# DWengert’s Lawn



## DWengert (5 mo ago)

Hello! We bought a house about 3 years ago. I have done a little work on the lawn on my own, but figured I could always listen to those who know more than me, so here I am.

Here’s my property with the lawn diagrammed out in three different contiguous areas, some subdivided further.










Area 1: North side of the house. About 2000 sq ft total. Winding lawn around driveways, flower beds, front patio, and a larger area on the side.

Area 2: Along the southwest side of the house. Also about 2000 sq ft. Only area that runs along a property line, but runs the length of it. Has a small area that runs behind the back patio fence and a small area inside the fence and gate before the patio.

Area 3: Small lawn about 250-300 sq ft on the east side of the house. Split into two parts by the back patio fence and a second gate on that side.

More details in further posts.


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## DWengert (5 mo ago)

Area 1.



















Area 1A: This area borders the neighbor’s driveway on the north, our driveway to the west, and the front large flower bed to the south and east. Challenges include grass damaged by a temporary berm put in during some gas line work in late summer and working around the gigantic flower bed.





























Area 1B: This runs along the north side of the house between the patio and flowerbeds of the house to the south and the large front flowerbeds to the north. Challenges include a fairly steep incline down into the large flowerbed north of the house.




















Area 1C: A more sizable area to the northeast of the house. This area was mostly moss when we got the house - not an intentional moss lawn, just neglected. We cleaned it up and reseeded with seed from a big box store. Challenges: finishing off making it nicer, tougher around the edges, and poor drainage that makes the area retain a lot of water when it rains very hard.

Bonus photos:




















Some garden areas that I want to focus on. The first is a hedge I want to grow out that was probably heavily damaged by neglect. Trying to get it to grow out again. The second is an area of two stepped retaining walls that I’d like to grow a large hedge for privacy for our back patio area.


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## DWengert (5 mo ago)

Area 2.





























Area 2A: Largest area of lawn. House to the northeast, neighbor’s property to the southwest. Challenges: The lawn here is pretty bad. Large bald spots, extremely uneven to the point where you could turn an ankle walking around, a large black walnut tree on our neighbor’s yard dropping walnuts in the fall, the neighbor’s lawn running into ours. Going to likely take a lot of effort to correct.











Area 2B: A bit of lawn southwest of the back patio. Don’t care much about this area for now - it pretty much just leads back to a shed where we store some yard and pool tools.











Area 2C: small area inside back patio fence and it’s first gate. Challenges: I think there’s some sort of not-so-good grass growing here, and it’s a smallish area we have to work running up against the back patio.


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## DWengert (5 mo ago)

Area 3:




















Area 3A: Small area around the back patio fence and gate on the northeast side of the patio. This area was almost pure mud and we reseeded this too. Only challenge here is the dip in the lawn toward the fence and retaining wall that makes it hard to mow. 











Area 3B: tiny area past the fence. Some stone steps lead down to area 1C. This was also mud and we’ve done ok with box store seed and growing this up. Only challenge is the small area.


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## DWengert (5 mo ago)

Next step is to get soil samples to a lab. There’s a city lab for testing soil here in Milwaukee that I’ll have at least areas 1 and 2 soil tested from, along with the shrubs I’m trying to grow out.


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## macattack (Nov 2, 2020)

Awesome looking property. Looks pretty secluded. Hope you have a good trimmer and leaf blower. What grass is that fescue or KBG? Have you been fertilizing and what is your goal?


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## DWengert (5 mo ago)

macattack said:


> Awesome looking property. Looks pretty secluded. Hope you have a good trimmer and leaf blower. What grass is that fescue or KBG? Have you been fertilizing and what is your goal?


Thanks - it’s actually on the urban side of suburban but tucked into a cul-de-sac. I hate to say but I have no idea what the grass is. How do I identify it?

We’ve been focusing on hard scape and the flowerbeds since moving in. I may have thrown some standard big box store fertilizer on it last year but nothing so far this year. I guess I thought soil test first and then put something down so it’s ready to really be tackled in the fall.


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## jskierko (Sep 5, 2020)

Awesome looking house/property! Definitely interesting in hearing more about what you are looking for in terms of the lawn you seek. In scrolling through the pictures I see several challenges presented: 1) you will have to be very selective in the type of grass you select. It looks like you have some very mature trees, which will really limit your options in terms of the type of grass you want to go after. Doing some trimming or thinning out of the canopy may allow some more light and may make some of the things I see like moss and creeping charlie less dominant. If you do something like this though, I'd give it time so you know how much sunlight you are actually going to get at various times of the year. 2) It's definitely manageable in terms of square footage of grass, but it looks like you have your work cut out for you in terms of edging and trimming in different areas. If it were me I'd possibly lose a few of the sections (2.3, 2.4, 3.2) and turn them into a hardscape of sorts. A soil test is always a good place to start though to see if there is anything glaring that is easy to correct.


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## DWengert (5 mo ago)

I definitely like the shade, so a shade-tolerant lawn is a pretty high item on the priority list.

My main goal would be to have a nice-looking lawn that is thick enough to naturally shade out the weeds from taking hold, allow for rain to absorb into the ground best, and to have the lawn even. I’ve never had to deal with a lawn this bumpy before (granted, our last home was the only other lawn I dealt with) and feeling like I have to walk gingerly to avoid turning an ankle is no fun.

Area 2.3 is more of a future project and I can just mow weeds there if necessary. It’s just a path to a back shed and not anything I’m too worried about. Area 2.4, I’d be worried about runoff down to the patio and the pool if we hardscaped that. I’d much prefer to keep that grass so water has some chance to absorb instead of funneling down onto the patio around the pool. Area 3.2 is actually pretty healthy. I wouldn’t mind a hard scape there but we are pretty nice in that area for lawn, finally - I wasn’t even planning on testing that area now because of how we worked it to look with the big box seed.

We’ve been putting in curb-style edgers around most of the flowerbeds where they meet lawn as an ongoing process - very easy to mow around, so less trimming to worry about. You can see it in 2.1 and 2.4, and not yet dig into the ground (just set in place) in 3.1. We plan to put that along the fence in 3.1 as well to stop the grass from getting into the bed behind the fence, and to make it easier to keep mowed/trimmed. Also plan to put it around the north bed in photo 1.1 when we can.


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## DWengert (5 mo ago)

Pulled soil samples today. Area 1C appears to be about 1-3” of soil with hard clay below it. May explain some of the drainage issues there and I don’t know if there’s anything to do about it.


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## DWengert (5 mo ago)

Ok, got my sample results (two lawn areas for area 1 “northeast” and area 2 “southwest”, plus a bonus area for my gooseberry hedge I’m trying to grow):

























(Don’t know why the pH has ppm, but anyway.)

So it seems like I need to add phosphorous to the lawn, but don’t need to amend the gooseberry hedge area for nutrients. Dunno if the high pH is an issue.


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## DWengert (5 mo ago)

Reading more, the high pH seems to be an issue. Sounds like the best move is to fertilize with MAP now and plan to add elemental sulfur in the late spring next year.


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## DWengert (5 mo ago)

Got the MAP in, plan to put it down this morning. Need to figure out an application rate. Going to research online but if anyone has any sources, please let me know.


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## DWengert (5 mo ago)

Ok, looks like 1lb per 1000 sq ft, so I put 2lbs on each section aside from the small one where I put 1/4 lb. Doesn’t seem like a lot of granules but better too little than too much.


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