade and fertilizer in the back yard and the parking strip between the sidewalk and the street.

Expecting about 2" of rain through Thursday, so hopefully the wind hasn't blown everything away yet and it'll all get a nice soaking.


----------



## PHXCobra

Which suburb? My wife is from Dallas Center and we stay with her family in Windsor Heights when we visit. I have enjoyed Iowa every time I've been there (only ever been in summer).

Stick with it, grass doesn't grow quickly and all the work you are putting in will pay off.


----------



## kds

PHXCobra said:


> Which suburb? My wife is from Dallas Center and we stay with her family in Windsor Heights when we visit.


I am not far from her family... I'm a little further north in Urbandale!


----------



## kds

Mowed, trimmed, and sprayed Weed-B-Gon on the dandelions on Saturday.

I can't believe it but it looks like the yards are ready to be mowed again already.

I'm amazed how well the yards (including the backyard, where the dogs roam!) flourished this spring. Granted, we got about 2.5" last week, but I'm hoping it all holds on until fall. My morale is up. I'm hoping to just fertilize everything pretty good this summer.

The area where I dug out those old hostas or day lilies or whatever they were a couple weeks ago in the front yard by the landscaping boulder is already germinating after being seeded only last week. And I haven't even been the best about watering them 2x a day!


----------



## kds

Things have been growing so fast around here this spring I haven't really had a chance to take photos! I think I mowed three times this week and even then I was violating the 1/3 rule.

The retired lady that lives next door to me and has a nice lawn (it was nicer than mine when I moved here) stopped me when I was blowing off the patio Friday night and asked what I was putting down on my lawn because it's so thick and green this year. I don't know if I was supposed to do it but I told her all the secrets I've learned so far. She was amazed that I've even been able to thicken up the parking strip between the street and the sidewalk. If I recall correctly, she said it was so thick it was "gross." :clapping:


----------



## JohnP

How's your above ground sprinkler setup holding up? Did you deploy it again this year?


----------



## kds

JohnP said:


> How's your above ground sprinkler setup holding up? Did you deploy it again this year?


Nope, not yet... I usually only do that when seeding since it takes a little more finagling. It's been pretty wet here and I've barely been able to keep up with the mowing. I haven't decided yet whether I will seed this fall, we'll see what summer brings us.


----------



## Rucraz2

Cyclone fan up here in SEMN now. Originally from down by Cedar Falls. We have a lot of friends down in your neck of the woods. I've been an "urban farmer" for quite a few yrs myself. Just when I think I'm starting to think I've moved up in the world of lawn knowledge, I learn some more on here and get knocked down a peg or two. I skimmed through your post here and looks like you have done a ton of work and learned a lot in the process. The best advise I can give you is to get a soil test if you haven't yet and see what your soil needs first. Then read up on as many renos others have done. They usually post what worked well and what they would have done differently. The biggest thing I have learned? That a lawn is similar to painting cars. It's all in the prep work. Get your dirt right. Otherwise looks like you are on the right track.


----------



## kds

That is a fair assessment. I have some work that needs to be done (tree and shrub removal, deck replacement, front steps replacement) so I'm kind of in a holding pattern for now as to not just throw money away when the turf is damaged from falling branches, trucks, excavation, and other things.


----------



## kds

FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, I got my blades sharpened...










Yes, the place is called Beaver Mower. I am a hormonal 16-year-old boy on the inside.

I can't wait to cut the grass tomorrow. I've never had blades sharpened before. At all. These ones were pretty dull after two years.


----------



## JohnP

Lol at the name! Do you have an extra set of bldes?


----------



## JohnP

Lol at the name! Do you have an extra set of blades for next time?


----------



## kds

JohnP said:


> Lol at the name! Do you have an extra set of blades for next time?


Not right now, but I do plan on getting another set eventually so I can have sharp blades more often!


----------



## kds

Not much new to share, but we did have a thunderstorm a few nights ago and when I pulled into the driveway I couldn't help but to take some pictures...



















I haven't taken a lot of pics because the landscape beds still need worked on and I've been having a hell of a time keeping those helicopter seeds and cottonwood seeds cleaned up. They both came down really heavy this year and throws the look of the lawn off. You can especially see it stuck to the edges of the turf along the sidewalk.


----------



## kds

I finally got the terrace (previously: 1, 2, 3) mulched and cleaned up this week! I know it sounds underwhelming, but a lot of work had to happen to get to this point. There was deforestation, lots of weed-pulling, stump grinding, rock removal, garbage removal, tilling, grading, tree planting, and finally, mulching. I took most of this week off from work to just get it done.










The last load of rocks and dirt taken to the dump. I would have preferred to not take dirt to the dump, but there was no way I was going to take the time to screen it all. I took about 6,000 lbs of stuff to the dump, not including the 3,000 lbs that some guy came and picked up after I posted it for free on Nextdoor.

I also learned that the max cargo payload in my truck is about 1,500 lbs. This was on a trip where I was carrying about 2,800 lbs. :shock:










In this final section, someone had laid down landscaping fabric, then river rock, and then covered that with dirt, and planted a tree. There were even several bricks in the area. At some point they must have ran out of landscaping fabric because I was finding shredded garbage bags instead.










Got the section tilled and leveled as much as I could. I also took the opportunity to spread the ashes of Jack back here and integrate them into the soil. Jack is a pet rabbit I had up until a couple of months ago -- he lived to almost be 12 which is really, really old for domesticated rabbits. He was my "dog" when I couldn't have a dog in my apartment. He moved around with me a lot and went through a lot with me. I'm glad that I have a final resting place for him.










This was the second load of mulch I trucked in. I opted for eastern red cedar -- still has that aroma of cedar but it's a little bit cheaper. I ordered 8 cu yds total, which would give me about 4" depth across the terrace. The first couple of loads they gave me heaping scoops so I probably could have saved a little money by going with 7 cu yds, but I just took advantage of it.

As you can see, the turf took a beating with the truck driving multiple full loads through.










Last load! It went quicker than I expected. I used a pitchfork to scoop, throw and flick. Got down on my hands and knees to even out any ridges. I didn't try to get it perfect, because I figured it would settle naturally and the dogs would make it uneven again anyway.

I took a break from the terrace to play with my new toy. I bought myself a Ryobi 1,700-PSI 1.2-GPM Electric Pressure Washer with 11 in. Surface Cleaner that was on sale as a Fathers' Day promotion at Home Depot. Then the scope began to creep.










I started out washing my front stoop, which really really needed the washing.










Then I started washing the bricks, the retaining wall, and the front steps (the flowerbeds with the hostas are next on the list for new landscaping).

Then I washed the gigantic parking pad and the driveway, and the sidewalk. @Mightyquinn and others said the driveway needed a washin'... so I did.










My neighbor's sidewalk where it meets mine.

I got back to the terrace and went to work on what the pressure washer was originally intended for... washing the retaining wall.










I think it turned out pretty well. It looks a lot more consistent now. Here's a before and after:










Even a really really old section of the retaining wall that's failing cleaned up nice (it hasn't fully dried yet though).










I finally got back to my ongoing tasks of keeping the place clean. We're getting some hot weather this weekend, so I think this is probably going to be my lawn at its peak this season.


