Looks great!

 

A little update. Had to head out of town this week for work but got it cut again before I left and before we had some rain come in. Given my soil test results I also put down down a mix of balanced 10-10-10, 0-0-50, and some regular 29-0-5 which should give about .58 lbs of nitrogen, 0.34lbs of phosphorus, and 0.5lbs of potash. I realize I should either switch to 46-0-0 or 21-0-0 and triple super phosphate or just run a balanced vs the regular that I put down with the 5% or so of slow release urea in it. Hopefully switching that up in about two weeks when I’ll aim for putting the same levels down on there. Any recommendations for getting those improved based on my soil test are welcome as well!

Grass is growing pretty well now though and is starting to thicken up. A couple spots are a little thin especially the edges. Looking forward to seeing how much it has gone when I fly back in Saturday.

 

Looking good!

On the right side of your soil test it shows the recommended rates per 1000sq.ft per year. You can break down the NPK components if you want to get as cheap as possible. This thread is very helpful: Soil Remediation Guidelines. Your PH is at a good level so just be mindful of what you are putting down. Some things raise PH, some lower.

Urea 46-0-0 should be the cheapest N source you can get depending on availability over there. Runs about ~$40 for a 50lb bag here in NJ. SOP or MOP to raise up your K should be cheaper than the Urea. I saw you already have some SOP.

 

I’ve glanced through that and need to do a better dive into it. Have some SOP but it’s hard getting in bigger bags up here in Alaska. Wish I could fly with it as my office is in Oregon so easy enough for me to fly some home if TSA would allow it.

I put the recommended lbs per acre from the soil test into a calculator from University of Georgia which allowed me to put my sqft and select whatever fertilizer you have or want and gives the amount to put of each. I thought it was a pretty decent calculator to help and just broke that total into 6 equal amounts to put out over the next few months. Given the lower P and K values would spoon feeding like that be smart?
I was surprised to see the pH actually alright. I was figuring I was going to be pretty acidic as many in the area are.

 

Lawn is looking great!

 

Came back and had the fiancé mow while I was out of town on Friday and mowed Sunday and still was taking a bit off. I I’m looking into PGRs and hopefully will be alright with this young grass. Mowed again today and just in a day I was pulling about 1/4-1/3 of an inch with it set at 2inches. I want to start bringing it down closer to the 1-1.5 inch mark and run there.
The remaining bit of my yard work is about to get started this week. Dort guy is coming this week between our rain and getting that knocked out which will let the area start soon. With that also had a quote come in for a full irrigation system setup for my property. I had toyed with trying to make do and moving sprinklers around this first year but they have an opening in the next few weeks and would be perfect timing to have all that set after the dirt work is done. It’s a little sticker shock but end of the day I know it is the better way to go. Now to convince the fiancé fully on that.

 

Been a couple days but I have been manually mowing every other day still. I’m waiting for my swardman to show up still. We had a few great days up here and my dirt work guy finally was able to make it to my house Thursday and did some prep work for my main lawn area. It’s quite bumpy with some major holes got that all filled and just need to get the top soil in. The fourth threw that plan off though as the pit was closed even though we had perfect weather Friday and Saturday. This next week we are looking at a bunch of rain which will throw everything off to getting irrigation in and getting the rest of the lawn planted. I have tree removal stuff happening Friday and irrigation was supposed to start Friday as well with the hook up inside the house with the outside stuff happening on the 14-16th. They say you have until mid August to get stuff going up here but I want as much time as possible especially with this other area being mostly KBG.

Now to the front left that is growing, I have been manually pulling some weeds I have been seeing pop up but luckily not a lot really in there. I did notice a few blades though that have bleached out. I haven’t applied tenacity to it this year as it showed up just after I seeded and I didn’t want to risk it being about 4 days after seeding. Not quite sure what is going on as it isn’t big patches just a few blades. Or max temperature up here has been maybe hitting low 70s so I’m not thinking any fungus pressure either only thing I have started doing is watering every 3 days which is putting about .3inches of water each time vs daily for shorter which I did until about a week and a half-two weeks ago

 

Not sure what's going on with those few white blades, but the rest of the grass looks happy.

 

Got a quick mow with the new swardman that finally made its way up here and was delivered today. My does this thing strip! Got some nitrogen down again and some more potassium down still trying to get those values up. The front left corner of this area has some lighter patches that I’m hoping is just wanting to be fed given it’s still new. I’ll probably still keep the manual reel going on this but wanted to test the new mower out.

It’s going to be a busy few weeks now that I got my front and side yard put in. We had a break in the forecasted weather and had 10 truckloads of topsoil brought in today and my dirt guy got it all spread out.

Irrigation is coming Friday for the backflow preventer and then Tuesday to start running all the lines. Headed down fishing Thursday for a couple days, back for two, and back out for a few more days of fishing. My hope is to have everything in and ready so that between fishing I’ll get everything in this seeded with the mix of total eclipse and obsidian on 7/20-21. That will give it a good 2-2.5 months before we should have any frost. Hoping that is going to get me through the winter with enough established that I won’t have too much to fight with come next April.

