# RavenAllen1971 Lawn Journal eastern Washington



## Ravenallen1971 (Jun 26, 2020)

Well I guess I have been lurking long enough to start a Journal. I'm located in the South Eastern corner of Washington state about .5 Miles from the Washington Idaho boarder. My USDA hardiness zone is 7b. When we bought our house it had a well maintained lawn cared for by a company. I thought water and mowing would be enough to keep it looking nice... that was 8 years ago. I didn't start caring about my lawn until 3 years ago. Thanks to Youtube; The Lawn Care Nut, Ryan Knorr, The Lawn Rebel, Grass Daddy, Etc. With all that knowledge I have been able to be bare foot in my yard without any problem. I then found this forum and wow. So much information and sharing of knowledge. Thank you. bla bla bla back to the point....

It started 7 years ago... when I tilled up the front yard to fix some grading around my house. The ground should never slope towards the house people. Not knowing better I jumped right in. No killing the lawn, just tilling it up. I started a small retaining wall to help have a flat'ish lawn rather than it be all slopy. Then work called and... I had to quickly flatten it out and throw down some seed as to not have a mud yard.









Sadly I don't have a lot of pictures of my front lawn.





But we do like our wildflowers.


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## Ravenallen1971 (Jun 26, 2020)

As for the backyard I have more pictures of that. We have 3 kids and an above ground pool so I felt it needs more attention because no one wants to step on weeds when going to and from the pool.

From 2018



From 2019





The fall of 2019 I tried to overseed the backyard with KBG. I now know that was a bad idea but hey we all have to learn right.
Here are some collages of my progress. Oldest pictures are on the bottom and roughly a week or two between pictures.


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## Ravenallen1971 (Jun 26, 2020)

Now I have been called a nerd and I don't take offence to it. Here are some soil test results from soil savvy for the past 3 years.

Soil Sample taken 23 May 18

Soil Sample taken 11 Apr 19

Soil Sample taken 8 May 20



I now know that soil savvy isn't the most ... liked soil tester. I do have plans of doing 1 last soil test with them in the spring of 21 along with waypoint so I can compare the results.


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## Ravenallen1971 (Jun 26, 2020)

Along with my nerdness I have an excel spreadsheet of the major things I've put on the yard since 18 may 2018.


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## Ravenallen1971 (Jun 26, 2020)

So to catch us up to this spring I had some free time and decided to finally finish my small retaining wall.













I have given myself 8 feet to the back and the right(wheel barrow side) as seen in the photos from our fence and property line, and 9 feet in front to our other wall. The 8 feet from the wall to the property line to the right will be our wild flower patch.


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## Ravenallen1971 (Jun 26, 2020)

After looking at the cool season reno guide I figured I would write my plan down.... and well I'm 1 week behind, but not really? I figured with all the work I've done to the front yard putting in the small retaining wall I might as well nuke the whole front yard and have it be uniform rather then a patchwork quilt of grass mix. .....And I would already be running these sprinkler zones anyway for what I needed to seed anyway. So this is what my yard looked like on 15Jul'20.... the day I nuked my lawn.













I roughly plan on seeding 11 Aug but may push that back as we might be getting a late summer here. That will give me time to flatten the ground, fallow the ground nuke again. I will be using SSS KBG sunny mix that I purchased last year for overseeding my back yard.


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## Ravenallen1971 (Jun 26, 2020)

Almost forgot to mention ended up making a lawn leveler. The downside is it is a bit too heavy to use in the lawn but works great for dirt work. Made it come apart so I can fit it in the trunk of my Toyota Corolla.


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## Ravenallen1971 (Jun 26, 2020)

Did my second round of glyphosate today. I either had some hardy mutt grass or my sprayer skills need to be worked on. I will have to get a few practice sessions in before I put down Tenacity after seeding.

Yesterday I busted out the sun joe with the dethacher and used it to free up as much dead grass from the front yard so I can easily remove it.

