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piotrkol's lawn

19K views 95 replies 32 participants last post by  Green 
#1 ·
Hello from Poland! Just joined but instantly loved this journal idea and decided I might as well start my own. First post will cover a brief history of the lawn, then I'll go quickly over the big renovation I just finished, and hopefully things will be picked up from that. Also daily updates on instagram @piotrkol_lawn

*2007-2018
The lawn was first established way back in 2007 when we got the house. At that time I wasn't much into lawncare so it was rather standard - glyphosate the weeds, rake the soil up and throw down some standard grass mix. Over time I got to like spending time in the lawn, which led to some nice results, but also got me thinking more and more about starting over - with much more knowledge then before. Here are some photos of the first lawn ranging from 2007 until July 2018.

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The next post will cover the renovation. Thanks!
 
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#80 ·
@cfinden - yep exactly, 2oz/acre.

@TheWhiteWizard - I found a product in Poland for corn fields called Juzan 100sc with Mesotrion as the only active ingredient. Try looking around for products in the farming industry, you might find some. It's a bit of a "do it at your own risk" kind of deal but I figured I had nothing to lose. Seems to work so far!
 
#81 ·
TheWhiteWizard - I found a product in Poland for corn fields called Juzan 100sc with Mesotrion as the only active ingredient. Try looking around for products in the farming industry, you might find some. It's a bit of a "do it at your own risk" kind of deal but I figured I had nothing to lose. Seems to work so far!
Thanks piotrkol! Very helpful push in the right direction.
I did a little deeper digging about mesotrione availability and indeed some products seem to be available to farmers in UK. I am hoping to take a journey today to a farm store that's a little detour on the way to the in-laws.

On a side note, and I really should have mentioned already, what a fantastic lawn you have! I read your whole journal.
Hoping that now you have a new product to help with the poa annua, you can make the progress you desire. Best regards
 
#82 ·
23 days since the first app of mesotrion (Tenacity). I sprayed 3 times so far every friday. Results are amazing with a few minor drawbacks ;)

First things first - I need to work on my spray game, I clearly oversprayed some sections and have a few really white spots :p Most of it should recover though and I'm planning on overseeding in the fall anyway.

Poa a is reduced to a minimum. any other weeds are pretty much gone. The lawn itself is really thick and looks really good apart from some white spots and stripes :)

Plan is to spray again in 21 days to reduce the risk of new Poa a germinating.

The leftover Poa a isn't looking well :mrgreen:


Hehe, joy to my eyes


And the mentioned stripes where I overdone it a bit. Looks better in real life though :lol:


It looks good! Really happy!
 
#85 ·
@sider1977 - Thanks a lot! I appreciate it. I spent 4 years in Chicago actually. Pozdrawiam! :D

@g-man - Not totally finished, but I reduced it to a minimum, you have to look around for a bit to find some, so I call that a huge success :D

Anyway - a long overdue update on the lawn. This season was dominated by the fight against POA. After finding help here on TLF I managed to reduce the POA population to a minimum which is amazing as I was ready to start from scratch at one point in June :)

Still mowing with the hand-pushed reel mower. The season is slowly creeping towards the end but I was lucky to get some record breaking october weather with temps reaching an amazing 80f today which doesn't really happen very often. We had some frost in September but it didn't seem to affect the lawn, it's still going :)

Just a few days ago the soccer goal started to lean backwards - turned out that one of the posts rotted I guess and cracked, so I had to remove it completly for safety reasons. Feels odd without it, looking around for something new...

As for plans - I really want to core aerate but I'm not sure if it's gonna happen this season or in spring. After that I will want to put sand down to flatten a few bumps that appeared throughout the year.

And finally a few pics :)











 
#87 ·
@piotrkol Just read through your entire journal, amazing work my friend. Really impressive the amount of time and effort you put in and sorry to hear about the Poa troubles. Sounds like you have it under control, like you us UK guys have limited access to Tenacity type herbicides but the idea about finding a source via the farming sector is interesting!

I have a couple of questions if you don't mind answering.