----------



## Ware

It's looking nice! :thumbsup:


----------



## iowa jim

You're hard work has paid off big time. : good job:


----------



## Colonel K0rn

I've found that any time I have the pressure washer out, I tend to find myself creating more things for me to wash after I'm done with what I originally intended to clean.

Your work turned out great, and man, that retaining wall really came back to life!


----------



## Amaxwell5

This all looks great. Good job.


----------



## kds

How much rain is too much rain?










Yep, that's right... 7.32" of rainfall today, in a matter of a couple of hours. We were anticipating severe weather, but not significant flooding like we've seen today. This brings our June rainfall total to 16.14" so we've been pretty soggy and have seen minor flooding in the usual areas.

I'm safe and the house is dry, but there have been multiple water rescues taking place and last I heard one person is still missing. There is a storm water management creek about a block away from me went out of its banks.

We're supposed to get more rain after midnight again, and evacuations are happening just south of me. They can't say how much more we're going to get, but it's supposed to be "significant."

As for what's happening here at home, the home is dry. The back yard completely flooded since we're downhill and then the street also flooded because of that and the fact that it slopes towards the municipal creek. I did have a large branch come down, about 7" in diameter. There are a lot of other smaller branches down as well.



















The water rushed over the top of the terrace retaining wall, I thought this looked crazy.


----------



## g-man

Wow, keep safe.


----------



## kds

Not a lot going on lately. After the heavy rain at the end of June, we went through a really dry stretch in July and most of August. Finally did a full mow for the first time in about a month and a half yesterday.

Turf type tall fescue is really incredible. Check out this shot I took from my front stoop. I took this at almost the height of our drought so you can see how drought-resistant TTTF is (in the center of the frame at the end of the driveway near the parking pad curve and lightpole). I took the picture from far away so you can get a sense of my neighbors' lawns. This is the Marvel blend from Earl May, a local nursery chain. It still remains so thick and dark green. This is definitely going to be my go-to blend and I can't believe how well it has taken to these two areas.










As for the rest of the yard... I still haven't decided the intensity of overseeding this fall. The back yard needs it very badly, but I'd like to take a tree down. The front yard is in decent shape, but could benefit from some overseeding. But I also need to rip out some shrubs in the front flowerbeds with the truck, remove the river rock, and then re-define the flowerbeds and prepare to plant the new vegetation and pour new front steps. So really I think I should just do a more half-hearted reseed this fall until after I put ruts in the yard with the truck and reshape the flowerbeds since there will be some areas there I'll need to fill in and reseed from bare dirt.


----------



## kds

December 18 - Big doin' at the kds household...

Remember that ash tree that went through the back deck?










It had outgrown the deck for a while now, where the tree trunk was getting girdled by the deck and it was right up against the joists so I couldn't just take a Sawzall to it and make the opening bigger. It was getting so bad that when the wind blew, you could hear the tree swaying and pulling the deck away from the house and then slamming it back into the house. It was very unnerving.

So it was time for it to come down.



















I also had them trim all the other trees on the property. Branches would fall all over the yards at the slightest breeze or fog, so hopefully I won't have to pick up so many sticks for a while.





































To get the tree trunk fully down below the deck, they made two cuts down below, hammered wedges into them, and then wrapped a chain around the middle section and pulled it out with the Dingo.










I scheduled this to be done in December so the ground was pretty firm... but when my number came up it was 50° so the ground was pretty soft. Needless to say, their trucks, Dingo, and other equipment had no mercy on the lawn. Here's how things look today after they tried to fill in some of the ruts...




























So needless to say, there's a lot more work to be done this spring. The tree needed to be done but it's causing some priorities to be shifted. I wasn't going to do much in the way of seeding this spring, since I need to clean out all the flowerbeds, paint the foundation, remove and install new bed edging, plant new shrubs, trim the boxwood in front, and some other items... these are all things that will need me to load and unload the truck in the yard, so I'm hesitant to put a bunch of seed down only for me to drive over it a few weeks later (at best). Maybe I'll be blessed with a few warmer late-winter/early spring days where I can get most of the flowerbeds cleaned out and hauled to the dump and I can get some seed down at least in the front so it doesn't look so bad all summer. Also on the list is re-staining the back deck and cleaning up the flowerbeds in the back.


----------



## GreenHorn

Also on the list is re-staining the back deck and cleaning up the flowerbeds in the back.

And fixing the hole in the deck where the tree was &#128514;


----------



## kds

GreenHorn said:


> And fixing the hole in the deck where the tree was 😂


Minor details 😉


----------



## kds

I haven't been able to get into the yard yet to start cleanup, but I did notice something interesting today... the tree company filled in some of the ruts from their trucks with a dirt/compost mix last winter. Now that things are greening up... things are _really_ greening up in the immediate vicinity of the dirt they threw down. Wowsers! Good stuff. Probably going to spread this throughout the yard next time I seed.

For the fellow Des Moinesians, this stuff came from Soil-Tek in Grimes. They do sell to homeowners. I wish I remembered how much they told me it was for a cubic yard but I do remember I was shocked that it was such a low price.


----------



## kds

I planned in advance to take today off from work to get the spring seeding done. I normally wouldn't want to do a spring seeding but I have a few spots that were pretty bad either from the dogs or the tree company that came through on the warmest day in December.

I started the day later than planned due to a couple of thunderstorms moving through the area. My first stop was Soil-Tek in Grimes. This is a company that specializes in erosion control/hydroseeding for large construction and highway projects. The tree company filled some of their ruts in December with soil from Soil-Tek and whoo boy is it good stuff, so I went back to get some myself. It's a mix of compost from Metro Waste Authority mixed with sand (not sure of the ratio). It's $25 per 1 cubic yard, so $50 for a pickup truck load. Everyone was super friendly, but I could tell it's uncommon for a homeowner to come in and get a relatively small load from them since it wasn't very streamlined.



















We saw what the yards looked like in December, and again last month, so I had a few specific trouble spots I wanted to focus on. Here's what it looked like this morning after a quick wet mow:



















_(ps: the flower beds and the bush are all works in progress and will be receiving attention once the grass takes root!)_

It doesn't look so bad but I did cut it pretty short this morning so the bare spots aren't very apparent.

There were some parts along the driveway and sidewalk where the soil and thatch layers (along with some of those tire ruts!) got too high and was getting scalped by the lawnmower and was generally not nice to look at, so I cut the really high points down and tried to level them out.










This is the south side yard where most of the damage happened from the tree company. It has actually recovered pretty well, but it needed some leveling. It slopes down towards my neighbor's house but the heavy trucks and equipment really caused some deep ruts that lead to a steeper dropoff than I would like, so I planned on leveling and smoothing this out.










This area between the flowerbed and one of the trees out front never seems to fill in that well. Not sure if the tree is sucking all the moisture out of it, or the mower just runs over it too much, or it's eroding... but I always feel the need to work on this.










I've never had very good luck with the space between the street and sidewalk. For some reason the edges got really bare last summer, there's always been a very low spot at the telephone junction box at the far end, and after the snow melted away this spring there were a lot of bad spots near the lot line. So this needed some work as well.