 

Irrigation day is here and all that work establishing my front section is going to see some disturbance. Have to hope feeding it last week and a good stretch of growth will help it bounce back when it’s all done. As for the rest of the yard it’s going to make getting that total eclipse down and staying moist so much easier! Plan is to get that seeded on Saturday night/ all of Sunday and hope I don’t have any problems with weather while I’m gone for four days fishing! Pictures to come!

 

I think they got all pipe pulled and set today which I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I know they quoted me a three day job for this so in about five hours worth of work and how far everything needed to get ran I’d say that wasn’t too bad. Main guy said this is taking more than the 38 heads to cover the total area. I need to remap out the new area to get a for sure size down so I can get that seed ready for Sunday. Going to be a bit as well getting some of this stuff fluffed up again especially the side area since their machine worked a bit in that area. Definitely excited for this to be in though and hopefully a bit better water control vs my temp setup. While I still needed some leveling work in the PRG section I’m really going to need to after this. All in all looks like we are at 41 heads which will be interesting how this balances out valve wise. I’m limited with a 6GPM refresh so they were keeping it at 4 heads per zone but I know the front left is 2 zones of 3.
I had to get the front left mowed though as I was trying to make sure utility marks stayed for them but that meant it growing more than I wanted.

Now to work around them tomorrow getting concrete poured so we can finally use our hot tub as well.

 

Are you still going to have 11k sq ft after this, or is that number going up?
Reread - going up to the 11k - got it.

I have 33 heads on my 16k - four per zone with one zone having five. I also have a fairly slow well refresh and need to run for a couple hours per zone to get a good soak.

Always good to see the bare soil prepped for a new lawn. Exciting!

 

Are you on a standard pressure tank or a constant pressure system? Right now I’m on a standard 60/40. Overall up here I think I’ll have less water demand from the system as I’m not getting weeks above 80+ through the year but curious to see how much I’ll need to fully run the system after establishment. The bigger thing will just be ensuring coverage with some pressure drop off with running longer times with the lower refresh rate.

 

Should be increasing about 11k of new lawn with all this but it’s going to be a bit to get some areas fluffed up before seeding. When they came out and quoted and designed everything they thought to run it a little more than the refresh rate and just put a pause between but I’m only down 145 for the casing and water level is 115. The other place we were having built was a refresh of 65gpm which had me excited until the builder incorrectly built structural things that we found.

I am super excited though for this and after seeing my section I set up for the PRG and how well the soil was moist when they dug all that up I know this new area should do quite well.

 

I think I am officially nervous/ frustrated in all this process. I have been pretty good on all our around the house projects considering we have only been in the house for four months but now with the front yard project I’m a bit worried. When they came in and put new topsoil I was worried there wouldn’t be enough to be as deep as I wanted. The area had some grass growing but was sparse and quite bumpy and in parts rocky. They did scrape most of the area but still worried it wasn’t cleared enough. The irrigation has pulled a bit of rocks up which I know there wasn’t much to do about that but everything feels either fully compacted from the equipment or too soft as they couldn’t pack it when putting it in on the couple slope areas. They aren’t quite done yet with irrigation but should finish tomorrow but I did notice two valves leaking tonight after they left and one head is leaking. Have a couple things to address with them tomorrow but hopefully that will ease a little worries going forward.

side note I did get the front left mowed again tonight now that it was all cleaned up from running the valves and pipes and brought it down to 1.25” and wow does it look good. At least that was a good booster considering the big lot of dirt I have elsewhere.

 

Irrigation in and running. I already feel better after seeing it going. Trying to get a bit of moisture down into the ground so it will not be fighting when seeding. Weather is great for seeding but would love to have a good slow rain just to prime it for me. I’m going to need to do a full audit on here to see how much it’s putting down but it is much better than I could have done manually watering this large of an area! There are a couple tweaks I think I need to do for sure and one is checking the spin down filter. I feel they installed it backwards given the flow direction and the sediment inside the filter with no way to remove so going to check that and see if that is working as intended. Finally on to the next step in the journey though!

 

Congrats! Definitely do an irrigation audit on each zone to see how long it takes to put down an inch.

 

Finally back from vacation and was able to get seed down. Having the full system is quite a bit different vs the above ground set up I had on a smaller area. It’s taking me a bit to get used to the full irrigation and right now I’m just watching it and running a few minutes at a time to areas that are starting to dry out. A few spots are needing to be hand watered too as some areas are hard to get full overlapping given a bunch of 90 degree heads.

I have had to curb some expectations on this bigger project area just given some slopes and the top soil not as thick and even compaction as I would like. I’m hoping to get a decent base down this year with what’s left of summer and beginning of fall to help bind the soil up and tackle the hopefully smaller problem areas next spring. I already can tell I have some drainage that I will need to address come next spring.

 

Update for the PRG section. My does it look good double width stripes! Super proud of this section. Now if I can get the other side to be half as good I’ll be really happy. I put down 75lbs in the 10,687 remaining bit with a mixture of total eclipse and obsidian. I’m sitting at 53lbs of total eclipse and 22 of obsidian but I feel on the slopes I might be a little light. I’m going to have a lot of leveling work to do on the slopes when it’s established as it’s soft in many spots.

 

Well we are getting some rain which I was hoping just to aid with keeping the new seeded area moist but it’s coming down more than I had wished for. I knew the area between the drain field and the house was going to be challenging especially without getting this water removed from the low spots but I’m going to have a big washout now. This area is just too compacted and poor drainage until I get a French drain in this may be a lost cause. Also not being able to get glyphosate down before the top soil was brought in a few weeks ago due to rain that fell right after they did some prep ground work isn’t helping with some vegetation coming up from under as well. A little envious of everyone with decently flat lawns in terms of grading. Everyone else in my neighborhood has pretty flat grades for their lawns I’m the only one with a big mound and drain field in the front.

 

After .53 inches yesterday majority between 11-4 we are hopefully nice for a few days now. Definitely have some washouts in the new seed area but besides that and the poor drainage a good amount did fine. Actually see a couple new sprouts coming up which should be the PRG starting. The back yard area though just as I was suspecting is getting hit with some fungus. I wasn’t sure on some of it before as I never was seeing this but parts of the turf just didn’t look as great.

the front PRG stand looked alright though. I’m hoping just a couple spiderwebs on that but will need a preventative down considering the back area. There quite a few small slugs though throughout and will have to set some beer traps for those.

 

That cottony looking mycelium in the second photo looks like pythium blight - you may want to get some azoxystrobin down fairly quick to stop it. It spreads pretty quickly left unchecked.

 

That is not what I want to hear. It’s quite difficult to get anything up here by I have found for some herbicides and fungicides. I’ll do some digging and see what and who will ship up here. And get a rotation on there. Thanks for the heads up of that!

 

Propiconazole is super useful stuff but just be aware it doesn’t work on pythium. The mefenoxam will though for sure - I use that regularly and it is highly effective, just insanely expensive.

 

Yep knew the propiconazole wouldn’t touch pythium but did seem to overlap with a few others that azoxy also covered such as pink snow mold which I know we get here too time to time. At least for pythium hopefully having a rotation on that would be a good thing. It definitely is spendy that’s for sure

 

Well new seeded area has taken a beating. In the two weeks it’s been down we’ve had just under 3 inches of rain and it hasn’t been even and slow. I’m sitting at DAG 10 on the PRG and about 4-5 on the KBG so I’m guessing that’s why it’s not as good looking as it was on the PRG alone area I have. There are several areas that have washed out or just have stayed way too wet from the rain. I did get one spot mowed today after a day of no rain so I’m hoping I can at least get this section looking alright by the end of the year. I know the other areas will come in and just is going to take a bit to get there with the KBG.

 

We got a little break the past few days in the weather and yesterday the yard really blew up. I think finally drying out has helped most of this new area. The soil brought in I’m pretty positive is mostly clay which with all the rain we got held so much and may have slowed germination down. When you get on top of it still quite thin but for how much it filled out I’m still hopeful for most of the yard. The moose have shown up and decided I needed some more dips and ruts that the rain didn’t do enough of though. Guess I can’t complain since we haven’t had any around the house since Memorial Day.

 

Looking good!

 

Got .2lb/k of AMS down across everything yesterday considering how much growth has been there. Spots that had some washout and pooling of some seed are filling in great too bad the full yard isn’t that thick😂. We are supposed to get a little rain this afternoon but back to decent weather after. I’m not sure if it’s worth reseeding the areas that have washed out this year now or just wait until the spring just given I’m going to need to bring some more soil in for all the rutted areas. I’m more leaning on getting what I can grown and set for the winter now and taking that on in the spring. I could put Obsidian down and get that going but with the long term of being mostly KBG that’s why I’m leaning on just waiting it out. If I could reliably grow into late October up here I’d consider putting just *** down in those areas but feel I’m just past my window. Now because of that we will have a long fall up here vs our maybe month of it.

 

Everyone is getting ready for overseeding or full reno seed down and I’m here trying to keep the leaves off. It’s slowly coming and ramping up how many are on the yard everyday! Wondering though what’s the latest anyone would keep feeding this prior to fall and winter? I’d like another time or two on the new seeded area which would get me just about to first frost potential which can be middle to end of September. Problem there is irrigation will be winterized in September some time so going to lose that ability to water in with that. Still have hoses if need be for it but considering it’s still going to be fairly young. Same with my more established area. It’s looking great and honestly pictures I don’t think do it justice.