TLDR- this was a reno at my old place before the new house, skip this post for the new reno- pic of the new property is towards the bottom of this post.
So I guess I'm finally getting around to my journal. More like not being lazy and transferring pictures from my phone to pc to make this easier.
This journey started in May of this year, I got 5 yards of top soil, spread it and seeded. Found this Forum shortly after as I started researching how to grow my seed well.
Having put down seed May 18 and then high temperatures soon approaching and droughts of June and July I quickly understood why spring over seeding is not highly recommended on TLF.
The good news about spring seeding was it allowed me to see the spots in the yards that had a hard time growing any grass. I started doing screw driver tests and realized that most of these spots were rocky underneath. I began to dig up every spot around the yards 20-30 that had bare patches and what I realized was most of them had large stones/boulders under them. I figure when they put the fence posts in they just chucked the rocks they found and those were my bare spots where grass wouldn't grow.
I had spray painted all the areas I needed to dig up.
I then soon realized I was being overtaken by the weeds and crab grass.
Backyard was really bad with weeds and uneven and I soon realized that a heavy weed treatment program was in order.
It was a hot dry summer and I wanted nothing more then to get the weed control going. So having access to par3 I wanted to put it down and see what I could do. With temperatures in July being so hot I decided I would attempt a night spray at 11pm and also to hope that no one would see me or smell what I was putting down.
I didn't burn the lawn from it and the weeds started to die.
So much creeping charlie and ground ivy though in the back yard.
Front yard, lots of crab and clover and other broadleaf weeds.
I acquired tenacity and did a broadcast spray of it soon after to go after the weeds again and the crab grass.
The creeping charlie is tough and so is the ivy it wasn't going away very quickly
I decided I was going to go all in on the fall over seed on the front and reno on the back.
We've been looking at moving and trying to get out of town to a more rural property with much more acreage and lawn to take care of, but I couldn't live here with this property the way it is. We had put an offer in on a house but it sold for 150k over asking and that's how a lot of properties are going during these covid times. So I figure we might be here for a bit and make the best of it in the meantime.
I decided because there are a lot of trees surrounding the back yard that I should trim them up the best I could and get as much sunlight into the yard as possible.
I filled up a sprayer with glysophate and planned on targeting the worst areas in the backyard and just working on taking out certain areas so I could essentially reno those small areas.
Well, I ended up spraying most of the back yard, I should of just sprayed everything to be honest, but for some reason I felt bad for some of the areas that I worked so hard on just to keep alive in the summer drought that I felt bad for those areas of grass and felt they deserved to live lol.
Wife decided she would take on re-staining the play structure
They finally showed up to pave the driveway of course right when I want to start and bring a load of topsoil home, had them rip out the strip of grass between my driveway and the neighbors and I just resodded it.
Time to scalp, triple scalp cut as low as the gas rotary would go.
Also you'll notice that I've put together a make shift irrigation system with hoses and orbit gear sprinklers.
3 out front, 2 on the side of the deck, and then 6 out back for a total of 11 with 4 zones running off of a Melnor rain cloud wifi hose end timer.
So having put down 5 yards of top soil in the spring I was ahead of the game, but I brought home 5 more in my dump trailer.
Let the wheel barrowing and shoveling begin. I started around 1pm on a Friday and had all but about half a yard spread by dark at 9pm. This was August 13 and I had the front yard prepped completely. Saturday the 14th I spent the day raking and leveling and rolling the backyard.
Wifey just watching.
Sunday the 15th was seed down, roll, peat, and spray tenacity.
The seed is nothing to special, knowing that we were shopping for houses it just didn't make sense to me to be throwing the cash away on elite cultivars for someone else to ruin. But I wanted to practice all these turf skills on this smaller property and do this reno and learn everything along the way so that when I get to a bigger property I'll know exactly what to do. I got this seed at a local Nursery and I heard good things about the brand (Greenland) it's a 40%CRF, 40%KBG, 20%PRG. People I know in turf care had suggested the mix for our local climate. The cultivars are still unknown to me. I also didn't feel like I was at a place in cultivar type knowledge yet to have made a call on what I wanted to put down for elite varieties.
Sit back and water and drink beer.
I was watering 4 times a day to start and was glad I had bought a wifi timer so I could turn the sprinklers on and off as needed. I was watering between 5 and 7 mins depending on time a day, some of the hotter sunny days for the front lawn I was running up to 6 or 7 cycles usually 5 mins a shot but around 1pm I think I was doing 10 minutes to help keep it moist. I had turned our security arlo cameras into lawn cameras to help me monitor. Wife works from home so I did try and get her to chime in and let me know what was happening.
First germination came up after 6 days.