I see you are using a Webb reel mower, I think they are the only low cost good quality manual reel mower here in the UK. Although you said you find it tiring, by the looks of it your cut quality looks great. Are there any downsides to it other than it being manual? Tempted to get one next year as like you I have a Hayter 41 and spending £1000+ on an electric Allett for my small lawns isn't really justifiable. Well maybe ;)

What type of RPR mixture did you use? Looks like RPR Sport/Stadium. Will you continue with this seed blend?
 
#88 ·
@jabopy Thanks, happy to hear! :D

@RCUK Thanks a lot! I'll be happy to answer :)

No real drawbacks to the webb manual. I wish it was a bit heavier - I noticed it'll sometimes sort of slide around in really thick lawn, which is hard to explain but it makes it tougher to mow very straight stripes. But it's nitpicking really and doesn't happen very often, overall I'd say go for it - it's a great little mower and the cut quality really is quite nice :)

Grass seed is in fact Barenbrug RPR for stadiums. I'm happy with it so far, so I'll propably use it for overseeding and stuff. It's amazing when it comes to the self repairing bit - if there's a little bare spot in the lawn for some reason it creeps and grows on it in a matter of a few days. I was amazed to see that. :)
 
#90 ·
Did not sharpen them yet, they seem ok at the moment, although I will try to do a backlap if I can get some backlapping compound. Having the reel sharpened will propably be a pain to do as there are very few places in poland that will do that for home owners. And it's actually more expansive than the mower itself. :|

It's the weh12:
 
#91 ·
A little update to keep things rolling even though not much is going on. Lawn is slowing down and winter is somewhere around the corner. But it's not here yet so I'm still enjoying a cool (literally) mow every few days. Temps in the 50's during the day and mostly 40's at night, with just 3 days or so with a frost so far.



The goal is still down and I'm very tempted to pick up a professional one. Even talked to a guy and got an offer for a miniature version of a pro level goal. Very cool stuff but it's quite pricey, closing in at about $400 :oops: Really tempting though...



The lawn is a bit messed up where the goal used to stand. I made little covers for the 2ft deep metal sleeves where the goalposts would go in. Don't want any animals to hurt themselves there, nor get water or dirt in them.



Discovered a little problem in the front. The sun is so low in the sky now that the front part of the lawn doesn't get much sunlight. And you can definetly tell, it's not very thick and very muddy.
Here's a photo of the problem, pretty much noon, and still the sun is so low that the fence is casting a really long shadow. Meh.

 
#94 ·
First update in 2020, welcome back :)

Winter is being very weird this season. Most days temps hang around the 40f mark, and drop to 30 or slightly below at nights. We barely had any snow, in fact this is the most snow that we had so far:



Rarely temps will drop a bit more at night and I get this ridiculous stuff happening. Not happy about the tall fence and low sun, but not much I can do :|



Lawn is well asleep, lost the color and isn't very pleasing to the eye, but hey - it's winter. I can definetly tell that there will be a lot of leveling in spring, there are some nasty bumps here and there. My plan of action is to core aerate, topdress heavily and overseed, should be fun :)

Goal update - in the end I went for the cheapest, easiets and quickest option - I got a wooden post and replaced the broken one. Can score goals again ;)











Anyway, not much happening at the moment, I'm hoping January passes through quickly, so I can start looking forward to spring. It seems like an eternity away at the moment even considering the lack of snow and frost :roll:

See ya later! Thanks for stopping by :)
 
#95 ·
Mid February 2020 update:

I mentioned this in my previous post but this winter is something else. It's Feb 15th and I still haven't had a single day with snow cover. Freezing temps? Just a handful at night. I started measuring soil temps the other day and I started getting a reading of 52f on regular basis. And sure enough this is what I found today:



It's tough to see but grass started growing!

I did a light verticut and went over with the mower today to pick up debris and to slightly chop the tips of the grass that are white after being dormant so long. I will get into pre-e asap. Being in europe my options are very limited so I might go with tenacity which I do have (mesotrione to be exact)

I can't decide if I should throw down fertiliser now or not. No winter in the forecasts at all...

Crazy stuff!

 
#96 ·
There are differing schools of thought on fertilizing early or not. If you do, I'd keep the rate extremely low (0.25 or less of a full app). Doing too much can throw the growth out of balance while it's resuming activity.
 
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