# Haywood74's Journal



## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

Pretty new to doing anything lawn related.....This project started when my wife wanted new steps in the front of the house and I started digging in to replace the grass with something nicer that the "run-of-the-mill" weed patch lawn that a lot of people around here have.....Our old steps were taken out back in April, and the plan was to return the week after and grade-off the slope and re-seed.....Long story short, monsoon rains this spring pushed it all back....These pics are a couple of days post nuking with glyphosate...

Starting point....Absolutely no grass was growing here, just crabgrass, nut sedge, and clover......With 6" deep washed out ruts...


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

July 12....Crew came in and graded off the slope, threw down a bunch of new top soil, and helped me sow the upper part of the yard....They ran out of time to finish the part by the street, so we pushed that back a few days....I know July is absolutely not a good time to try to grow grass, but the idea here was to get something down immediately and then potentially come back and hit it in the fall with a re-seed....Learning as I go...Went with Black Beauty Ultra after seeing a few pics online....Crew also used some straw matting to hold everything in place on the slope.....Threw down Scotts with Tenacity as well hoping to keep the weeds at a minimum.....


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

11 days post-"seed down"....No irrigation system, so I was watering this mostly by hand with a hose and a wand shower-type sprayer....Neighbor to the left is full 100% zoysia and neighbor to the right is weed/grass mix like I started with...


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

July 23, lower portion sown....Pics from 7 days after....Left neighbor had a guy pressure wash her sidewalk.....I was REALLY hoping he didn't use any kind of chemicals as it washed out a lot of what was done....I tossed down more seed and EZ straw and watered it in pretty good, hoping for the best...


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

July 29.....West half of the top section came in pretty decently....East half, not so much...Pretty patchy...I think the crew threw down a little too much fertilizer on the east part as I saw a lot of germination, but it was all white....Still watering by hand mostly and learning as I go....LOT of nut sedge and other assorted weeds started booming in the upper corner of the west side....Spot sprayed with a 3-way....Weed seed must have came in with the new topsoil....


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

Got tired of watering by hand....Ordered up the parts listed from a youtube video for a rag-tag irrigation system....MUCH better that spending 45 minutes a crack hand-watering with the wand.....


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

Aug 6th....4lbs per 1k humic acid granules and SLS ultimate 3-18-18.....Forecast of light showers.....3 hours later, .75 inches in about 30 minutes....May have to reapply.....


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

August 10.....1st cut at 4" just to even it all out and start a mowing regiment....Some sideways striping from the straw mats, but filling in nicely I think....West side looks pretty good for the most part....Still a few open spots toward the top and close to the sidewalk....29 days of keeping it wet so the KBG can germinate, but it looks like it finally took off.....Just started easing off the daily 4x watering....Having to work around a water meter here, too,so not the easiest of tasks to accomplish.....Street part has seen a LOT of weed growth....That topsoil they brought in must have been loaded as I used Scotts with weed preventer there as well and you can barely tell.....


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## g-man (Jun 15, 2017)

Don't give up on watering. Start to transition to a little bit longer duration but less frequent. Cooler weather is approaching. You had good germination for a July seeding.

It is recommended to mow lower at around 2in on a reno to encourage spreading. Soon you will also need to give it some nitrogen too.


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

First crack at anything on this scale, but it seems like I had an awful lot of weeds pop up for using a starter with Tenacity....dropped it at bag rate on the lower part and it is absolutely covered in weed growth....


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

Hit the main part of the backyard with glypho today.....Neighbor said I could take it onto his side of the line and do whatever I wanted...Other part shown was nuked and scalped back in early July...


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

Front yard is still filling in....Still some open spots, but will throw down some more seed in a few more weeks and hopefully thicken those areas up....2 days of rain in the forecast, so that should help too....3-way-spot-sprayed some of the remaining sedge and a few of the remaining weeds...Hoping that takes care of the major weed issues up top....


