Steveo's 2022 Full Reno - Lawn Journal

April 11, 2022

Most of the front yard seems to be browning up pretty nicely! White balance is different in these pics since it was cloudy, so I'll have to remember not to do that next time I take them. Only a handful of spots that need more but I'll just do another blanket application over everything. Backyard is 1 day behind, but about 7hrs after the initial glypho application back there I had some pretty heavy rain so that may have set me back quite a bit. Second application will be going down this coming weekend! Will wait and see if a third will be needed.

Good luck with this project. I'll be keeping an eye on this journal.

Following. Love a renovation.

April 28, 2022

This will be a long one so grab a beer and strap in….

We've been having an unusually cold Spring thus far, but the rain has not been nearly as scarce as the heat. About every 2-3 days we'll have some showers so that has really slowed the progress I've been able to make. With that being said, we finally had a 4 day stretch of 65-75° temps with no rain so I got out and scalped it as low as I could go. Soil temps are right in the mid 60s now too. With the amount of bumps and holes there are, it scalped down to dirt in several places and often got hung up which made it very frustrating. The glyphosate has obviously done a fantastic job at knocking out mostly everything, but I do have a few areas left I need to spot spray. I also purchased 25lbs of Royal TXD Bermuda seed (blend of Royal Bengal, Yukon, & Mirage) from Hancock and I plan on laying it down around 3lbs/1000. Now for my plan going forward (and I'm always open for suggestions and advice):

1) Bring in a walk-behind skid steer. I plan on using the bucket attachment and one other, but that's where I'm conflicted. I'm going between a Harley rake and a soil cultivator. They both seem to do similar jobs, but they appear to both have their place and I'm not sure exactly which would suit my needs better. Any input?

2) First order of business is excavating for the patio expansion. I plan on extending it out in some fashion similar to the last photo below. I plan on going down about 5" - that leaves 3" for crushed gravel, 1" for sand, and 1" for concrete pavers. Some sort of decorative stone will be placed between the pavers, but at this point I just want to complete the excavation.

3) Excavate 2 trenches for French drains - 1 at each corner in the rear of the house where the downspouts are, extending out towards the back of the property under the fence.

4) Once all excavation is complete, I plan on laying down weed barrier and bringing in the crushed gravel to spread it throughout the planned patio area and in the bottom of the trenches. This will prevent a muddy mess from forming if I need to extend this over several days if rain moves in.

5) Lay French drain piping with sock and pack with gravel

6) Using either a Harley rake or soil cultivator, I want to till and level both front and back yards. I also plan on incorporating some lime throughout everything to raise the pH levels (soil test below). I'm thinking about going with calcitic lime over dolomite lime since it does not appear that I need any more magnesium. If you think I should go a different route please let me know. I do not think I need to bring in any top soil as I'm under the impression that the soil excavated from the back can be used in any low spots. Once I get it the way I like it I will roll everything

7) Bring in sand, pavers, edging, and decorative stone to finish off the patio

Now for the fun part…. I have a family beach trip planned for the week of Memorial Day at the end of May (5/28 - 6/5). Because of the constant attention that new seeds require, I'm thinking about putting a hold on things once I'm at this stage and picking up where I left off when I get back. Once the backyard gets to my liking enough to where I no longer need the skid steer, I will then finish off the patio because I do not want to drive the skid steer over the new pavers and that new gate is the only way in and out. Speaking of the new gate, I just finished that project but I still need to remove it and install the pickets on each end so that the hinges and strike can mount directly through them. Anyways…

8) Once back from the beach trip I will do any final touch ups with a landscape rake including scratching the surface, before finally laying seed. I'm still debating whether I want to just lightly rake the soil over and roll it in, or also throw down some peat moss since I struggled with wind and pests getting to the seed last year. I'll probably make that decision in the moment, but I'm leaning towards the peat moss route since it's not too much more work and it will help retain moisture a lot better.

9) Work on my above-ground sprinkler system by daisy chaining a few pop up's on spikes together.

How does that all sound?? And now for the pictures, starting off with my soil test results. All yard pics were taken before I mowed

Quick cell phone pic as I left this morning to show the scalp. Even I can make an awful yard look good every now and then hah! Red are high spots, blue are low spots. Since my yard is pretty flat (just not uniformly flat) to begin with, I'm leaning towards the soil cultivator. Anyone disagree??