I applied some Ironite to my back yard as the soil is low on iron, then gave it some GCF Microgreene for the grass to take up. During the application I notic3d some heat stress showing up. Time to tweek the watering for the 100° week that we are forecast to get.










It got too dark after watering plants to snap pictures of the back yard.


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## Ravenallen1971 (Jun 26, 2020)

Well I went over my now dead turf several times with my sun joe with scarifier attachment to help break up and dig out what I could. Who knew how many rocks hide in the dirt. I still have a long way to go before seed down. It didn't help having a week of 100+ 2 of them hit 106. I may have to push my seed down day back 2 weeks depending on the temp.

I have also been trying to kill of a tree of heaven that was in the neighbors back yard untill they cut it down 4 years ago. That thing is a pain. It looks like I need to hit it with glyphosate regularly from here on out till winter.


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## Justmatson (Apr 4, 2020)

Looking good!

Thats a lot of work especially in that heat.

Are you going to keep watering the front, any more gly apps you doing?

I might have missed it.... but what kind of seed are you putting down?


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## Zip-a-Dee-Zee (Apr 9, 2020)

Good luck! Hope the Sunny Mix from SSS works out for you. BTW I love seeing a white Sienna in the background of your posts!


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## Ravenallen1971 (Jun 26, 2020)

Justmatson said:


> Looking good!
> 
> Thats a lot of work especially in that heat.
> 
> ...


I have stopped watering the front for now so I can do dirt work and not mud work. I will resume watering once I get the dirt set and do a abridged version of fallowing prior to seeding. I plan on 1 more app of gly 1-3 days prior to seed down.

The seed I am using is from Seed Super Store SS1100. It is 
35.60% Blue note
32.89% Midnight
30.23% Bewitched
00.01% weed
01.27% inert


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## Ravenallen1971 (Jun 26, 2020)

Wow has time slipped away. Between work and our heat wave here it is almost mid August. Front yard isn't ready for seed yet. So many roots within the first 1"-2". Must have had some bad watering practices years ago. Figured I would rather have some low spots with the ability to add soil to level out over time vs having to dig.... again.

Backyard is looking good. Lowered my HOC to 1.75" so the kids can play croquet easier.

I believe I have found " The Bermuda" grass in my back yard.... grrrr. Good thing I have plans on doing a reno on that (depending on the results/outcome of my front yard).

Here is a picture of my oldest 11 mowing his first lawn.


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## Ravenallen1971 (Jun 26, 2020)

Did more dirt work this week. Realized that August is almost over and have to get this done. I have learned that next time I have to lower the soil height I'm going to rent a sod cutter. Getting through the turf is a pain. Second thing if I am reusing soil from a lawn rent a trommel. Sifting soil is very time consuming by human power.

Update photos







Removed my stepping stones and filled them in. Just too much of a pain to dethach around them, and more grass now. Win win.



Added a slope down here to the hose bib area. We will see if I can get some grass to grow on it.


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## Ravenallen1971 (Jun 26, 2020)

Okay time for an update.

I finished my dirt work on Monday Aug 24th. Here are some picture of that. I couldn't get it as smoothed out as I would have liked. I had run out dirt. I tried to get all the key hard parts as best as I could and hope I can slowly fill in my low spots over time. I used a roller to check for high and soft spots, then went back over it with my homemade level rake. What I did was fill it in with dirt and slowly drag it across the ground. Where it was low it would deposit the dirt. I then rolled it again. rinse and repeat till I was out of dirt.







I didn't take any pictures of what I looked like at seeding. I did that on Tuesday Aug 25th, I took my thaching rake and scored the ground North and South, then East and West. Then broadcast my seed down. Rolled over it North and South, then East and West. I then turned on the sprinklers for a few minutes to dampen the soil and rolled over it one last time. Sprayed some Tenacity at the 4 oz rate, and Glyphosate and set my sprinklers to go off at 6am, 9am, noon, 3pm, 6pm. I have some old toro 300 rotors if I remember correctly and 2 hunter pgp rotors and have them set to run for 6-8 min depending on weather.