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

Lower yard....weed issues that I am working with....Pretty sure these are not your run-of-the-mill lawn weeds....Looks more like those ones you find out in the fields around here, so my guess is they rode in one the new topsoil that was put down....Also some clover-looking woody weeds that are low and are shooting out 5-6 runners....This stuff seems to be spreading rather quickly....These photos are after pulling weeds for an hour today....You can barely tell I was in there....


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

Hour and a half later, my wife and I cleared most of the weeds....She did a lot more work than I did, so she gets most of the credit here....


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

30 days from sowing the bottom section.....39 days for the top section....The parts that are lighter green in color appear to be thinner areas of growth....I think I over-watered and am developing a fungus issue....

Weeds have come back again for round 2, so I will be having to address them soon, as well.....


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

Busy day today.....cut to 2.5".....dethatched the front strip by hand...filled in some holes in the front....scalped the side area and re-raked with the thatch rake....threw down 16 bags of Scott's soil and did some minor regrading....bigger day coming tomorrow....


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## crazymas0n (Apr 19, 2019)

Progress! I feel your pain though, I faced a similar weed battle when I brought in new dirt. Keep at it, it's going to look great.


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

I was about 10 minutes into that dethatching by hand before I realized that I shoulda dropped the 100 bucks for an electric dethatcher.....and that lawn leveler doesn't work very well with wet dirt....


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## crazymas0n (Apr 19, 2019)

haha yes, I started dethatching by hand yesterday, was about 5 minutes into it and then went to the rental shop. Rented a gas powered one for $40 and was done in an hour.


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

yep....top dressed part of my lawn in the dark tonight....


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## Chris LI (Oct 26, 2018)

I just saw your journal. Nice work! That's an incredible turnaround. I really like the photo sequence of where you were, to what you've achieved. Some Tenacity should take out those grassy weeds by the street. If you're looking for weed ID, you can post close ups in the weed forum. I can see that you've been bitten by the bug, as you've nuked the backyard.

FYI-Zoysia is invasive, so keep an eye on your property line. It's more appropriate for you location, but I still battle it up here in NY. I think that it doesn't like Tenacity, so keep that in mind (Please double check the label. I think that it lists it as being "sensitive" to Tenacity). It finds it's way across/under my 48" sidewalk, so a yearly RU nuking at the property line may be in order.


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## NoslracNevok (Jun 12, 2018)

Good idea getting it started early, perhaps harder but a safer bet in the long run. Nice to have a neighbor give the to what you want" consent.


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

Update....the front strip and slope I cut down to 2.5" and then dethatched again....scalped the little side strips.......I applied a bag of Disease Ex to everything....4lb/1k Black Gypsum....2lb/1k Jonathan Green's Love My Soil....2lb/1k Humic DG....overseeded everything, then re-hit the bare areas with Black Beauty Ultra....top-dressed/kind of levelled (ran out of topsoil after 2 cubic yards, so the leveling isn't as good as what I was aiming for)put EZ straw down and watered in enough to get it to tack up....

It rained this morning and washed out some of the side strip and front strip, so I reseeded bare spots, tapped in seed with my foot, and added more straw....sprayed everything with Tenacity (hence the green straw look) and lightly watered in the herbicide application over the strawed areas only....

I took particular pleasure when I double-spot-sprayed some crabgrass that has been pissing me off for a long time 

Scattered rain forecast for tonight, then 3 days of sun.....whew.....

I can't lie here, my wife helped me out a LOT the last few days....I wouldn't have gotten one half of what I did without her...


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

4x daily watering since seed down....put down RGS/Air8 combo yesterday....today I am seeing all kinds of babies!! Haven't seen anything growing in the areas where I overseeded, just where I had scalped it down and pretty much bare-dirt'ed it...4 days in and it looks pretty decent so far...


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

I put a brass quick connect on my SLS product....it dawned on me that all of my DIY ******* sprinkler setup junctions had such quick-connects....this thing makes a VERY good spot sprinkler for me on the areas that are getting under-watered...pop a sprinkler head off, hook this up and run it in water position and I'm in business....


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

This spot was drying out too fast in the sun, or the sprinkler wasn't getting it well enough....put some more EZ Straw on it, hit it with the SLS growth booster, and then spot-watered it in good....Hoping this does the trick and I start getting some growth there...


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

Pretty decent germination and growth for the most part.....Looks to me like the shadier parts are getting a lot more growth/germination.....Also, have noticed a few spots that have germinated completely white...Assuming these are spots that got slightly hot with Tenacity when I sprayed...


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

Front slope looks kind of like a battlefield...BIG white crabgrass patches by the street that look pretty bad, but they are dying......there are a lot of spots that were showing bare dirt.....hand re-seeded and put straw as best I could...Also put down a bag of peat moss on the front strip and the lower slope that wasn't coming in well...very good germination/growth above it, but wasn't coming in hardly at all...And one patch where the sprinklers overlap that has come in fast and thick.....wish it all looked like that instead of the hodge-podge that I have now...


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

pulled hoses and sprinklers.....vacation time.....mother nature is now in the driver's seat for 11 days....rain forecast for 5 of them, so I am hoping I'll be ok....


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## badtlc (Aug 22, 2019)

Haywood74 said:


> pulled hoses and sprinklers.....vacation time.....mother nature is now in the driver's seat for 11 days....rain forecast for 5 of them, so I am hoping I'll be ok....


I think you'll be fine. I think we get a bit paranoid when it comes to watering new seed.

I am doing an overseed/patchy reno right now with a TTTF blend. I through some seeds down on my neighbors yard in a corner up against my yard. This area was a lot of dirt and weeds. My sprinklers don't really reach it unless the wind blows the right direction and even then it is droplets. We have been above 90F the entire 2 weeks since I threw the seed down and no rain. I'll be damned that the seed in this area has actually germinated some and is already a couple inches tall. I think there is enough that if I can get some water to it, it will fill in perfectly.


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

Came home from vacation and found the side strip looking pretty good....A little bit thin in some areas, but overall pretty decent....Front slope by the street was a white weed patch that was a foot tall.....moved everything at 4" and it looks a lot better.....From what I can tell, most everything that I over-seeded didn't come up, only those areas where I seeded bare dirt....
Had a couple of mushrooms pop up as well....


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

Pretty sure I got hit with Gray Leaf Spot....Looks like the new stuff that I got going a few weeks ago is starting to see the same type of curling at the top of the leaf and dead appearance....


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

Seed down in the backyard 4 days ago....2 days later, we had a flash thunderstorm that dropped 2" of rain and washed out and floated a bunch of the seed out of the ground....Re-seeded those spots and put down more EZ straw as there is more rain coming Tuesday....I am hoping that the 1 days I had to let it dry out enough to walk on won't hurt germination rates...Also hoping that seed floating in water for an hour or two doesn't have a negative effect either...

Other spots were seeded 4 weeks ago and look to have some Grey Leaf Spot on it....Disease Ex at curative rate down 6 days ago.....Hoping the cool weather spots the spread and allows for some recovery....


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

I had all but given up on the backyard germinating....Seed down was 10-9 and 2 days in, got hit with 2 inches of rain and I thought it had all floated out...I let it dry out a day and then re-seeded and hit the bare spots with more EZ Straw...I stopped watering after 9 days due to 0 germination, but my wife hit it one more time with water and it started popping up....I hit it with RGS+Air8 and the next day it took off...Today I put down some worm castings and hit it with some liquid 16-4-4 to push it a little bit before the temps drop...

Rest of the yard is looking a lot better than I thought it would after getting hit with Grey Leaf Spot....Carbon X'ed and Disease X'ed it and it pushed out rather nicely....Some spotting due to dogs, but I can live with that for now....


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## Haywood74 (Jul 11, 2019)

Update....First real good cut for the year....Still have some weed issues and some thin/bare spots, but for 1 year progress, I am liking where it's at....I sprayed some WBG about 2 weeks ago and it didn't touch most of the weeds I had in the yard....Fresh cut today at 3.5" and most of the yard looks decent...Front slope and front strip will definitely need an over-seed this fall, but the back is doing really well....Rain forecast for the next 6 out of 7 days, so hoping that it pops out an inch or so and can hit it with Tenacity on the one dry day we have coming....


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