This is the only area in the back yard I'm going to be working on. I think I'm finally accepting that the back yard is never going to be where I would like it to be with lots of trees and two dogs with the possibility of a third dog joining our pack this year. The main area here is erosion on the hill, so I felt that I really need to get this done. Grass hasn't grown particularly well on this hill, and when the dirt comes loose then one of the dogs sees it as an invitation to dig. It's cordoned off to keep dogs out and it'll probably stay up for quite a while.

The first step was to fill in some of the low spots and try to level things out...




























The seed I'm using is again Marvel, a turf-type tall fescue blend from Earl May. I used it the past couple of years and I've been pretty pleased. I start seeing results within 5-7 days, and it's a very nice dark green, even when it's been dry.










I threw the seed down in the front yard, then went to spread the Scotts Turf Builder with mesotrione and when I poured it into the hopper, I didn't remember it being so yellow! I knew something was wrong. I accidentally bought a bag of Turf Builder with Halts! Definitely not going to work for me. I stopped by Lowe's and they didn't have any so I went back to Home Depot to make sure it's the Turf Builder with mesotrione. I spread the Scotts, then laid down some peat moss (not many pictures on this part, sorry. I was getting towards the end of daylight and was hustling).

I put down a lot of material on the south side yard to hopefully smooth it out, and I have two downspouts that drain through this area. I noticed quite a bit of the material the tree company put down in this area last December washed away, so I got this erosion control blanket from Home Depot. It's pretty big and I had to cut it...










I also got a smaller erosion control blanket from Lowe's for the area between the front tree and flower bed to see if that helps...










I'm not sure about these blankets. I'm worried the netting is going to make a mess and I'm not even sure if I put enough staples down or in the right places. I used a netless blanket a couple years ago and I wasn't very pleased with that one after the birds picked it apart. I fully expect that I'll have to pull all of these blankets up in a month or so for a good mow.

At this point I was out of daylight, it was really windy, and the temperature dropped about 20° to 50°. I didn't get to seeding the area in the back yard or put any sprinklers up -- I wasn't really open to the prospect of getting sprayed with cold water in 50° weather in the dark to get the sprinklers set up. Hopefully the seed doesn't get wet and I can get at least the front sprinklers set up in the next few days.

I'm still not sure how I'm going to water the strip between the street and the sidewalk. I could lay a hose across the sidewalk and give that area its own set of sprinklers but I'm worried about bikes running over it or people walking by and tripping over it. Or I could just water it manually, which is less than ideal. I could put 360° sprinkler heads in the yard and have it spray that area and the sidewalk but I also don't want to irk anyone walking on the sidewalk if my sprinklers come on when they're nearby or they have to try to dodge the sprinklers.

It feels like this is one of the bigger seeding projects I've done, even though I've done almost this same exact scenario before. The only change is that I brought in a lot of sand/compost material and I'm trying to water the area between the street and the sidewalk. I'm a little apprehensive that I'm doing everything correctly. Couple this with knowing the summer is tough on new grass, I'm hoping with my fingers crossed. 🤞


----------



## JohnP

kds said:


> I'm still not sure how I'm going to water the strip between the street and the sidewalk. I could lay a hose across the sidewalk and give that area its own set of sprinklers but I'm worried about bikes running over it or people walking by and tripping over it. Or I could just water it manually, which is less than ideal. I could put 360° sprinkler heads in the yard and have it spray that area and the sidewalk but I also don't want to irk anyone walking on the sidewalk if my sprinklers come on when they're nearby or they have to try to dodge the sprinklers.


You put some work in!! :thumbsup:

I was thinking of something like this to do a hose over the sidewalk or in front of the garage. I have to run over the hoses when we come home and it's not ideal.

https://www.amazon.com/Happybuy-Pack-Protective-Cable-2-Channel/dp/B07BC7XZPQ/


----------



## kds

JohnP said:


> I was thinking of something like this to do a hose over the sidewalk or in front of the garage. I have to run over the hoses when we come home and it's not ideal.
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/Happybuy-Pack-Protective-Cable-2-Channel/dp/B07BC7XZPQ/


Good idea!


----------



## kds

I've been busy with life so I've done a terrible job documenting this spring's overseed, but looks like there's some germination in one of the areas! Still waiting for the main part of the front yard, the south side yard, and the strip between the street and sidewalk to start perking up. This overseed has sure had its challenges.


----------



## kds

It's been a challenging planting, that's for sure. Some parts are doing better than others for seemingly no rhyme or reason. I don't know if it was the freeze, the generally cooler-than-average temps, or the cloud-to-sun ratio. being out of whack, but the seed is really struggling to pop this year.

I gave in and mowed the front yard. It was so tall, I was pretty much breaking the 1/3 rule at the level of what would be a felony in most TLF back yards. The seedlings are still so young, I tried to hold out. The established turf was not only getting thick but it was starting to lay down over itself in some areas so I was worried about the new grass not getting enough sun. I just pushed the mower as gingerly as I could, tried to avoid the big areas of new seed, and came back around with the trimmer to try to even some of the areas out around the big patches of new seed so it didn't look so terrible.

I also took away the erosion control blanket in the front and cut away about half of the erosion control blanket in the side yard. I don't think they were doing any good, it's possible they were doing more harm than good and it was just ratty-looking.









May 5th









The hill in the back yard, May 7th. I'm planning on keeping this fenced off probably until next spring. The dogs really beat it up and it has a hard time recovering and it ends up eroding away.









The side yard, May 7. You can tell where the bare areas are under the straw blanket pretty clearly here.









The side yard, May 11. Still not really coming up in the bare areas.









Here's what most of it looks like under the straw blanket. Pretty sparse. I was pretty good about making sure the area had ample seed, seed-to-soil contact, nutrients, and water so I am extremely surprised at the poor results here so far.









Here's the area where I pulled up the erosion control blanket in the front yard along the driveway. You can see on the left side of the photo the grass is a little yellow/bright green in the shape of the blanket where it seemed like it was getting smothered. The area between the tree and the front steps is also pretty sparse, but for whatever reason I've always been having a hard time getting grass to grow and stay here.









The strip between the street and the sidewalk is looking mighty green but grass is having trouble growing here for the most part too. Really looking forward to not having to water this area so I can powerwash everything again!

This coming week is going to be critical. We're finally going to have some warmer temps, into the 70s and 80s with plenty of sunshine. I'm hoping all the yard needs is a couple of days of a warm sun for things to really take off. This is easily the worst results I've gotten from an overseed in the past three years, including another in the spring.


----------



## iowa jim

We have had a very cold spring and I'm sure that is effecting that young grass. You have done a amazing job on your property from leveling to the tree on the deck and that transformation of the terrace is top notch. Do you wish that you would have thrown in a little kbg to help with the spreading? I don't know you but one thing i know is that your not afraid of work. great job


----------



## kds

Thanks, @iowa jim. It was tough but at the same time I knew that it may not survive the hot summer. I went into it knowing I would probably have to do a second seeding in the fall regardless. I wanted the yard to be a little more presentable after all the traffic on the lawn from the tree company but if I had left it well enough alone I bet it wouldn't have looked too bad until fall.


----------



## kds

I planted a flagpole today!

It's a 20' Uncommon USA Presidential Series flagpole. I found a local store that carried it for a lower price than direct from the factory _and_ free delivery. We've been in a bit of a rainy weather pattern lately, so imagine my surprise when I saw on the Ring doorbell that it had been delivered on a beautiful sunny day!

