Honestly if you are going to put that much effort in, you are clearly looking for high level results. Don't do it now, wait until late July early aug to start and be ready. KBG can take so long and then you risk it being mature enough for heat. I did 90% kbg and 10% rye, the rye helped cover the area quickly and retain moisture but I started mowing when that hit 3/4" to make sure the canopy was still open for the kbg.

I would recommend two glypho apps, I rushed my last reno due to weather and only got one app, now I'm frustrated with some poa. I wish I would have done glypho, wait three weeks, glypho again, wait two weeks, then clear the area.

 

In my opinion, definitely too late if you still need to do a complete kill off of current yard. If you were starting with a blank slate today and you could seed right away I'd say it would be doable with proper diligence. But if you seed in the beginning of May, you aren't getting out of sprout and pout until June and with Midwest weather it could be 80+ degrees for several straight days by that point. Seems like you want to do it right. Seed the hole, reno in the fall.

 

I agree with those posts above. 100% wait if full reno. You can plan the timing of everything, but almost never will it go according to plan. Your glypho May take longer to kill, weather may prohibit timing of seed down, etc etc. There are a lot of variables that we have no control over. If you haven't yet, look in the lawn journal threads for renos and it will provide a lot of insight, and most likely examples of how things never go as planned.

 

I agree with the above. Seed the hole with perineal rye seed you can have a lawn in two weeks then go with your renovation at the right time. You can rye seed cheap at hancock seed ships free and 10% off.

 

I have done 2 spring renovations now with KBG and you will be just fine. Here is how to proceed:

1. Make sure to do the first round of glyphosate early enough. In the spring it takes a long time for the grass to turn yellow to indicate that it's dead (even with round-up brand glyphosate). I was not able to seed till June 1st because of this. Get your glyphosate down on a nice sunny day in the first or 2nd week of May. Some of it always survives so you will need a 2nd round and then also to spot treat some patches before dropping seed.

Drop you seed in the final week of May or middle of may if you think it's going to be warm. Remember that temps affect germination rate so you can adjust your seed rate slightly higher to compensate. Be sure to save enough seed to fill in any bare spots. 1-2lbs of extra seed on hand should do it.

In July you need to watch the grass carefully and water. Seeding in spring requires more water as you have to make the seedlings last through July/August.

The benefit with seeding in the spring is you can do the "fall nitrogen blitz" (see the guide in this forum), so your grass will begin to fill in quite well before going dormant.

No renovation is easy to be honest. There's always challenges no matter when you seed. Go ahead and do it now since that's what you were learning toward anyway.

 

I would definitely wait until late summer to do this. As others have said your clearly looking for high quality results. To put that effort in and then seed at a non ideal time could be a waste. In reality you only need to wait a extra 2 1/2 - 3 months from your planned seed down day. Renovations can have many challenges. Especially a all bluegrass reno. The best way to be successful is to take out the unnecessary variables if you can.

 

Thanks for the responses.

My thought was that since I have 10lbs of seed (@2lbs/1000 would be 4lbs for my 2k sqft) I would have at least two attempts. I figured that any germination/surviving grass would only be a plus for the fall attempt (essentially turning the fall seeding into an overseed project, with the added benefit of already having killed off all the undesirable grasses/weeds in the spring so I can time the second attempt a lot easier/sooner in the fall).

If I wait to start the reno until fall, when should I be doing my glyphosate applications? The lawn would be mostly dormant in July, so wouldn't I have to wait until August to start the glyphosate? That would put me around the end of August for seed down?

 

Thought I'd add some pictures so you can see what I'm working with.

Last fall (October 2020)

Current after tree removal (March 2021)

 

It's not a big lot you might be able to pull it off but still voting for a quick total rye over seed now you can have a lawn in two weeks to at least get you to smile and have no soil erosion then go for the full KBG this fall

 

Don't let the lawn go dormant this summer. Keep it irrigated so your spraying glyphosate on a lawn that is currently growing. The lawn looks thick. You don't have to overseed this lawn this spring. If you wanted to only seed the area where the tree was that would be fine.

Start your glyphosate apps in late June or early July so you can get in 3 apps of gly before seeding. In your area you can seed end of July or first week of August.