Soil cultivator. No personal experience, but from talking to LCO's.

dubyadubya87 said:

Soil cultivator. No personal experience, but from talking to LCO's.

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Appreciate the support of my confirmation bias I think that's the route I will go.

Decided to bring out the SunJoe and scarify a little before rain moves in tomorrow and continues over the next several days. Only had time to do the back and only did it in one direction, but it definitely pulled up a ton of dead material. Especially where things were getting matted down. Probably a waste of time since I will use the soil cultivator to do an even more thorough job of this, but I figured why not hah. Went back over it with the mower to get it all up and I'm starting to visualize things a lot better. These showers moving in are going to put a serious damper on my plans, but I may be forced to just deal with it and excavate wet dirt. We'll see!

The Royal TXD Bermuda seed has arrived! Discovered this after reading through @Bermuda_Rooster lawn journal and it seems like really good stuff. Blend of Mirage II, Yukon, and Royal Bengal. Oregon tested, dog approved hah



Threw some in a small planter with Miracle Grow and some peat moss then watered it heavily so I'll be using this as a test plot to measure germination time. I did the same with some TTTF last year that I kept at my office and it turned out great! Might have to leave this one at home though since it requires so much sunlight. It's sitting on top of one of my 4x4 fence posts now

Excavation is done for the patio, just waiting on gravel and I'll do about a 6" base of it. May go grab the Harley rake this weekend to start grading the lawn

Yesterday I had 6yds³ of screenings delivered to begin filling in the patio area. I ended up excavating a little deeper over by the gate because I previously only had it about 2" deep where the rest of the patio area was closer to 8". I brought it down to 6" which was about as deep as I could go without incorporating too severe of a slope. I plan on wetting and compacting it today, then using the little bit that I have leftover to continue filling, screeding, compacting, etc... I NAILED the material estimates, I was really surprised. Normally I either order wayyy too much or not nearly enough. But I was dead on this time!







Also brought in a Harley rake and began tearing up all the dead material. Only had it for a day so I just focused on tilling for now. We don't have any rain in the forecast so I'm going to wait on the soil to dry out a little more and then start raking it level and rolling it.

First round of compaction is done and I'm really happy with how it's turning out! I have about 2 Gorilla Cart (7ft³ size) loads of screenings left which will be perfect for building up the low areas and around the perimeter. Ill do that tomorrow and I'll screed it flat and confirm grade, but so far so good

We have some real bad weather coming over the next week so I'm hoping for the best and preparing accordingly. Estimated 5-7" of rain between today and Thursday. I got the front hand raked out and as much as I could, and removed a ton of dead material, rocks, and old construction debris. I kept finding bricks that I hit with the Harley rake and were buried about 4", presumably leftovers from construction. I also kept finding this green mesh material that I assume was used for erosion control when the house was built back in 2011. You'd think they would've used a biodegradable material, but 12yrs later here we are. The back is still the same as I left it because I didn't have enough time or energy to tackle that project, but it's at a pretty good stopping point now that I have the base material compacted for the patio. I do still have a mound of dirt in the corner that I would like to use to fill in some low spots in the front, and also build up the edge in the back that butts up to where the patio will be so it can be graded away from the house. I leave for Florida for a week starting next Saturday so I'm hoping to at least have the front to a point where I can immediately plant once I get back. The back may need an extra couple days of grading before planting. Here's how it will sit or the next several days while I watch this rain!

It's been a while since I last updated but we've gotten a TON of rain. So much that I've had to respray glypho two more times putting me at a total of 4 blanket apps and 1 spot spray. Anyway, all that rain carved some pretty deep channels in the yard so I decided to bust out the SunJoe scarifier and go to town using it as a tiller. Surprisingly, it worked GREAT! Just well enough to break up the clumped clay soil turning it back to its powdery, easy to spread form. I have 6yds of fresh top soil coming in tomorrow to fill in the low spots, patio pavers coming Tuesday to finish the back patio, and I should have seed down by Wednesday!







Also, here's a great example of all that green mesh that I've found throughout the yard. When I excavated for the patio, I noticed it's also a couple inches under my neighbors grass. I'm thinking it was what held the rolls of sod together during transport, and the landscapers never removed it after installing the sod. Man what a mess this stuff makes!