I stopped by Home Depot on the way home from work today, I grabbed 3 80-lb bags of high-strength Quikcrete, a ag of gravel, a trowel, and a post level. I got to work almost immediately when I got home and started digging.









Pulled out this bad boy first. The flagpole is going in an area that's currently turf and adjacent to the current "flowerbed" but once I redefine the flowerbeds, this will be a part of the flowerbed.









Roots. Lots of roots. Also hit a brick a couple of feet below. Not sure how that got there... it has to have been there for 50 years.









I hit a big root at the bottom. A big, big root. So I had to shift my hole to avoid it and get the recommended depth of 28". Which made my hole a weird shape. So to fix it...









I cut the bottom off an old Behr paint bucket to use as an improvised form. I ended up cutting it down to about 5-6", but I probably should have left it a little taller. I decided I was going to keep most of the concrete base below ground level but have a collar around the PVC sleeve so that I didn't have this crazy-shaped giant concrete pad.









160 lbs of dry concrete.









160 lbs of wet concrete. It was a lot harder to mix than I expected (this is my first time doing anything with concrete).









I used about 220 lbs of Quikcrete and this is after I troweled the collar and wiped down the sleeve. I probably should have not put so much concrete on the bottom side below ground level so grass can have a chance of growing there... but this area is going to be a flowerbed soon, so probably doesn't matter.

















Looks pretty level!

So far, so good... it was pretty firm by the time I cleaned everything up and got inside. Looks like the improvised form may have traveled a bit when I filled it with concrete so it's a little offcenter, but barely noticeable.

Tomorrow I'll cut up the bucket and hopefully that will come off clean and there weren't any air bubbles. I tried to save some of the sod so hopefully I can lay that down around the collar. Then on Friday everything should be set and the flag will be flying for the weekend!


----------



## JohnP

Poke.


----------



## kds

JohnP said:


> Poke.


I know, I've been doing a poor job of posting this year  A lot of my weekends have been occupied by other things so my week nights have been my only opportunities to do things, and there are a lot of things competing for attention in that ~5-hour window. I'm working on reigning in my to-do list as well as the maintenance items so I should be getting ahead soon.

I finished up the flagpole project, it turned out ok. Tried to put some of the sod back around the sleeve as much as I could, I just need some rain and sun to perk the grass up a little bit. I don't have a light for the pole yet so I'll be raising the flag in the morning and bringing it in at night this weekend. Ignore the overgrown bush and maple tree seed pods...










As for the turf... I picked up and put away some of the sprinklers I had out and I liberated the rest of my yard from the erosion control blanket I put down last month. I was originally going to leave some of it around the downspout because it didn't really grow but I didn't want to mow around it anymore and have to trim on top of it with the weed whacker so I just ripped it all out.

Using an ECB is probably something I'll never be doing again. It's a pain to unroll it and put the stakes down, then it grows unevenly and suffocates the turf in some areas, and it's just plain unsightly. I don't know if it was the ECB that caused the grass to not grow very well or if it was the freeze, but I'm pretty confident that the ECB didn't help things. The areas where I pulled up the ECB earlier are doing much better compared to this area. Here's a look at the side yard where I tore out the ECB tonight, you can see some of the bare spots...










Mowed and laid down some of my last bags of Milorganite in the front yard tonight and did three passes on the lot lines for easy domination . We're supposed to get about a half-inch of rain to water things in tonight so that's perfect.

The hill in the back yard that I fenced off seems to be doing better especially now there's no ECB back there. There is some grass growing where I've always had trouble keeping grass. This area is probably going to be fenced off until at least fall to help the turf take root here and hopefully give it a chance to stick around. I need to take an update pic here -- every time I've been mowing in the back yard the past few weeks it's pretty much after dark so no pictures are coming out very well. If we get a break in the rain this weekend, I'll take some pics.

Landscaping has been a focus this year now that I have all of the front/side flowerbeds cleaned out from all that river rock that was in there. I've been spending a lot of time visiting nurseries looking at plants, getting prices, and coming up with ideas. I can't wait to get started on this, the side beds are going to look great with some plants and fresh mulch! I have a neighbor that has an amazing flower bed that I envy, so I can't wait to have my own to enjoy.

Some weekend I'm going to rent a tiller and a bed redefiner to reshape the beds and get ready to plant. I did get a quote for concrete edging for the front flowerbeds but I think $2,000 for colored and stamped curbing is a little much and I'd lose some flexibility for future modifications so I think I'm going to go with natural edging.

I'm trying to get quotes to have the front steps rebuilt but oh man is it hard to get a contractor to come out and bid on a small job like that. And it would likely require me to rebuild the retaining wall next to it so it's going to be a two-part job in addition to rebuilding the flower beds. I also want to find a contractor to come and trim up the overgrown yew(?) bush in front, it's such an eyesore. It's overgrown and has some deformities from snow and ice falling on it from over the winter so I think this is probably a trim best left to a pro.

The back deck also needs to be rebuilt, it's aging out. I considered Trex vs. wood and settled on wood. I'm waiting to see what I should do next with the back yard, but I think I want to focus on the front yard first. The back yard has so much room for improvement that I want to get the front yard out of the way first and then tackle the back one bite at a time. I've pretty much accepted that the back is the dogs' playing field so I'm not going to focus on anything other than hardscaping.

That's pretty much where I'm at for now... definitely planning an overseed in the fall which should help correct some of the issues I had with the spring seeding.


----------



## JohnP

Love the flagpole!!!


----------



## kds

Not the greatest mow tonight... I couldn't even mow in a straight line to save my life. The cut on the lot line was like a crooked haircut that can't be fixed...










After raining day after day, it's been clear for a day and a half or so now. I've not only been straight-up molesting the 1/3 rule, but tonight I cut about 3/4 of the blade off. And some parts were still sopping wet. The kind of wet where you stand in the yard and you can hear bubbles when you step and the turf decompresses. Like this corner that was sopping wet and even without using the self-propeller I _still_ managed to get ruts...










But the hill in the back yard seems to be recovering well despite something digging holes in it.


















The front yard is looking better after a rough winter and a mostly failed overseed. Haven't done much here except put down some Milorganite at bag rate last week.










The maple seed pods and cottonwood seeds have been _really_ bad this year, paired with several inches of rain over the past week and a half, everything needs a good powerwashing. I also need to get caught up on weed control. It seems the cottonwood seeds even embedded themselves on my welcome mat and I'm getting germination in the welcome mat!

I need to get caught up on landscaping and weed control. Someone is supposed to be coming by to trim up the overgrown yew in the front garden bed and then I have some hydrangeas to plant in the front to celebrate the 3rd year in this house. Hopefully should get started with landscaping the beds soon too.


----------



## kds

Had a good mow tonight. Of course I've been super busy so I still haven't been able to keep up on things as much as I should have so things were a little overgrown, not to mention the maple tree seed pods started germinating so I had a bunch of volunteer trees all over. But things are filling in quite nice, and I even managed to mow mostly straight lines tonight!










The yew bush in front is, yep, still overgrown... so far two contractors flaked on getting that thing trimmed up. I'm getting close to just getting some shears and hacking it up myself. Can't get much worse than it already is.

The hell strip even looks better!