The front lawn recovered really quickly from the initial scalp and I scalped it again with the manual reel mower I picked up from the classifieds before any germination and I never stopped mowing it, just kept mowing it back to try and let that kbg get established and not overshadowed.
You can see obviously where I didn't kill off in the backyard kept on growing and the different grass types coming in at different times and speeds.
The other huge concern was the day after seed down, we were suppose to get a moderate rain and it ended up dropping 2 inches. Everyone here that's reno'd knows how that feels. I did end up dropping more seed two weeks later to help make sure the bare areas filled in.
I think I may have sprayed tenacity too much in the smaller front yard area, as germination was slower and I really over seeded heavy there to make sure it filled in.
Sep 4th
Baby kbg is really just starting to germinate now
I think it was at least 16 days before it started with most of it around the 21 day mark I would say.
Decided my manual reel mower needed a striping kit.
Sept 10
Still slow to fill in back in this shady corner basically under a tree
I'm mowing every two days at 1.25"
I first sprayed Urea about 2 weeks after germination at .23N/M and did the same thing every 7 days for the next 3 weeks for a total of 4 apps at 1lb
Sept 15
Notice the yellow kill spot, big dog got out on the yard and took one leak, killed a spot the size of a dinner plate.
Sept 17
Sept 20
Sept 25
Oct 1
Tenacity went down on Sept 28 at 4oz rate. 37 dag
Oct9
bleaching making it look horrible in color from where I was with it setting into dark green.
I also dropped HOC on my manual to 1" for this cut to see how it looked.
Also dropped .5N/M granular where as I had been spraying my urea.
Couple collage pics to show the progression
Well if you made it this far, thanks for reading and looking through all the pics, I know when I read journals I love seeing pics more than anything to see the progression so I tried to show that here.
It's been a heck of a journey but I've had fun with it, and it's been a great learning experience and I now feel pretty confident to do this on a larger scale when that day comes!
I would like to give special thanks and mention to @Harts he's been awesome, I text him all the time and bug him and get all the answers anyone could ever need from him, he's been a personal lawn coach and senior advisor and an overall awesome dude. @Babameca is another great go to guy and knowledgeable.
This is such a great community and everyone one of you have helped me along the way so I would like to say thanks, and to all the guys making guides like @g-man that stuff is so priceless and valuable these forums are just an overall amazing place where someone can come and learn and take their lawn from crap to something of envy in the neighborhood. I applaud everyone for their contributions to making TLF such an amazing place.
Thanks!
Bryan aka BBLOCK
So I guess I'm finally getting around to my journal. More like not being lazy and transferring pictures from my phone to pc to make this easier.
This journey started in May of this year, I got 5 yards of top soil, spread it and seeded. Found this Forum shortly after as I started researching how to grow my seed well.
Having put down seed May 18 and then high temperatures soon approaching and droughts of June and July I quickly understood why spring over seeding is not highly recommended on TLF.
The good news about spring seeding was it allowed me to see the spots in the yards that had a hard time growing any grass. I started doing screw driver tests and realized that most of these spots were rocky underneath. I began to dig up every spot around the yards 20-30 that had bare patches and what I realized was most of them had large stones/boulders under them. I figure when they put the fence posts in they just chucked the rocks they found and those were my bare spots where grass wouldn't grow.
I had spray painted all the areas I needed to dig up.
I then soon realized I was being overtaken by the weeds and crab grass.
Backyard was really bad with weeds and uneven and I soon realized that a heavy weed treatment program was in order.
It was a hot dry summer and I wanted nothing more then to get the weed control going. So having access to par3 I wanted to put it down and see what I could do. With temperatures in July being so hot I decided I would attempt a night spray at 11pm and also to hope that no one would see me or smell what I was putting down.
I didn't burn the lawn from it and the weeds started to die.
So much creeping charlie and ground ivy though in the back yard.
Front yard, lots of crab and clover and other broadleaf weeds.
I acquired tenacity and did a broadcast spray of it soon after to go after the weeds again and the crab grass.
The creeping charlie is tough and so is the ivy it wasn't going away very quickly
I decided I was going to go all in on the fall over seed on the front and reno on the back.
We've been looking at moving and trying to get out of town to a more rural property with much more acreage and lawn to take care of, but I couldn't live here with this property the way it is. We had put an offer in on a house but it sold for 150k over asking and that's how a lot of properties are going during these covid times. So I figure we might be here for a bit and make the best of it in the meantime.
I decided because there are a lot of trees surrounding the back yard that I should trim them up the best I could and get as much sunlight into the yard as possible.
I filled up a sprayer with glysophate and planned on targeting the worst areas in the backyard and just working on taking out certain areas so I could essentially reno those small areas.