 

Although i have never done a spring reno i believe there are desinct advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages would be the ability to kill off all poa a which is plaguing my fall reno currently. My fall reno experienced multiple washouts which carried both the seed and the tencity resulting in bare spots and a ton of poa a. Less washouts in the spring
Disadvantages would be you need to irigate like crazy to keep your young grass alive and you will have crabgrass. Imo crabgrass is easier to deal with than poa a. The main part will be keeping it alive through the heat and then being proactive with pre m in the fall.

Many have failed with a spring reno but it is possible.

 

I have done 2 spring renovations now with KBG and you will be just fine. Here is how to proceed:

1. Make sure to do the first round of glyphosate early enough. In the spring it takes a long time for the grass to turn yellow to indicate that it's dead (even with round-up brand glyphosate). I was not able to seed till June 1st because of this. Get your glyphosate down on a nice sunny day in the first or 2nd week of May. Some of it always survives so you will need a 2nd round and then also to spot treat some patches before dropping seed.

Drop you seed in the final week of May or middle of may if you think it's going to be warm. Remember that temps affect germination rate so you can adjust your seed rate slightly higher to compensate. Be sure to save enough seed to fill in any bare spots. 1-2lbs of extra seed on hand should do it.

In July you need to watch the grass carefully and water. Seeding in spring requires more water as you have to make the seedlings last through July/August.

The benefit with seeding in the spring is you can do the "fall nitrogen blitz" (see the guide in this forum), so your grass will begin to fill in quite well before going dormant.

No renovation is easy to be honest. There's always challenges no matter when you seed. Go ahead and do it now since that's what you were learning toward anyway.

This.

If you have irrigation, I wouldn't let a spring seed/reno scare you off especially such a small area. I seeded 17k sq ft May 31 last year and it turned out great. Just need to monitor your water and I put down fungicides just to be safe. I detailed everything in my journal last year.

 

Thanks for the reply, I have irrigation

I'm still debating between the two. I have the stump grinder coming back tomorrow to grind down some high spots (want to make sure the roots have room to grow). If I start spraying glyphosate this week, I could potentially seed on April 25th. Timeline would look something like:

April 7th - gly
April 14th - gly
April 17th - scalp/scarify/aerate (is 10 days from the first app and 3 days after the second app enough time to get a full kill?)
April 18th - fill low spots/level lawn
April 21st - last gly app on anything that remains
April 25th - (potentially power rake/scarify one more time?) Seed down/tenacity app for pre-em

On the other hand, delaying would give me extra time to really level out the lawn and as SNOWBOB11 said I can keep the grass actively growing through summer and start the kill process earlier (early July) in order to time the seeding for the end of July/Aug 1st. I feel like this will result in less rushing to get things done in terms of prep work.

Let me know what you think about the above timeline (and questions).

Thanks.

 

Thanks for the reply, I have irrigation

I'm still debating between the two. I have the stump grinder coming back tomorrow to grind down some high spots (want to make sure the roots have room to grow). If I start spraying glyphosate this week, I could potentially seed on April 25th. Timeline would look something like:

April 7th - gly
April 14th - gly
April 17th - scalp/scarify/aerate (is 10 days from the first app and 3 days after the second app enough time to get a full kill?)
April 18th - fill low spots/level lawn
April 21st - last gly app on anything that remains
April 25th - (potentially power rake/scarify one more time?) Seed down/tenacity app for pre-em

On the other hand, delaying would give me extra time to really level out the lawn and as SNOWBOB11 said I can keep the grass actively growing through summer and start the kill process earlier (early July) in order to time the seeding for the end of July/Aug 1st. I feel like this will result in less rushing to get things done in terms of prep work.

Let me know what you think about the above timeline (and questions).

Thanks.

It really depends how level you want things to be. If you want a putting green, having all summer to do it might be beneficial. If you want it pretty level, you should have plenty of time this spring.

Skip the scalp/scarify/aerate on April 17th and do that on seed down day or the day before. Why do it twice?

Water the day after you gly so the grass processes it as much as possible.

What's your weather look like for the next couple weeks? NW IA is pretty close weather wise to the southern 1/3 of Wisconsin and it is going to significantly cool back down. This might be a question for someone else but how much does grass process gly at lower temps?