This is the area around the utility box I tried to level and re-seed. Looking pretty good and it's starting to become a little more uniform with the mature turf around it.










The back corner hill is looking pretty good. It's becoming pretty uniform with the established turf around it as well. Only time will tell how much of this will make it through the summer.










Also finally put the Bernzomatic torch to work on the crack weeds!



http://imgur.com/6FTkS0I


I have a hydrangea plant that needs to get planted, along with flowerbeds that need tilled, planted and mulched. Need to rent an edger to really get the edges cleaned up like they should. The neighborhood cottonwood tree is finally done dropping, so powerwashing is also on the list.


----------



## ken-n-nancy

kds said:


> But things are filling in quite nice, and I even managed to mow mostly straight lines tonight!


Just catching up on this thread since last year. You've been busy! Love the flagpole, and the combination of your work and spring weather makes that lawn look great once again! Well done!


----------



## kds

I've been trying to get contractors to come and trim up the yew bush in front of the house but I haven't been successful in getting them to come do the work. So I bought a trimmer and trimmed it myself! I figure it couldn't look any worse...




























...I think it looks pretty bad. Hopefully it recovers. If not, I can put something else there, I'm just trying to use what's already in the ground.

Rented an edger to clean up the edges. $30 for a half day at Mulchmart. It took me about 30 minutes to do this, it took a lot longer than that to drive out to pick it up.





































This combined with a powerwashing would be 🔥


----------



## g-man

:thumbup: Proper edging make a lawn pop. :thumbup:


----------



## iowa jim

I just bought a still edger this month and i really like it. There is plenty of power and it was $260.00 ( 56ce home owners model ). Might be a good investment for you.


----------



## kds

Beat the storm just in time!

Got the front yard all cleaned up for the holiday. Weeded and mulched the front garden bed, adjusted some of the rocks at the end of the front flower bed by the steps, mowed, edged, and blew off the hard surfaces before a gust front moved in and spewed leaves and sticks all over the yard accompanied by .55" of needed rainfall.


----------



## pennstater2005

kds said:


> Beat the storm just in time!
> 
> Got the front yard all cleaned up for the holiday. Weeded and mulched the front garden bed, adjusted some of the rocks at the end of the front flower bed by the steps, mowed, edged, and blew off the hard surfaces before a gust front moved in and spewed leaves and sticks all over the yard accompanied by .55" of needed rainfall.


That looks great!


----------



## iowa jim

Looking good: Are you using any iron treatments to keep it that green?


----------



## kds

iowa jim said:


> Looking good: Are you using any iron treatments to keep it that green?


The only fertilizer I used with iron so far this year was Milorganite, which I put down at 2x bag rate in the spring. I put down Scotts Turf Builder with Tenacity when I seeded before that.

I honestly think a big contributor to the deep green color this year is the seed I'm using to seed each fall and spring. It's the Earl May "Marvel" TTTF blend and I can definitely tell the areas where it takes hold over the older, more established grass because it's much darker. And it stays a deep green under heat.


----------



## FORT

@kds Just read through your journal while drinking my morning coffee. As everyone else has said, excellent job and love the flag pole! Subscribed!


----------



## kds

Thanks @FORT! I got really lucky this year that the yard stayed as good as it did with minimum intervention. It's lit a fire to do more next year.


----------



## FORT

@kds Keep it up, I look forward to seeing your progress!


----------



## kds

I'm working on coming up with a plan for a fall overseed. I will most definitely be working on the front yard and the main parkway but I'm figuring out what to do with the back since that's the dogs' yard. Dormancy is hitting both yards pretty hard, but the back yard looks better right now than it has at this time any of the past two years. Still, I haven't wanted to spend much time in the backyard this year because it's just a hot mess.

I should landscape both beds on the side of the house, preferably before seeding happens. I would like to move that giant boulder out of the corner of the front yard and into one of the side beds since it's hard to mow around in its current location, grass doesn't grow around there, and it bakes any remaining grass around it. I'm planning on renting a walk-behind loader with a landscape grappler attachment to do this. Ideally I could rent an aerator at the same time and do both on the same day.

This winter I'm going to work on coming up with an actual plan for applications throughout next year.


----------



## kds

(August 30, 2019)

I've had this dumb rock in the corner of my yard since I moved in. When I bought the house, it had some day lillies, sedum, and some other plants around it and encircled in pavers. It didn't look very good. I pulled out all of the plants around it and planted TTTF. The grass came in pretty well, except the boulder scorched any grass right next to it in the dog days of summer every year.

Even though the obstacle was smaller now with the plants and pavers removed, it was still a pain to mow around. It looked like the top of the boulder had been chiseled out, so it was always collecting water and black stuff, and it always looked dirty.



















So I put an ad up on Craigslist and Nextdoor... if you could come and pick up the boulder with minimal damage to the yard or sidewalk and take it away, you can have it for free. I had about 10 responses come in overnight between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. I had a person lined up to come over and take it, but he found out that afternoon his equipment was broken. I moved onto the next one, who said he had a truck with a crane on it and he can come over on Friday.
























He made pretty quick work out of it. Strapped it up, hoisted it up into the air, and set it down on the truck bed. In and out in about 5 minutes with almost no damage to my lawn. He said he collects boulders like this, sandblasts them to clean them up, and either resells them or does custom engraving on it as a landscape boulder.

Also I had no idea that the bottom of the boulder _wasn't_ flat... it was actually down in the dirt a little way!


----------



## kds

(August 31, 2019)

Now that I had the boulder out of the way, it's time to seed.

I stopped by Mulchmart to grab 2 yds of straight compost. It's the same compost that pretty much everyone sells around here from Metro Waste Authority's compost program. I could have gotten it much cheaper where I purchased the compost/sand mix from this spring at Soiltek but it's been a little more difficult for me to get supplies from 8-5 stores since I just recently switched jobs.










I read something in the TLF Discord that made me want to try out United's Super Turf II LS. It looks like it scored well in local NTEP trials, and the lateral spread characteristics made me curious. I'm skeptical that it actually works that well, but it would be great to help with thickening the lawn in the front and I would even consider using it in the back yard where the dogs tear it up each year if it can help repair itself. Again I had a hard time getting supplies from contractor supply stores, and I didn't really plan this very well, so I panicked a little at the last minute trying to find this seed on a weekend. @NewLawnJon happened to see this blend at a local nursery that was open Saturday. I headed up there and picked up the 5 remaining 5-lb bags they had left in stock.










I mowed short and spread the compost Saturday and watered it in a little bit.

On Sunday I mowed even shorter and spread the compost out a little more. Then I put the seed down in the front and the hill in the back that's been fenced off all summer in an effort to keep the dogs out so the grass can take hold and stop the erosion that was happening this spring.

All summer long I've been cutting the grass at about 3.5"-4". When I cut it short, it revealed a lot of crabgrass. A _lot_ of crab grass. I hand-pulled the big clumps, but there is still a lot out there. Not sure how the grass is going to do with this competition and how it's going to look a month from now. I can only blame myself though, I haven't been keeping up on the yard as well as I wanted to, mostly because I have been poorly organized this year, and a lack of time during certain weeks.



















On Monday I had the sprinklers all set. I used the same Hunter MP rotators I've been using. I was thinking about using some different sprinklers that maybe wouldn't require so much hose and tweaking but I just used what I had. The sprinklers are the most annoying part of an overseed, behind spreading compost. I didn't tweak them too much. I did get some mini-rain gauges to measure how much water is being put down on certain areas over a certain amount of time, but I haven't really felt inclined to check it out yet.


----------



## Babaganoosh

I bought those mini gauges as well. Can't wait to use them


----------



## kds

Seeded on Sunday, germination on Friday!


----------



## kds

We received over 2" of rain over the past 48 hours and it was time to mow. A hot, humid, sweaty, sticky weeknight mow. Let's take a tour of the lawn.



















Things are looking better than when I last posted. There are some bare spots, which I'll get to soon, but it's filling in. I'm even seeing some seedlings sprouting really well under the existing canopy. There are some weeds that are even turning white from the mesotrione.

















The left picture is from last Friday (September 6) and the picture on the right is from today. I took the picture on the left because it was pretty obvious which area didn't get compost and a lot of water...










This is where the boulder was. Looks like the compost didn't want to stick around and it took its little seed friends with him. I will throw some more seed down in a last-ditch effort and topdress with peat moss.










This is the area between the maple tree out front and the front steps, and it's a perennial troublemaker. It was looking pretty good through this summer... but as I found out when I cut it short... a lot of what filled in was crabgrass



















There are still a lot of pockmarks in the turf that haven't really seen germination. A lot of these are in the south yard where the tree company did a lot of work last December. For some reason or another, it's been extremely difficult to get those spots filled in with good grass. I'll probably seed a lot of these areas and topdress as well in a last-ditch attempt. I may resort to hand-watering these areas in the spring if I can't get growth this year.

And then the back hill... I have been working on it but haven't been really talking about it here.










Eh, not looking too great. It grew pretty well in the spring, but it's like it hasn't been getting enough water, even though I'm pretty sure it's the same configuration as it was in the spring.

There are some parts that just don't have any germination at all, or like these areas aren't getting any water at all. May have to switch some hose around.










It might still be early in the process but I am going to put down some more seed and topdress with peat moss just in case. Looks like more overnight storms are in the forecast tonight with possible flash flooding so I'll work on that tomorrow or later in the week.


----------



## iowa jim

Over all your looking pretty good, got 2 1/4" here and that helped perk up the lawn.


----------



## kds

Things are looking pretty good. The areas where I re-seeded are well into germination now. I'm starting to back off the watering. Will probably start feeding it nitrogen soon, possibly this weekend if the weather cooperates.



















Here's the area where the boulder was:










The back hill even looks much better than it did in the last post:


----------



## kds

I should start looking for a reel mower for next year. I mowed where I probably shouldn't have on Sunday and laid the grass down so hard with the wheels in some spots, I don't think it's coming back up.

I'm planning on doing a nitrogen blitz this fall, so I put down 0.72lb/N in the front and back tonight.


----------



## kds

I'm way behind on updates and now that things have definitely stopped growing, I thought it would be a good time for a mega-update!

The overseed in the front went pretty well, except for those squirrels that kept digging anywhere the grass wasn't too thick, so it looked a little pockmarked (these pictures were from September 28):




























On October 3 we were facing our first hard freeze and it was time to bring all the sprinklers in, but the front yard was looking pretty good! I had been spoon-feeding some leftover fertilizers up to the freeze date and I think it made a difference.



























(I didn't have much time to edge and blow _and_ get a picture before the sun went down...)

The backyard hasn't been getting much attention in the lawn journal this year, and that's right, because it's been mostly neglected in real life this year. It's where the dogs play and that makes improvement a little difficult so I've tempered my expectations. There's also a lot of landscape issues to resolve and the back deck to replace, so there's a lot going on in the back yard that need to be addressed in a certain order.

But it wasn't totally neglected. I did re-seed the back hill that always seems to have some issues every year, and then I fenced the area off for the entire growing season to keep dogs out. Here's a chronology of how things went this year:









April 22









May 30









June 6









August 5 - I spilled some fert right on top of one of the usual trouble spots, which didn't help things. Oops.









September 5









September 18









October 20









The dogs love hanging out on the hill to keep a watch over the property, so I'm happy to oblige as much as I can.

The hill is still holding together pretty well, so I'm hopeful it's going to come out of winter a little thicker than it did this year. If it continues to be a problem, then I think the next logical solution would be to build a retaining wall around the hill and turn it into more landscaping place (the retaining wall behind the tree needs to be rebuilt anyway).

This is another year where I feel like I didn't do enough... or much at all... but things for the most part still look better than last year. Everything is still pretty green going into this week, though probably not as green as it was heading into winter last year.










Lessons learned this year:
- Do what you can, even if you don't think it's much.
- I need to do a better job of alternating mowing direction next year... some areas like the strip between the street and the sidewalk usually only get mowed one way, and ruts are definitely starting to show and it makes the grass look thinner. I also need to use the edger around the, uh, edges of the property since there are ruts on the property line and around landscaping, and then another rut exactly one mower deck-length over  
- Do better weed control. I had a crabgrass problem this year because I was planning to overseed in the spring and fall (which I did) and it always kept me from applying some preventatives.

I want to work on researching care plans this winter and come up with my own plan. I think now is the time for me to suck it up and get a decent backpack sprayer so that not only can I spray Tenacity in anticipation of overseeding, but I can apply more nutrients quicker (time was a major issue this year) and cheaper, and not have to worry about timing it with a good rainfall. I also resisted all year opening up my bags of XGRN so I can start a regiment in the spring and see what results I get throughout the year.

I also have a _ton_ of landscaping to do! I have the side front garden beds almost completely empty, I am going to be tearing out the front in the spring, and then redefining the front beds, re-mulching everywhere, and maybe even work on some of the landscaping in the back yard around the deck if I get it replaced in time.


----------



## kds

Lots of snow mold in the front. Guh!





































Raked it out a bit to get some air moving through it. I'm going to move the snow to the driveway today so it will melt and I can get a full raking in.


----------



## 2strokeracer

Just read your entire log, I'm about 3.5 hrs south. I'm trying to read on how others are Overseeding there yards as I want to do the same thing. I too am leaning more towards the TTTF. Just like you I have landscaping to do and I am going to be doing that first before I do the overseeding as I don't want to have to reseed as I clean up the tree limbs.


----------



## kds

I had to relocate some of the snow from the front lawn to the driveway to melt.



















Lots of pronounced snow mold hiding underneath!










I hope to get soil samples sent in this weekend, and get my sprayer ordered along with some prodiamine and Mark-It Blue. Need to come up with a game plan this year!


----------



## Thenenk

Excited for your turf to wake up! A lot of hard work last year, excited to see where you take it this season.


----------



## kds

@2strokeracer @Thenenk Thanks for following along!

I had the opportunity to get out and clean up the back yard a little bit. We are expecting rain tomorrow so I wanted to get out and rake up some areas of snow mold or otherwise matted down from the snow to fluff it up and promote air circulation. I ended up raking the whole yard. Here's how it stands now...




























There are lots of bare spots all around right now, but no overseeding is planned for this spring. This time of year is usually spent me being disgusted by the state of the yard and then it wakes up and looks much better, but this is the roughest it's looked after winter. I'm planning on powerwashing the brick patio and I'm still hoping to rebuild the deck this year. Not sure if I'll get to any landscaping in the back except for removing/replacing the dead trees on the terrace as I am going to have my hands full rebuilding the garden beds in the front and sides this year.

