[PNWLawnnewb]

Mowed the front at 2" and the back at 3" with the riding mower.

Debating going back to the reel mower for the front but the yard is SO green and lush at this HOC - the back yard is stressed and sad, but living still - and i THINK we've made it thru the worst of summer.

A week of low-mid 80s beginning on August 2 (8/3 was 63° at 7 am, I almost had to put on a hoodie!)

I bought one of the Big League Lawns striping kits for about $500ish after tax/shipping and installed it Saturday morning. The lawn is so stressed from heat I really cant tell if it does much. Well, the back yard looks like crap, but i CAN tell that it took the stripes. My verdict is still not made - the rollers are 48 inches wide, and i REALLY liked the fat | skinny | fat stripes, so time will tell if this thing goes on the marketplace.

No more PGR on the back this year - I'm planning a heavy overseed and even HEAVIER seeding in some of the spots that didn't take, after I amend the soil in those spots. Really bummed I won't be able to do a fall pre-emergent....

Applied the following cocktails:

Front yard:
T-Nex: 1 oz
Azoxy: 2 oz
Liquid Iron: 22 oz (leftover bottle from last app)
Main Event: 5 oz
Bifenthrin: 3 oz

Back Yard:
Azoxy: 3 oz
Main event: 8 oz
Bifenthrin: 4 oz

(I'll edit this post with a photo after work)

might take a few times but the stripes do show and they look awesome when they do!

 

[jdmcquerry]

Added .25lb/M nitrogen on 05 August.

Mowed today at 3½ with the riding mower (no edging/trimming today).

Adjusted irrigation to go 25 mins a day instead of 2 hours once a week based off a paper I read. Nothing to lose, this is perfect weather for this grass (low 80s).

When I had my driveway resurfaced a couple weeks ago (during the heatwave), I used the tractor to ferry loads of debris/dirt to the back 40, and there are obvious tracks in the yard where the grass has been injured. Hoping the N² will bring it back around, as there's an obvious improvement to the rest of the yard

Got my tiny bottle of T-methyl in the mail, 16 oz, so basically 1 application ($50).

Got 2½ gallons of chlorothalonil as well. I'm going to wait till next weekend to do a blanket app.

Applied glypho to my 2025 mini-reno... This piece is full of stuff that looks like Bermuda but may be some kinda sprawling crabgrass, but it's also got a butt load of giant pine roots and compacted earth/sand. Plan is to kill, till, fallow, amend, kill, seed. So hopefully there's enough time for all-o-dat.

"Mini-vation"

 

[jdmcquerry]

After mowing last Saturday I got bored and decided to put down .2lb/M of AMS - I've begun a weekly addition to reach the levels recommended by my soil test, and to help the grass recover from the injured areas from tractor and vehicle traffic over the last few weeks. We play cornhole in the exact same place every weekend and of course the areas beside the boards take a beating. At first I was hesitant to even play, but then I thought, why even have a yard if we cant enjoy it? So the grass gets beaten, and then it recovers during the week. What I've noticed with the nitrogen apps is that the grass recovers quickly. After 2 days and ½" of rain, there is almost 2" of growth.

8/13: Mowed to 3¾ - working my way up to 4¼ (highest setting on the T30). Still using the riding mower to attempt to justify the cost of the stripe master... I haven't quite mastered getting my stripes even widths, seems like I overlap too much (a habit of using the tire tracks for the return pass - basically only using about ½ the width of the deck). But they look better at the taller heights.

No pics of the fresh mow - it looks kinda janky anyway because I haven't done any edging in over a month, and we are planning something different for around the raised beds adjacent to the shed. I may run the trimmer tonight.

The "Mini-vation" is dying nicely, and really highlights the depth of the green grass from the kill zone. Very satisfying. I will add pics tonight.

Monday afternoon, between rain showers....

 

[jdmcquerry]

 

[jdmcquerry]

Quick mow today at 3¾" with the T30, still no trimming, the heat caught up with me!!

Ran the scarifier over the Mini-vation and hauled off 6 wheelbarrow loads of crap. I'll do the second round of glypho tomorrow morning (8/17).

 

[Montauket]

Now that’s some bare soil!

 

[jdmcquerry]

Applied fungicide cocktail to backyard: 5.5 oz/M Chlorolanothil, 2 oz/M T-Methyl, 2 oz/M Propicanazole. Crossed my fingers to prevent the rain from coming and it worked - I had "white" dry grass by dusk and from what I've read each of these should've been rainfast in 30 mins to an hour. The brown patch has spread over large portions of the yard, so I'm hoping this works. I pulled a couple random blade to show the wife when she asked about it and even pulling from the "best" spots, the grass showed damage. Really surprising that this came about so quickly, and spread so rapidly over the last 2 weeks of high humidity and rain. I'm curious if my nitrogen apps have just been feeding the fungus - just another thing to kick my own *** over. I'll give this 3-4 days and then bag mow. Fortunately I've got family coming in a couple weeks so at least the yard will look like dogshit when they get here.