6yds of dirt has arrived! They're forecasting highs around 97-100° with heat index's around 105-110° for the next 14 days, so I'll be doing most of the work in the evening after I get home at 5pm. Hoping to take advantage of these temps so I can see germination in about 5 days

6/20/22

I've been slacking on my updates but the pavers arrived 6/14 so I'm just waiting until I finish off this dirt before getting sand delivered for the final layer on the patio sub base. I managed to get about half of that dirt spread around the main portion of the front, so on 6/15 I went ahead and spread some seed on that location as well as some Lesco 18-24-12 starter fert. I took another 1/4 and moved it to the back, and now I'm just waiting to move the rest back there. It's been so incredibly hot lately that I can really only work for about an hour or two before getting too hot. I also installed the metal edging in the rear that goes around the new patio. On 6/19 I began to see first signs of germination so it's looking pretty hopeful! I will have to get better pics with the drone soon for a true comparison.





I noticed before I started this whole project that the area around the A/C unit is very prone to moss buildup. The condensate line drips right on the concrete pad and then spills over to the adjacent soil, making a perfect breeding ground for it. I'm not sure what I'm going to do at this point in time, but more than likely nothing. Since this is on the side of my house and really not visible, I'll just let the rest of the yard fill in as best as it can and then maybe attack it in the fall when we're running it less so there will be less moisture to fight. Any advice will be appreciated!

@callmestevee_o how is this going? I seeded Arden the last day of July in 2019 in my front yard and same time in 2020 in my side yard but this was in the Atlanta area so there was a bit more growing season. Would be interested in seeing your Royal TXD progression.

clbphllps said:

@callmestevee_o how is this going? I seeded Arden the last day of July in 2019 in my front yard and same time in 2020 in my side yard but this was in the Atlanta area so there was a bit more growing season. Would be interested in seeing your Royal TXD progression.

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Man, I have been seriously slacking on the updates haven't I?!? I really need to get back out there with the drone to get proper comparison photos. Until then, here are just a couple photos from an item I put up for sale on my local off-road group taken July 17th, as well as the last full lawn photo I managed to take back on July 6th. Since that photo was taken it has filled in TREMENDOUSLY! Especially in the corner closest to the spot I was taking the photo from, as well as along the drive way. I finally have an edge now!! The only thin spot I have is up near the island where there is a large crepe myrtle to the right of that photo but I can tell it is slowly filling itself in.







This next photo was taken July 11th to show that the back yard patio expansion is almost complete. I screeded a thin layer of sand and threw the pavers down. Now we're just trying to find the right rock to fill in the gap. We want a dark grey or black polished stone around 1/2" in size, but it's harder to find than you may think. Most of what we found is either too big or too small and we don't want pea-gravel sized. I did experiment with pre-germinated seed and that is what you see has germinated in this photo. However, I have two labs who constantly run and tackle each other so they ended up scattering it all around. I have since thrown down more and it has filled in much better than what you see. I have accepted the fact that the back yard will never be as nice as the front and that's okay! I'm keeping everything right around 2" due to the extreme heat we've had over the last 2 months. I will get updated photos this week to show just how far it has come

And almost 1 entire year later…

Been around just forgot all about my journal! 2mon ago I picked up a used 2014 GM1000 for $600. Wheels, groomer, 1 light, no catcher. Replaced carb, filter, spark plug, oil, bedknife, fuel tap, & gas cap. Guy I bought it from was an auctioneer and said “it cut great when he tried it yesterday.” Took one look and the corner of the bedknife was jammed up in the reel.…





Anyway, got it all back in working order and currently maintain the front at 0.625” and I’m getting close to needing a 3rd app of PGR

I bought some Royal TXD from OutsidePride but probably going to return since house came with sod.

Here's my yearly update lol

I'm really happy with how it sits right now. I'm currently mowing at 5/8" and just put down my second app of PGR this season. MasTec came out and did some underground boring for Comcast fiber (even though I use AT&T), so that's what the sand patch in the middle is from and they also added a new utility pedestal. The remnants of Hurricane Beryl came through earlier this week with 4.5" of rain in 6hrs but it's soaking in nicely.

My wife and I are expecting our first baby in about 3-4wks, so I'm hoping this PGR really takes control since I won't have the chance to mow as often.