I also got out and took some soil samples for testing in the front and back yards plus the front flower beds. It has become pretty apparent to me that the soil in the flower beds is total garbage, so I'll be interested to see how that test comes back. It's loose and a bit dry on top where I tilled it last year, but very very dense down below. It was very difficult to get decent cores out of it.

And there's lots of clay in my back yard, it's very inconsistent. Check out this core I got from the back yard:










This year is all about getting the soil right. This is the first time I'm sending soil samples to be tested. Then in the fall there will likely be overseeding.


----------



## kds

I didn't have to send the soil samples off to the lab to find one problem:










Grubs!

I'm not sure whether this came from the back yard or the front yard, because I did a stupid thing where I took each container of soil and laid it out on a plastic bag but didn't label which was which, so I may have gotten the front yard samples mistaken for the back yard samples.

So with a lot of rain in the forecast, I went out with a flashlight at 9 tonight to re-take soil samples and this time I was sure to label them.










I'll pick through the cores tomorrow and get a sample sent off to Waypoint early this week.


----------



## kds

The results are in!

Front yard:

















Back yard:

















Flower beds (front and south):


----------



## kds

Things are greening up pretty nicely. I haven't been able to get out to rake yet. No edging and no mowing yet either.










Most of the areas of snow mold have recovered except for the smaller area near the street light where it was completely matted down and brown. I'm still raking dead grass out of the area but it is slowly improving. The picture looks worse than it actually is.










My sprayer is here and I was going to pick up some prodiamine from a fellow TLFer but then social distancing suddenly happened. I live with an immunosuppressed person so it's been hard to justify activities with other people for now.

But I'm making do for now. I found some granular prodiamine a neighbor gave to me after she hired a lawn service. With some rain expected this weekend, I put this down in the back yard (3k sq ft) at a rate of about 6 lbs/1k sq ft which the label said should provide 4-6 months of protection.

I also found a bucket of Scotts Turf Builder with Halts that I bought by accident. I put this down at bag rate which presumably provides 6 months of protection since it recommends reapplying in the fall. I don't know much about pendimethalin. I still have about half a bag of this left.

I'm not sure how effective this will be, but last year I didn't do any weed control at all, so this is better than nothing. Hey, I may even just nuke it all and start over this fall!


----------



## kds

I finally got out into the yard yesterday to get things cleaned up! No striping kit... that thing doesn't seem to fit my Honda very well and it's been feeling like more trouble than it's worth.

Mowed, trimmed, edged around the sidewalks, driveway, and along the curbs. Torched some crack weeds.














































I have some spots of clover in the front and back I need to treat, as well as some creeping charlie that is, well, _creeping_ into my lawn from the neighbor's lawn.

There is a bad infestation of poa in the back yard. It always comes back after glyphosate. When I step in it, it's so thick I have to look down because it always feels like I stepped in dog poop. I started to hand-pull the worst area and pull it up like carpet but abandoned that idea since it was making my yard waste can so heavy I'm not sure they would have accepted it.










This year's priorities are to continue weed control and fertilization. Other priorities are to reshape the front landscaping beds and clean up the borders and to plant the landscaping. If I'm lucky I'll be able to rebuild the back deck by fall. I just started a new job that's taking most of my time right now, and the current pandemic situation is creating some issues with getting supplies so that's crimping things a little bit.


----------



## Chris LI

You have a strong start to the season. Nice photos! :thumbsup:


----------



## ArtOfWar626

Lawn is looking great! Have you seen any rhizomes from the Super Turf Lateral Spread?


----------



## kds

ArtOfWar626 said:


> Lawn is looking great! Have you seen any rhizomes from the Super Turf Lateral Spread?


I haven't really looked yet... I have one area that is 100% Super Turf LS that I should probably check to see if there are any rhizomes.


----------



## ArtOfWar626

kds said:


> ArtOfWar626 said:
> 
> 
> 
> Lawn is looking great! Have you seen any rhizomes from the Super Turf Lateral Spread?
> 
> 
> 
> I haven't really looked yet... I have one area that is 100% Super Turf LS that I should probably check to see if there are any rhizomes.
Click to expand...

Can you please? And share images if you dont mind digging one up. :mrgreen:


----------



## kds

I just noticed Google StreetView finally came by and took our picture last fall, replacing the images they had from 2011. Looks like this was during my overseed last fall.










What's funny is if you go north one step, it goes back to the old images from 2011. Huge difference!


----------



## kds

April 29 - still working on pulling up the poa under the spruce tree where there used to be rock. I would have been done by now but I am afraid my yard waste bin will be so heavy public works won't pick it up. There's so much! But I want to be diligent to try to get it all and keep the poa at bay. I may be removing the spruce tree this year, and if so, grass will be going here when I re-shape the beds.



















May 3 - I bought a bunch of XGRN 8-1-8 late in the season last year so I waited until this year to put it down. With plenty of rain in the forecast it was a perfect time! I put about 60 lbs down over ~5,000 sq ft. I also put down 10 lbs of BioAdvanced 24-Hour Grub Killer Plus Granules after the discovery of grubs when I did my soil test.










Today, May 11 - Still need to get to the nursery to do the side garden beds, re-shape the beds, and power wash the concrete, but things are off to a pretty good start and I'm happy with the yards so far. I've opened the dog door in the house during the day and have been playing a lot of kickball with the dogs so the backyard has been getting a lot of traffic and the yard has been handling it really well.


----------



## kds

Starting off with a picture after my mow today. My favorite mow yet, maybe not, maybe it's in my top two.










Here's a picture from Monday... I was out walking one of the dogs and noticed my yard is darker than my neighbor's. The greenest/darkest lawn in the neighborhood is usually between me and her, it was tough going earlier this season, but looks like XGRN may have given me the edge over her professional lawn service.










I've been having issues with my Honda mower... one of the front wheels likes to fold over under itself, sometimes both of the front wheels will just straight up fall off, the treads are gone, and the Toro striping kit keeps coming detached. I actually lost the hook for it somewhere in the backyard when it last fell off. I hated that thing -- it always came off, it sucked navigating in tight spaces, going in reverse sucked, and the crossbar never really fit as well as it should so it was always going back and forth.

I almost considered buying a Time Master during Toro Days to replace my Honda, but I get compliments on my lawn from passersby so I didn't see a reason to buy a whole new expensive mower when the one I have could just be fixed. It was the difference between $1,200 to replace vs. $130 to repair/improve.

I bought all 4 replacement wheels from Repair Clinic (rear wheel here and front wheel here). The total shipped was just under $31 but I forgot to find a coupon code -- it's usually pretty easy to find a 10% off coupon code for Repair Clinic. Installation was stupid easy.

Old wheel vs. new wheel:










I also bought a CheckMate Striper from Big League Lawns to replace my Toro kit. I remember finding the CheckMate when I was first shopping for stripers years ago and scoffing at the price, but clearly it's worth it now compared to the Toro's poor fit. Installation was pretty easy, it would have been easier if I remembered I bought the fluted drill bit -- I ended up poorly hacking some holes and didn't see the drill bit until I was done. But man... this thing is worth every penny! I forgot I even had a striper attached... it never got in the way.