 

[Lauerw]

Applied fungicide cocktail to backyard: 5.5 oz/M Chlorolanothil, 2 oz/M T-Methyl, 2 oz/M Propicanazole. Crossed my fingers to prevent the rain from coming and it worked - I had "white" dry grass by dusk and from what I've read each of these should've been rainfast in 30 mins to an hour. The brown patch has spread over large portions of the yard, so I'm hoping this works. I pulled a couple random blade to show the wife when she asked about it and even pulling from the "best" spots, the grass showed damage. Really surprising that this came about so quickly, and spread so rapidly over the last 2 weeks of high humidity and rain. I'm curious if my nitrogen apps have just been feeding the fungus - just another thing to kick my own *** over. I'll give this 3-4 days and then bag mow. Fortunately I've got family coming in a couple weeks so at least the yard will look like dogshit when they get here.

I could imagine the family. "How much time do you spend on this?"

Mine looks awful right now too, nobody is allowed over for at least 3 weeks.

 

[jdmcquerry]

I mowed today. Bagged clippings and discarded. Plenty of fungicide left on the grass. Fortunately there's been no rain to contend with.

Some photos to show how crappy it looks.

The first pic is from August 9th, I can almost see this starting back then...

And today, August 21st:

Honestly unsure if this will recover. 😔

 

[jdmcquerry]

Resumed irrigation today (8/23). I think it's looking better, but I'm not ruling out confirmation bias. I definitely think the slightly shorter cut I gave it has helped to perk up the grass.

Ran the scarifier and raked the Mini-vation area. Added lime (27 lbs) 2 days ago. I'll set up irrigation sometime this week and pick up some bagged "topsoil" for the low spots.

This area is full of big roots from adjacent pines that I can't remove, so it's something I'll have to work around now and in the future.

 

[PlanetBeen]

I 100% feel your pain with the fungus. I have no idea when it will end and what will be left. I also have no idea if grass will grow back or if it's toast. I just can't imagine it coming back in the completely dead looking areas. I will cry tears of joy if it does. In my back yard I'm already planning an overseed since that is where I do the Pylex applications but I had absolutely no plans to overseed my brand new 4k renovation in the front.

I check the dead stuff every day looking for signs of life. When I see green I have no way to know if it's new growth or just some poor grass that hadn't finished dying yet. :-(

 

[jdmcquerry]

I 100% feel your pain with the fungus. I have no idea when it will end and what will be left. I also have no idea if grass will grow back or if it's toast. I just can't imagine it coming back in the completely dead looking areas. I will cry tears of joy if it does. In my back yard I'm already planning an overseed since that is where I do the Pylex applications but I had absolutely no plans to overseed my brand new 4k renovation in the front.

I check the dead stuff every day looking for signs of life. When I see green I have no way to know if it's new growth or just some poor grass that hadn't finished dying yet. :-(

100% believe it was the "cool" week we had, the humidity in the mornings (before work at 345 am) was in the 90s, the grass stayed wet all day. I probably screwed up by stopping irrigation, which at a minimum knocked the dew off.

Honestly, I didn't know what I'm doing at this point - is the next fungicide app preventative or curative? Do I or don't I add nitrogen to help it? What i assumed were dog pee spots earlier in the year have proven to be dollar spot, and when that dies it literally leaves a 10" circle of DIRT, no grass, just death and bare soil... 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

 

[supa]

Lacking the experience of others as this is my first season applying fungicides I lean towards if I have to question it I'll apply curative. Next spring I guess I'll start with preventative.

 

[jdmcquerry]

Lacking the experience of others as this is my first season applying fungicides I lean towards if I have to question it I'll apply curative. Next spring I guess I'll start with preventative.

I put all my chemicals into AI and created a preventative schedule for next year, including cost per app, and a running tally of my available stockpile... I plan on using it next year!

 

[jdmcquerry]

Because I can't leave anything alone, I applied .2 lb/M of nitrogen today. My parents are coming on the 2nd and I want what's alive to be GREEN.

 

[jdmcquerry]

August Summary:

Temps ranging from 58.1° to 95.9°, with a monthly average of 74.7°.

Precip was a dismal 3.06 inches with the last recorded rainfall of 0.87" on the 18th.

The yard looks like crap, in general. Fungus rapidly developed (average humidity for the month was 81%, and it wasn't uncommon to see low-mid 60 degree temps at night with 90% plus humidity levels) and killed a few hundred feet of grass.

Raking up the dead grass to bag when mowing and it looks like round-up was applied in those areas - dead brown grass, and bare dirt. This COMPLETELY negates the possibility of applying a "fall" pre-emergent because I will definitely need to re-seed those area. Might as well plan on an entire overseed at this point.

What I think I've learned: When I mowed at 2.75-3.25", the grass looked a little bit heat stressed, but I never experienced any browning that bothered me. Once I took the HOC higher to "protect" from the heat, that's when I began to see the wetness, which obviously lead to fungus. Combined with my 0.2 lb weekly additions of AMS, I was creating the perfect environment for the grass to die in.

I was really hoping to make it to September with no giant dead spots, but that didn't happen, which means in those areas, I am starting from ground zero. I will NOT do annual renovations, this takes too much time, money, and honestly, I don't think I have anything to show for it on basically the 1 year mark of my renovation.

If I can't make it through the next 2 months without more loss, I'm throwing in the towel and will sell all the shit I bought to get me this far, and go back to just having a yard full of dirt and weeds.

 

[Montauket]

Seems to be quire a few of us got delt a bad hand of fungus this year. I think I'm going to move to @Carlson house so I can look at some green grass.

 

[PlanetBeen]

August Summary:

Temps ranging from 58.1° to 95.9°, with a monthly average of 74.7°.

Precip was a dismal 3.06 inches with the last recorded rainfall of 0.87" on the 18th.

The yard looks like crap, in general. Fungus rapidly developed (average humidity for the month was 81%, and it wasn't uncommon to see low-mid 60 degree temps at night with 90% plus humidity levels) and killed a few hundred feet of grass.

Raking up the dead grass to bag when mowing and it looks like round-up was applied in those areas - dead brown grass, and bare dirt. This COMPLETELY negates the possibility of applying a "fall" pre-emergent because I will definitely need to re-seed those area. Might as well plan on an entire overseed at this point.

What I think I've learned: When I mowed at 2.75-3.25", the grass looked a little bit heat stressed, but I never experienced any browning that bothered me. Once I took the HOC higher to "protect" from the heat, that's when I began to see the wetness, which obviously lead to fungus. Combined with my 0.2 lb weekly additions of AMS, I was creating the perfect environment for the grass to die in.

I was really hoping to make it to September with no giant dead spots, but that didn't happen, which means in those areas, I am starting from ground zero. I will NOT do annual renovations, this takes too much time, money, and honestly, I don't think I have anything to show for it on basically the 1 year mark of my renovation.

If I can't make it through the next 2 months without more loss, I'm throwing in the towel and will sell all the shit I bought to get me this far, and go back to just having a yard full of dirt and weeds.

Same. Same. Same. And Same.

Yet last night found me researching phosphites for pythium prevention, bulk prices for Mefenoxam (spoiler - it's not much of a savings) and watering each zone in the back for 2 hours in a desperate attempt make up for the complete lack of rain. I have no automation so this required an alarm and walk to the back of the yard at 430am, 630am, 830am and finally 1030am. sigh

All this work and most of the yard looks terrible. Time to sell the house and move into a condo.

 

[jdmcquerry]

All this work and most of the yard looks terrible. Time to sell the house and move into a condo.

I was leaning toward just having a REALLY nice rock garden.

In all seriousness, if bermuda grass actually looked good to me, and it wasn't dormant for so long, I might consider it. The zoysia in the front is already brown all winter long - which means December till almost June these past few years, I can't imagine the backyard being dormant so long...

To think I chose the "worst" variety of grass seed, known for growing anywhere with little to no maintenance, and it's STILL failing makes me feel any type quality lawn is beyond my reach.

 

[PlanetBeen]

I was leaning toward just having a REALLY nice rock garden.

In all seriousness, if bermuda grass actually looked good to me, and it wasn't dormant for so long, I might consider it. The zoysia in the front is already brown all winter long - which means December till almost June these past few years, I can't imagine the backyard being dormant so long...

To think I chose the "worst" variety of grass seed, known for growing anywhere with little to no maintenance, and it's STILL failing makes me feel any type quality lawn is beyond my reach.

I've been talking about making the front yard a pond with paddle boats and ducks and the back yard a pool with a lazy river. And parking lots and basket ball courts. Anything that just gets rid of all the grass and lets me give up.

I had all my plans set for moving up my renovation seeding to this weekend since the weather has been so nice. Then I check the weather and of course Friday and Saturday say 90. Today I'm just pausing and tomorrow I'll start or resume planning again. I guess the Friday herbicide can move to Saturday night. I guess seed can go down Sunday maybe after it cools again. Who knows? Or seed Saturday but die from heat exhaustion. If I'm dead I don't have to care about the lawn anymore.. 😂