# Waterjockey lawn journal



## waterjockey (Aug 2, 2020)

After lurking/reading this forum for close to a year now, and starting to up my game, figured it was time to start my lawn journal. I live in the Niagara region in Ontario Canada.
I neglected the lawn at this house for about 10 years. Mowing short/scalping when it got long, No watering, no weed control since they banned my favorite (at the time) weed n feed. Wife would dig weeds out with a shovel once in a while. We had a lawn surface that was full of craters. My neighbour *had* the best lawn on the street, which always made ours really stand out (not in a good way lol)
After a summer reading this forum, I decided I could take our bumpy weed patch, and turn it into a good tier one lawn. I got 3 yards of fine sand, another 2 yards of loam, and a couple of big bags of peat moss, and went to work on the front and sides end of Aug 2020. At this point I bought a bunch of big box store mixed bag of seed, figuring if I actually got any good at this, and wanted to take it to the next level, I could always nuke it and start over. So I scalped the lawn, spread my sand, then loam, then seed, then peat moss on top, and sprayed with Tenacity.
Looking at these pics, I can't believe what a dead dirt patch it used to be. This year I started mowing the front with a manual reel mower, and put my first application of PGR down today! The front is so small, I really didn't mind mowing every 2 to 3 days, I'm hoping with a good watering plan, and the PGR, I'll promote good root growth and tillering. I'm pretty sure I achieved my goal of a tier one lawn, and hoping by end of growing season Oct/Nov this year, to be in a solid tier 2 category, with a second round of levelling on the front lawns, and a first leveling on the deeply fitted and weed field back, that I wouldn't call a "lawn", but a dirt field with patches of green. 
The Lawn Forum, and the cool season lawn guide enabled and inspired me to put a hell of a lot more work into my lawns. While I haven't contributed much yet, many thanks to all the regular posters, from whom I have learned so much. Maybe over the next 3 years, a tier 3 lawn is not out of my reach 

Day I started levelling

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Levelling and amending









Last fall, near end of growing season







Current status


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## waterjockey (Aug 2, 2020)

This spring, 2nd cut I took my manual reel mower to the lowest setting and cut (about 1.25 inches). Since then I've kept it at about 1.5 inches, until about 2 weeks ago, when I started raising it to about 2.25 inches to help it survive the coming heat.
Today I mowed, put a 2nd application of Prodamine at .4 oz/1000, first ever application of Anuew at .2 oz/1000, and .25 lb N/1000 greenmax (5% iron I think), and 2nd application of grub b gone....I think I have some issues at the property line....or It's the neighbour who won't stop messing 5-8 feet into my lawn past the property line. Not sure what I am going to do with that guy


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## waterjockey (Aug 2, 2020)

So far this year, I had been mowing the lawn every other day, and still getting lots of clippings. Since putting the pgr down on Sun, I mowed once on Wed...and it was a charity mow.. barely any clippings....I'm blown away by how little top growth there is. No discernable difference in colour, but I've got a pretty good green going...unfortunately my cell phone blows out the colour, It's much darker than in my pics. I'm tracking gdd as close as I can get geographically with greencast, guessing about 300gdd for next app? Think I will put a little lighter application down next time...it may take a while for me to get used to so little top growth, and It's starting to get pretty warm and dry...I don't want to smoke all the work I've put into this lawn since the fall .


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## waterjockey (Aug 2, 2020)

Another charity mow. The young grass was tall, but the established stuff has grown very little. I picked a zip code as close to where I live as I could, showing 238 growing degree days as of today...but I suspect It's higher, as we had a few very hot days, much higher than the ggd site I am using shows, but still so little growth. I think I'll back off on the pgr a little, next application....curious to see what ggd I get to before it starts to grow again. Really loving the dark green (pics don't do it justice), getting almost blue.


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## waterjockey (Aug 2, 2020)

Looking closely at the lawn, noticed a bunch of new growth over about 40% of the lawn...as if I had recently seeded....those very fine, lime green shoots. I'm guessing this is new growth due to applying pgr? If so, I continue to be amazed at how well this stuff works. Set the manual reel mower to the highest setting, and gave the lawn a charity mow (knocked the tops off the new growth), as it hadn't grown enough for the most part to the higher mower setting. Some is probably due to the pgr, some of it because of the multiple high 30's/40 deg day (104 degF) heat wave we are having. It's supposed to rain for the next 3 days, starting tonight, so gave another application of PGR (at about 325 ggd). Rate was 0.2 oz/is a. Also took some plugs from the backyard, and put them on the boulevard where the neighbour smoked my baby grass with a heavy dose of fertilizer a couple of days after germination. , I'm very happy with how dark the lawn has become. Going to order and start spraying Fas, sea kelp, and humic acid. I'm hoping the pgr and the kelp/humic acid applications, with good water management, will promote root growth. I still seem to have a fairly shallow root system, and I think it should be much better by now. I'm also thinking of the tournament ready pucks and applicator. I could probably benefit from some water holding/absorption surfactant.


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## waterjockey (Aug 2, 2020)

When I sprayed my pgr last week, I did it at a time of day where it was hard to see in the one direction with the sun in my eyes. It was clearly evident where I missed....I now have a few lighter green strips that are growing significantly faster than the rest of the lawn. One of those failure to pay sufficient attention to the task at hand. We'll certainly be more careful next time. I also stopped part way through because the neighbours had all their grandkids over in the pool, so figured I would wait till everyone went home and finish spraying later in the evening between the houses. I must have overlapped quite a bit on the front in spots...because I was way short of mix....not enough to do the lawn completely between the houses, and the section of backyard on that side. About 600 sq total....short. It's been raining almost every day for about 2 weeks...mushrooms popping up everywhere, but the lawn appears thin to me...maybe the 10 or so days of 100+ deg have taken their toll, combined with a heavier than intended apps of pgr? Gave a light (0.2#/k) dose of green max. Wasn't happy with how the lawn was looking with the reel at the highest setting...looked...."unkempt"...so knocked it down a notch and did it again....much better! I think this will be my forever highest setting for summer heat. Oh...I grabbed the wrong bottle, and spot sprayed round up 4 or 5 places I meant to spot spray weeds. Those spots are as dead as it gets and ugly as hell. ..even my wife asked what happened there. 
Going to rake, seed, and cover with compost and hope the seedling survive the rest of July and Aug. My FAS and citric acid shipment was delayed....not sure it will arrive before I'm due for another pgr application. Not too worried, grass is very dark green with the greenmax and pgr apps...just wanted to see how dark I could push it.
In spite of spring and June apps of pre-em, there seems to be more crab grass and poa a than I was expecting...I'll hand pull a bunch and spot spray some of the unidentified stuff. When I sand level again late Aug, I spray with Tenacity again, and hand glyph what I suspect is poa a...I believe the tenacity should light that up for me


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## waterjockey (Aug 2, 2020)

Lawn started growing fast...assuming at 340+ ddg it's safe to say it was out of regulation. Mowed and mixed Anuew at 0.2oz/1k. in 4 gal carrier (my normal volume for 2k/sqft). With about a gallon mix left and about to do the remaining section of backyard, my sprayer quit. Made all kinds of pumping noise, but no spray. After 30 minutes if trying to clear what I assume is a blockage, I gave up for the evening. I'm thinking I am going to need a new handle/pump assembly. 
The areas I seeded (the accidental spot spray of roundup), are starting to sprout. Also seeded the backyard where I lifted the flagstone walkway. Don't expect that to survive the summer (going away for 2 weeks in Aug and will have zero care), but it will provide some temporary ground cover to keep the mud down some.


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