New wheels and new striper on the Honda after the mow:


----------



## bushwacked

Great looking yard! Glad you are putting it to the lady with a professional lawn service, gotta make you feel good! Although that looks like a tough race haha.

Glad I saw this ... looking into getting a striper for my lawn and was looking at the toro as well, however this looks like it may be a better one and I have the same mower too.

Curious though, does the striper work only on certain height grass? Mine is 1 3/4 so curious if it will stripe


----------



## kds

I have some catching up to do!

I lost track of things, in March 2020 I started a new job (the week everything shut down) and then in August 2020 we were hit by a really intense storm which messed things up big time both at home and at work (my job then was literally managing disasters, which included this one). I went back to school plus I started a new part-time position last year as a reserve police officer where I live, so I was pretty busy. As a result, my lawn was pretty much neglected, along with this lawn journal, for the rest of 2020 and 2021. I've been working to get back to a better spot in life and I now have a job that better supports my goals in life and I'm taking control back.

Here are some things I have photos of since I last checked in...

*July 14, 2020* - a storm came through and took down about 1/3 of the silver maple in the front yard. Luckily the roof is metal and didn't puncture the roof, just some dents.



















*August 10, 2020* - an even bigger storm came through and basically took the rest of the silver maple in the front yard. Limbs fell all over, but they weren't all mine. My neighborhood was without power for a week.




























Still wanted to clean things up as much as I could, though.



















World's ugliest tree. We had a lot of gawkers coming through the neighborhood after this storm and walkers always stopped to look at this atrocity.

*August 27, 2020* - Started collecting plants. Here's Amber with a blue muffin viburnum.










*September 4, 2020* - this is an area at the end of the parking pad near the back yard that was just weeds when I moved in. I had some extra dirt so I filled this area in with the extra dirt. I seeded it with Super Turf II LS.










*September 5, 2020* - prepped the north and south garden beds for planting.




























*September 26, 2020* - the area at the end of the parking pad that I seeded with Super Turf II LS is coming in pretty good now.










*October 10, 2020* - I love mowing over a leafy yard.










*October 11, 2020* - got some hostas transplanted to the north bed and a gold tide forsythia planted out front.



















*October 17, 2020* - planted a blue muffin viburnum and some purple Stella D'Oro day lilies in the south bed.



















*October 24, 2020* - Did I mention I really like mowing leafy yards?



















*November 6, 2020* - got a wild hair up my butt and replaced the mailbox post.










*June 16-July 19, 2021* - undertook a project to replace the bullet brick edging around the front and south garden beds and replace the plants. This is what those areas looked like originally.




























This was an impulse buy just because I've never seen them. Had no idea where to put them. Still not sure where they should go, they will probably get moved again somewhere eventually. I apparently never took a picture of the label to remember what it is, but I think it's Liatris spicata (dense blazing star).










From left: purple sensation lilac, gold tide forsythia, blue muffin viburnum, dense blazing star, purple stella d'oro day lillies.










White pugster butterfly bush on the left. It started attracting butterflies the same day... unbelievable.










Planted some may night salvia at the base of the flagpole. Also planted some pardon me yellow day lillies between the front stoop and the yew. Moved some hostas closer to the window and the brick facade (the large green hosta on the right did not make it this year for some reason).




























Limelight hydrangea is coming in pretty good after a couple of years.



















I found this ring when digging and tilling up the front garden bed.

*August 15, 2021*










*September 2-8, 2021* - finally had a couple of trees taken down that needed to come down. The spruce in the rear had been thinning out significantly and basically had no foliage left so it was time to come down since the damage was irreversable. It was also time for the silver maple out front to come down since it had been shedding really large branches over the past few years, but especially after the derecho. The labor shortage combined with the derecho caused the year-long delay to have these trees taken down. Still to this day there are neighbors that are just now getting their injured trees taken down.



















There really wasn't a lot to to take down from this silver maple at this point.










Wednesday in front of one of the pieces of the trunk from the silver maple.










Time to grind.










There was a lot. There are also roots everywhere that were pretty much impossible to eliminate.

September 22-27, 2021 - time to fill in and seed where the silver maple was. Supply chain issues meant my normal bulk topsoil supplier was out of stock and had to go somewhere else. Unfortunately this soil had a lot of clay in it, so not ideal. I again seeded with Super Turf II LS.










Nightmare scenario, dumped a bunch of seed and in the landscape bed.










Tried to shop-vac as much as I could.




























When irrigating for seeding/overseeding, I usually have 2-3 zones going across 2 spigots on either side of the house but only one timer. So I got a B-Hyve connected sprinkler timer and it is SO AWESOME. I love being able to set the schedule from my phone, monitor it, and be able to turn it on or off remotely based on the weather forecast. I had a few trips to Mississippi during this time so it was a HUGE benefit. Never had any issues.

*October 3, 2021*










*October 5, 2021*










*October 10, 2021*










I did not do a very good job of vacuuming up the spilled seed.

*October 16, 2021*




























Still really weird not having a giant tree in the front.


----------



## kds

*April 26, 2022* - first time with the Milwaukee edger attachment!










*May 7, 2022* - we planted some more things out front!



















Twist n shout hydrangea










Dwarf kelsey dogwood










Fruit punch dianthus. This was where the white pugster butterfly bush was planted last year, but it was DOA this spring so it got replaced.










Dark orange coneflower (might end up getting moved)










Becky shasta daisy (might end up getting moved)










Karl Forster feather reed grass bookending the front steps in front of the stoop. The ornamental fescue I had planted here wasn't doing so hot this spring so I replaced them and moved them to the back yard just in case I can maybe nurse them to come back a little bit.



















*May 10, 2022* - at this point the only thing I've done with the lawn so far is put down some Flagship, and the lawn has been growing like crazy and I'm mowing every 3 days.



















Definitely going to need to re-level the area around where the maple tree was, it's settled pretty unevenly and there's still a little bit of a lip around the area. And I have to say... I'm not entirely impressed with the Super Turf II LS seed. I've done two areas now of 100% Super Turf and it seems pretty slow to germinate (and doesn't germinate very well, imho), extremely slow to come up the following spring, and takes months for it to mature in the next spring after seeding. I can't really testify to its lateral spread claims because I haven't dug any of it up yet, but in the area at the end of the parking pad that I planted in 2020, I have not been very impressed. I will probably start seeding with Earl May's Marvel TTTF blend again once I run out of the Super Turf.










Also a new development in the past year is that I now have a 3rd dog living here. Despite the fact that I did not overseed the back yard last year, it still seems to be holding up pretty well all things considered.










Probably the next thing on the list for the back yard is to renovate the deck and the area under it. Now that the spruce tree is gone, I'll need to remove the pea gravel and river rock where it was and around the deck, re-shape the landscaping beds, replace the river rock under the deck, and plant around the deck. I would also love to build a shed back there as I'm running out of space for tools and other outdoor stock.

I've had a Sprayers Plus 105ex for a couple of years and I just now managed to get it out of the box. With how windy it's been this spring I haven't really had a chance to test it, but I finally did and the nozzles that come with it definitely apply the material way too slow so I'll need to replace the nozzle and re-calibrate it. I have a case of GCF products to spray so hopefully I can get this done soon.


----------