Then the kiddos started school on Wednesday and life got busy again. Then today Tuesday 1 Sept went going to pick up the kids it looked like I had some green fuzz that didn't look like weeds. When we got home from school I took these.





This is in a section that gets full sun all day. As expected the partly shaded areas are lagging behind but I will gladly accept 7 days for germination.

As for the back yard I am on week 3 of Fall Nitrogen blitz. I have been doing .25#'s N Week. I made a Lawn striper and have been tweeking with it.





The top picture is from Oct '19 and the bottom picture is from today Sep '20. It is looking much better this year.

I wan't to thank everyone who has spent time helping, coaching, and sharing their experience's and trials on this forum. It has been very much appreciated.


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## Chris LI (Oct 26, 2018)

:thumbsup: Looking really good!


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## shiltz (Aug 14, 2020)

Can't wait to see how the renovation goes! I'm also in Eastern Washington. Planning a renovation for next year. Good job so far!


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## Ravenallen1971 (Jun 26, 2020)

Here are some more grass baby pictures.


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## Ravenallen1971 (Jun 26, 2020)

Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend.

Here are some update photos on the grass babies. These are taken Tue Sep 8th, 14 DAS / 7 DAG















I germination is good. I have a few spots that I am questioning. We had some good winds over the weekend while we were away and I noticed a very dry spot, so I adjusted the sprinklers to water the sidewalk a bit to cover it. I also swapped nozzle sizes on one of the sprinklers as it was almost puddling, and that is my weakest germination area so I hope that helps. There are more weeds than I anticipated but far far less then the last time I tried to do this 7 years ago. The fallowing of the soil is a HUGE help in this aspect. I have a small spotted strip of old grass that is holding on. 3 rounds of Glyphosate and still holding on... maybe I should have kept that grass type.


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## Ravenallen1971 (Jun 26, 2020)

Well I stepped out on to the new grass yesterday (25 DAG). Took my manual reel mower and gave it a bit of a trim. I have one section that is coming in gang busters, while another section is lagging behind. I know it has slowed down with all the smoke from the fires letting less sun shine. I hand sprinkled some more seed in the spots that needed it. Threw down some greene county fert Air-8, and RGS that I had on hand and .25#'s N via Urea to feed it. I think it is okay and will be great come next year. It isn't going to be a full as I would have hoped this year, but ehh it will grow.

The backyard is looking amazing during the fall nitrogen blitz. I'm mowing every other day. I bagged it last night just to see how much I'm taking off (and to see how nice it looks). I removed just a smidge over one bag. I'm not seeing my small bare spots fill in so I'm guessing I mostly have TTTF or Rye in my back yard. I'll have to decide at some point if I want to reno my backyard to bluegrass or keep what is there and overseed. I'm currently leaning toward a reno and plant perennial rye. It would be the best balance of fixing the yard and having a lawn come back quick.

No pictures as the weather is smoky cloudy and gross. I have been outside long enough to do what needs to be done then hide back indoors.


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## Ravenallen1971 (Jun 26, 2020)

Wow it has been a while. Here are some updated pictures. These are from December.


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## Ravenallen1971 (Jun 26, 2020)

Here is an Apr 22 update. My poka dot front lawn is from gly some triv. I didn't get it all but plan on doing a 2nd round soon. I need to work on being more precise.

The yard is still waking up, it has been vacuumed and bagged twice but on this day it was long enough to be cut. Our spring seems 2-3 weeks behind previous years. Parts of the front yard are filling in nicely, other parts are still not getting enough sun yet to get going.

I over seeded the back yard with some PRG 2 weeks ago. The back yard was neglected due to the reno and small wall build in the front. Trying to get it up and healthy before the kids are out of school.

Only .25N applied 3 weeks back as a spring snack. I'll apply another .25N today.


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