Well, I ended up spraying most of the back yard, I should of just sprayed everything to be honest, but for some reason I felt bad for some of the areas that I worked so hard on just to keep alive in the summer drought that I felt bad for those areas of grass and felt they deserved to live lol.
Wife decided she would take on re-staining the play structure
They finally showed up to pave the driveway of course right when I want to start and bring a load of topsoil home, had them rip out the strip of grass between my driveway and the neighbors and I just resodded it.
Time to scalp, triple scalp cut as low as the gas rotary would go.
Also you'll notice that I've put together a make shift irrigation system with hoses and orbit gear sprinklers.
3 out front, 2 on the side of the deck, and then 6 out back for a total of 11 with 4 zones running off of a Melnor rain cloud wifi hose end timer.
So having put down 5 yards of top soil in the spring I was ahead of the game, but I brought home 5 more in my dump trailer.
Let the wheel barrowing and shoveling begin. I started around 1pm on a Friday and had all but about half a yard spread by dark at 9pm. This was August 13 and I had the front yard prepped completely. Saturday the 14th I spent the day raking and leveling and rolling the backyard.
Wifey just watching.
Sunday the 15th was seed down, roll, peat, and spray tenacity.
The seed is nothing to special, knowing that we were shopping for houses it just didn't make sense to me to be throwing the cash away on elite cultivars for someone else to ruin. But I wanted to practice all these turf skills on this smaller property and do this reno and learn everything along the way so that when I get to a bigger property I'll know exactly what to do. I got this seed at a local Nursery and I heard good things about the brand (Greenland) it's a 40%CRF, 40%KBG, 20%PRG. People I know in turf care had suggested the mix for our local climate. The cultivars are still unknown to me. I also didn't feel like I was at a place in cultivar type knowledge yet to have made a call on what I wanted to put down for elite varieties.
Sit back and water and drink beer.
I was watering 4 times a day to start and was glad I had bought a wifi timer so I could turn the sprinklers on and off as needed. I was watering between 5 and 7 mins depending on time a day, some of the hotter sunny days for the front lawn I was running up to 6 or 7 cycles usually 5 mins a shot but around 1pm I think I was doing 10 minutes to help keep it moist. I had turned our security arlo cameras into lawn cameras to help me monitor. Wife works from home so I did try and get her to chime in and let me know what was happening.
First germination came up after 6 days.
The front lawn recovered really quickly from the initial scalp and I scalped it again with the manual reel mower I picked up from the classifieds before any germination and I never stopped mowing it, just kept mowing it back to try and let that kbg get established and not overshadowed.
You can see obviously where I didn't kill off in the backyard kept on growing and the different grass types coming in at different times and speeds.
The other huge concern was the day after seed down, we were suppose to get a moderate rain and it ended up dropping 2 inches. Everyone here that's reno'd knows how that feels. I did end up dropping more seed two weeks later to help make sure the bare areas filled in.
I think I may have sprayed tenacity too much in the smaller front yard area, as germination was slower and I really over seeded heavy there to make sure it filled in.
Sep 4th
Baby kbg is really just starting to germinate now
I think it was at least 16 days before it started with most of it around the 21 day mark I would say.
Decided my manual reel mower needed a striping kit.
Sept 10
Still slow to fill in back in this shady corner basically under a tree
I'm mowing every two days at 1.25"
I first sprayed Urea about 2 weeks after germination at .23N/M and did the same thing every 7 days for the next 3 weeks for a total of 4 apps at 1lb
Sept 15
Notice the yellow kill spot, big dog got out on the yard and took one leak, killed a spot the size of a dinner plate.
Sept 17
Sept 20
Sept 25
Oct 1
Tenacity went down on Sept 28 at 4oz rate. 37 dag
Oct9
bleaching making it look horrible in color from where I was with it setting into dark green.
I also dropped HOC on my manual to 1" for this cut to see how it looked.
Also dropped .5N/M granular where as I had been spraying my urea.
Couple collage pics to show the progression
Well if you made it this far, thanks for reading and looking through all the pics, I know when I read journals I love seeing pics more than anything to see the progression so I tried to show that here.
It's been a heck of a journey but I've had fun with it, and it's been a great learning experience and I now feel pretty confident to do this on a larger scale when that day comes!
I would like to give special thanks and mention to @Harts he's been awesome, I text him all the time and bug him and get all the answers anyone could ever need from him, he's been a personal lawn coach and senior advisor and an overall awesome dude. @Babameca is another great go to guy and knowledgeable.
This is such a great community and everyone one of you have helped me along the way so I would like to say thanks, and to all the guys making guides like @g-man that stuff is so priceless and valuable these forums are just an overall amazing place where someone can come and learn and take their lawn from crap to something of envy in the neighborhood. I applaud everyone for their contributions to making TLF such an amazing place.
Thanks!
Bryan aka BBLOCK
