Lawn Care Forum banner

coreystooks Lawn Journal

16K views 136 replies 15 participants last post by  MasterMech 
#1 · (Edited)
Wanted to just keep everything in one journal going forward. Time to get going with another season. Didn't do much at the end of the season last year as me and my wife had our first baby at the end of September. I went into dormacy at 5/8" on the reel low area and 2.5" on the big area. A couple of weeks ago I ran over the main area at 0.5" to clean it up, and then last week got the 15" Sun Joe dethatcher and tested it on half of the backyard and then scalped that section to 3/8". The Sun Joe made it extremely easy to scalp afterwards due to how much it thinned it out. I hope to get started on the rest of it sometime this week as well as getting my big area scalped. Also got to get prodiamine down ASAP the weather just hasn't cooperated with my schedule lately.

The section I did my little test scalp on

Quite a bit of rye survived the two MSM apps as well as an Alabama summer and is showing bad

Main yard as it sits now



 
See less See more
4
#29 ·
Interesting week this week. Sprayed PGR and iron Monday, then Tuesday morning as I was almost finished mowing the front the alternator on the Jake gave out leaving it dead. Now we've gotten 4" of rain since then with the mower on the sidelines. Back to the mower, I've ordered the parts to do a full battery conversion since a new alternator is $2k, there's a a guy in the Jacobsen facebook group that has done this conversion and I'm following his method so hopefully everything turns out good. I think I'm going to go ahead and spray another dose of TNEX to try to keep it under control until I get the Jake back going.
 
#30 ·
Got the battery conversion mostly done still have to tidy up the wiring but I just got it to where I could mow this morning. It works great it's very quiet all you hear is the grass being cut and a slight hum from the motors. I'm confident that it can double cut my 12K sq ft easily. Also talked to local seed supplier yesterday and they should be getting their ryegrass in any day now and prices will be much better than last year, only $114 a bag. They usually get Champion GQ but looks like they're only getting Sunrise Primo which based on what I've read is a really seed as well.





 
#32 ·
Looking really nice.

You may be able to rebuild the old alternator or have someone like ozark fairways do it and recoup some money. What was the total cost of the electric conversion? Battery powered reel would allow me to mow whenever I wanted and the price would probably come in cheaper than the consumer options that don't seem to hold up to normal use.
 
#34 ·
@Boy_meets_lawn well I was planning on pulling it apart just to try to see what went wrong but I can't get it apart. You have to pull the heat sink off to get to the bolts that mount it to the engine but I sweat this thing is jb welded onto it or something. All in it was around $290 and $260 of that was the battery.

@robbybobbywell it would have to be the e-flex because I think that's the only one that has the electric drive motors.
 
#43 ·
Day 10 update, it looks spotty but there is germination everywhere just some spots slower than others. Got another 20 or so pounds of seed on day 2 of pregerminating right now and will throw that down and really thicken it up. I didn't say when I put seed down but I did 7lbs/k the first seeding and with what's left will be another 5lbs/k. Will probably mow it Friday.
Plant Sky Natural landscape Tree Land lot
 
#50 ·
Finally got the second round of Pre-e down, had to wait on some rain since the big area isn't irrigated. Same app as before, 0.5 oz/k of Simazine and 0.21 oz/k of prodiamine. The funky looking spot you see is where I scalped down an area in August where there was some goosegrass to try and stress it out. Going to have to watch for that stuff next year.
Sky Ecoregion Cloud Tree Road surface

Sky Ecoregion Tree Land lot Plant


Here's what the big area looked like in January of 2021, I really can't believe how much it grew in just this year.
Plant Land lot Urban design Residential area Landscape
 
Top