 

I bought a Sun Joe scarifier for christmas, maybe just looking for additional reasons/opportunities to test it out haha, figured an extra pass or two with the scarifier before aerating and leveling couldn't hurt. Not sure if I'll have time to do everything in one weekend so I was thinking I would break it up into two weekends (17/18th and the 24/25th).

The weather is looking pretty decent, the 14 day forecast shows highs between 55-60 and lows of around 40-45. Additionally the averages for the month are pretty similar around 55-60 and lows down to 40.

I have been seeing a lot of grass greening up lately.

 

Just remember that if you aerate, you might be exposing more weeds that will show up when you start watering seed. And depending on where you get your dirt from, you might be bringing in more weeds that would require the fallowing process. I brought in top soil for my reno and some unknown weed went crazy. Luckily i was able to glypho that before seed down. Like others have said...spring probably is possible. I just think you should assess what people have said and make your own determination. I think it's all a gamble. But your odds are more in favor come fall in my opinion.

...this is a good thread

 

Thanks Slingblade, I'm not as worried about weeds as I am about killing all the current Fescue grass and getting the new KBG grass to survive summer, but as evidenced by KoopHawk it can be done with enough water.

Weeds can always be killed later with some herbicide and a pre-emergent for next spring. As long as I end up with (mostly) KBG in the yard it will fill in the dead spots.

When I did my spring Fescue renovation (I liked the wide leaf blades and drought resistance at the time, but now want the darker color and spreading abilities of KBG) I had an extra 3-4 weeks of growing time that I won't have for the KBG (due to the long germination period). That is why I was more worried about the length of time, but seeing KoopHawks renovation has put my fears there at ease. He was able to seed around May 31st in temperatures much higher than I would have and I would be seeding here about a month earlier than that.

Both his KBG renovation and my previous spring Fescue renovation turned out fine as seen in the (first) picture I posted earlier, which was taken near the end of fall.

 

Got a few goodies today. Wanted to replace my impact sprinklers which aren't very consistent with the coverage. I saw some reviews on this sprinkler and it seems pretty gentle/consistent and was in stock locally, going to pick up one or two more to make sure I have full coverage. Wanted to play around with a water timer last year as well but never bit the bullet, so I decided to pick one up for this reno.

 

Finished filling the hole from the tree, as well as all the divots and problem areas that I knew were low.

Also, put down the first app of glyphosate (a little late on my projected timeline, but it has been raining on and off the last 3 days and I didn't want it washing away right after I put it on).

 

good luck! did a complete reno on my back in fall 2019 with Mazama/Midnight and did my front fall 2020 with mazama mono stand and midnight mono on my strip.

 

@briansemerick Nice! Which one do you like the best mazama/midnight mix or a monostand of one or the other?

Update: Temperatures took a dip down to the 40's this past week so I don't think very much glyphosate has been absorbed by the lawn. There definitely seems to be some more brown vs. last week, but I'm going to try using a finer mist nozzle with a bit more surfactant on this upcoming application.

There is also less rain in the forecast this upcoming week so it will get more of a chance to be absorbed before being washed off.

 

I'll let you know next summer. It seems to take a full season and a half for it to really get thick and full. But I do like having monostands in some ways because you know exactly what is your grass and what is invasive and should be removed. Plus it's very consistent in color.

 

you can step on all that dirt that you used to fill in the tree stump. After that only the top 1/2 or so needs to be loose

 

Thanks for the reply @john5246, I actually chased down one of the (numerous) lawn care companies that handles my neighbors yard and had them roll my yard for 20 bucks after I was finished lol.

 

Used the Sun Joe dethatcher/scarifier yesterday which really pulled up a lot of dead material and left some nice grooves throughout the whole lawn and kind of helped smooth things out a bit more. I think most of the lawn is dead, there are still a few sprigs of green grass here and there.

A few questions:

Do you guys think these few sprigs of green here and there are a concern or will the bluegrass overtake it? Or should I do another glyphosate application this week, which would be my third?

Also do you think that with the slits from the scarifier the lawn is thinned out enough? Or do I need to try to remove more material before seeding? I can see bare dirt throughout most of the lawn where the slits are obviously.

Picture below for reference of what it's looking like: