# wingless' Southern Florida Argentine Bahiagrass Front Yard Overhaul



## wingless (Jan 28, 2019)

The front yard in my 1963 southern Florida home was horrible. It was a cacophony of weeds, roots, grasses, rocks and other debris. The small yard had hills and depressions. It was ugly.

When the houses on my street were built, all had wells and septic systems, that were all eventually retired when the City installed water and sewer. The nearby homes all retired / removed their well pumps, but for some reason mine remained, connected to fractured PVC plumbing. My tests showed the well and pump provided a massive amount of water. My decision was to rework / upgrade this setup, just for usage on the yard. This topic shows my irrigation well pump system.

Prior to my starting the effort I knew there were two versions of in ground irrigation systems, the older having 1" flexible black tubing, the newer having 1¼" thin wall PVC piping. All those old pipes and heads were ripped out and discarded. My speculation was the black stuff was from around when the house was built, using the well water, not only for internal plumbing usage, but also for the yard. The thin wall PVC appears to have been installed when the house got City water and the well was converted just for yard usage, through a hydraulically indexing zone valve.

When I started, I knew the yard had a massive tree, the fell during a storm, plus a smaller palm tree that I had removed and that stump ground during my driveway expansion.

My plan was to use my custom homemade dirt sifting screen to remove weeds, roots, rocks and other debris from the soil. That tool fit nicely into my wheelbarrow, making it "easy" to get rid of all that undesirable stuff. I excavated about a foot down and filled many City yard waste barrels w/ vegetation to discard.

Throughout the process, almost until the end, it looked like I was going to have excess soil that would need to be relocated elsewhere. That would have been the result, except that I unexpectedly ended up discarding LOTS of gravel at the property line. My new driveway required a property survey, w/ a map and corner stakes. I assumed the fence was the property line (so did my neighbor). In fact, the line was over a foot further onto my "neighbor's property". My plan was to replace their crushed gravel driveway up to the property line w/ grass, just like the rest of my front yard. That was the hardest work of the whole project. I needed to use my demolition hammer to break apart the decades-old compacted rock in this area. (It just laughed at my shovel). I ended up discarding LOTS of rock in this small area, using the excess soil from the other area to attain the overall flat lawn.

The plan was digging / sifting / excavating, starting up near the house and progressing down towards the street. This would include placing / burying new systems as I progressed. My new systems included irrigation plumbing, hose bib plumbing, low voltage landscape lighting and line voltage post lamp w/ convenience receptacle. The adjacent fenced driveway also got convenience receptacles and overhead switched landscape lighting as part of that effort.

My plan was to place a Sylvester Palm in the approximate yard center. I REALLY liked this palm tree. It doesn't make messy coconuts or seed pods that constantly require attention. I have seen this from small to huge and REALLY liked what I saw. The only "detriment" is that this tree grows slowly.

What I discovered during the excavation was that the ¾ soft copper fresh water pipe feeding my house from the City water authority was buried diagonally across the front yard, about 9" down, directly under where I planned to place this palm tree. I didn't want a problem from the new baby tree placed over this shallow water pipe. That soft copper fresh water pipe was removed and replaced w/ ¾" Type L rigid copper tubing, now hugging the new driveway and the new patio, totally out of the way of this palm and everything else. I ensured all this new tubing sloped downhill to the water meter, in case future service is ever required.

The "weird" front lawn shape led me to design the in-ground irrigation system to have a modified multiple H shape, having tees off as required. The plumbing is all 1¼" Schedule 40 PVC, with one smaller area decreased to 1" pipe. All my heads a 4" fixed-angle fixed-range pop up heads.

What I discovered during initial commissioning was that the conical screens on each head quickly filled w/ contamination. I cleaned all the screens twice after initial usage, plus did a messy open pipe burp. Now when I examine the screens there is almost no crud. My speculation is that long period of non-usage contributed to the crud.

There is NO shortage of water on this system. It has ZERO difficulty maintaining the selected 38 psi when discharging into 16 heads, half at 1.5 gpm, half at 0.75 gpm, currently putting out about 18 gpm total at 38 psi.

The nozzles have been swapped and adjusted to attain proper coverage w/ little ending up not where desired.

The yard was changed back from the small mountains from my excavation / sifting to "flat" using a shovel, wheelbarrow, hard rake and hoe. I did LOTS of eyeballing to ensure I attained the desired terrain contours, overall flat, except where required. I used my homemade lute to increase the flatness beyond what was possible using just the rake.

The soil is VERY sandy. I applied MANY large (3.8 cu ft or 3 cu ft) bags of peat moss using my Landzie peat roller. The initial bags were tilled into the top. Later bags were raked into the top.

The yard was finish leveled, again using the rake and the lute. I then used my full of water Arnot 16 gallon / 20" wide / 16" diameter / 155 lbs compression roller. The grass seed was applied, followed by a top peat moss layer always applied using my peat roller, then compression roller again.

My grass was selected to be the Scotts Argentine Bahiagrass grown from seed. This Bahia looked to have the characteristics I wanted, such as: heat / drought resistance; deep roots; darker green than Pensacola Bahiagrass; grown from seed and individual plants, not plants creeping sideways.

My front yard was a long duration as just dirt, so I was VERY familiar w/ the remaining native weeds. One was a tall skinny grass, w/ very deep / strong root. The other was a small low clover. Both were hand extracted throughout the process, the tall one aided by a small hand shovel.

The native weeds were mentioned because the Scotts included several very hearty weeds in the seed mix, not previously seen in the yard. The most virulent was crabgrass. The most-scary was a wispy low grass that had tiny seeds attached along the blades. (Fortunately, none of those seeds detached during hand extraction). There were other weeds. All were / are hand extracted and remain to not be an issue.

When I planted I had one small "ancient" bag that was used on part of the yard and had almost zero germination. My fresh bag worked great. I did other yard projects, then reseeded that initial area.

What I observed is that germination started in 3-4 days and fully germinated in a week.

My irrigation was set to water for 5 minutes, every hour, every day, from 8AM to 7PM. This maintained the soil / peat moss as damp, permitting great germination.

Currently, the area w/ the initially placed fresh seed is dense and about 3" tall. The reseeded area is not yet dense.

Initial Yard w/ Huge Tree and Adjacent Palm Tree









Yard Starting Point









Dirt / Weed Screened


















Front Yard Raked









Front Yard Lute Smoothed









Front Yard Compression Rolled









Front Yard Roughed for Seed









Seeded then Peat Moss then Compression Rolled









Front Yard Sprinkers Running









Front Yard Grass Started Growing









Front Yard Landscape Lighting


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## Twodollarblue (May 26, 2020)

Very methodical. Nice job.


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## beachlife399 (5 mo ago)

Great work! Looking forward to future updates!


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