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Timotej's Lawn Journal (Europe/Slovenia)

32K views 195 replies 24 participants last post by  Johnl445 
#1 ·
Hi everybody!

Everything started in Winter18/19 when I found Connor YT channel, than Ben Sims, Ryan...
After I watched all videos, I made plan for SPRING2019. I wanted lawn as Connor's (low cut, thick, flat,...)
BTW Connor Ward's stickers from reel mower brought me there. :mrgreen: :thumbup: TLF!!! :thumbup: Connor!!!

My goal is:
BEST LOOKING LAWN IN SLOVENIA :bandit:

I live in suburbs of Ljubljana (capital town) in Slovenia
It's a 3 apartment house that was recently renovated. I'm in charge for lawn care.

Plan for lawn renovation : 2019front+side 2020back

This is Garden plan:
Lawn is divided on BACK and FRONT+SIDE
Blue dots are connections to rainwater well.


Our climate:
We have a lot of rainy days, hot summers and sometimes snow in winter. NO wind at all.



This is how it looked after house renovation:








I needed to add 10m3 of soil for front and side. (march 2019)










Here is my help!


Irrigation + electricity instalation


Seeded on 1. April 2019 with PRG/KBG mix
It was the best what I could get at that time.


10. April 2019


16. April 2019


5. May 2019




25. May 2019




12. June 2019
Brown Patch

This is when I realized that pesticides are available only to licensed users here in Slovenia.
It took me 14 days to somehow get fungicide. (1L Azoxystrobin+Chlorothalonil)

24. June 2019 Fungus gone


8. July 2019 There lawn looks already very nice. HOC 4cm






25. July 2019 Pink flamingos delivered form Amazon :D


8. August 2019 Leveled lawn with sand.
Also dead spots from worms castings are seen here.




12. September 2019 Worms invasion (nightcrawler)
There were casting all over my lawn.
I collected few kilos of worms from September till November and reduced population quite a lot.


15. November 2019 Last mow, Applied winter fertilizer



End of season 1.
 
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#3 ·
@g-man for catching worms you need:
Rainy day, than at night you go out with a flashlight and tweezers. Flashlight needs to be in red spectrum of light. Worms don't see red light.

Here I threw Aprox. 1kg of worms on compost but half were dead next morning. I went catching at least 7 times this fall. Every time I caught near 1kg😋 and all of them were on 130m2 of lawn. It was really messy with casting all over and they made a lot of damage with castings. I needed solution, and now is much better. Still castings, but not as much as before.

 
#6 ·
timtimotej said:
Our climate:
We have a lot of rainy days, hot summers and sometimes snow in winter. NO wind at all.
Welcome to TLF! It's nice to see more folks joining TLF from all over the globe. Nice job on season 1. I find one piece of information on your climate very interesting. "No wind at all." That is very surprising. I have fought battles with the wind for many aspects of lawn and yard care, so I appreciate calm days.
 
#8 ·
timtimotej said:
@Chris LI on the other hand no wind can be a problem in connection with a lot of rainy days...I had 3 fungus outbreaks this year. Soil and grass stays wet for too long.
In spring I will aerate plus top-dress with sand, to increase drainage and change soil structure to more sandy side.
Good point. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, as the saying goes. :mrgreen:
 
#11 ·
Little update:
We had mild winter, only 2 inches of snow.
Only frosts did damage to my lawn and untreated fungus later in fall.

It seems, that late fall app of nitrogen/potassium helped, if I compare with neighbor lawn.


These are my test pots. I will use them to see how grass responds to pgr,... it's same grass type as lawn. The difference is, I keep pots on my balcony and they never freeze, no rain.




I also have a lot of poa a. and for now, the only option is hand pulling. 😞


I'm planning to:
1.mow lawn low
2.apply pgr
3.core aerate
4.top dress with sand
5.de thatch(break top layer of soil)
6.overseed with bluegrass
 
#14 ·
@timtimotej I have the same worm issue, so use Velvet Purity Soil Conditioner which contains tea seed saponin. The saponin drives the worms up to the surface and then the birds can have their feed. After application, either water in or let the rain do the work. Next morning, be prepared for a worm clean up :) After a month or so you will need to reapply.

The other company that makes a similar product is Vitax, Enhance C. Both are also good for the soil as they add small amounts of organic matter.

Not sure if you can get these in your country, if not try to find a way of buying tea seed saponin in its pure form or another product with this in it. None of the products above are marked for killing worms but they work and you will find some articles online about how saponin effects worms.

http://archive.lib.msu.edu/tic/ttgnc/article/2012jan14.pdf
 
#16 ·
Grass looks OK to me, for the start of season 2.
It has nice color, but it is a little bit thin.
I'm hand pulling poa a/poa t. for 2 weeks now. Slowly, I'm coming to the point, were I only find few still hiding.
I pruned cedar tree this morning. I cut off branches growing too much upwards.
Of corse this was not enough. I took my mower out, cut grass down to 3cm, verticut, over seed, roll. What a day!😄
I dormant seeded with 100%bluegrass (yvette DLF)
Weather forecast looking good! I'm thinking to try to top dress with sand next week, before rain comes.

Morning

Afternoon


 
#17 ·
I sprayed with thiophanate methyl against earth worms 3 days ago. (7g/100m2)
I still see castings. But I also found dead earthworm this morning.

Blackbird having fun.



Today I sprayed humic/fulvic/FAS.

I'm watering daily for seeds to germinate.
Control pot no germination.

 
#22 ·
Can't tell how much I learned from last season. Now I understand that soil microbes and soil structure is the key of success. I started building up soil structure with sea-kelp and humic this spring,
instead of throwing down just NPK on last season. Also spraying Fe with some N made big difference. HOC is 2cm.
Results are insane! I'm really happy!
I'm still having lot's of poa a, but will deal with this in fall with pre emergent.

I did dormant overseed with bluegrass early in seasson. Can I start spraying PGR or should I wait? Grass is growing crazy😁



 
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