I sprayed the entire yard with Killzall 41% glyphosate this past Saturday at 8oz/1k. It did lightly rain about 4 hours post application, so we will see if that hurt me. No signs of death yet, but hoping to see some by mid-end of week. I am planning on making a second application as needed this coming weekend.

 

Will you be ordering sprigs or making your own from sod

 

I am going to pick up about 300 bushels of sprigs from the folks at Riverside Turf.

 

3 days post glyphosate app. It looks like parts of the yard are starting to yellow and lose color. Weather hasn’t been great since it cooled down to the 70s followed by a few days of rain this week.

 

I scalped and de thatched this weekend, amounting to about 30 bags of grass clippings .Rain all day Saturday hurt me pretty bad. I wanted to thin it out as much as possible for the next round of glyphosate. I am planning on tilling the yard pretty shallow next weekend. Around a 2” till. Just something to turn all this into dirt.

 

I ran the mower over the yard yesterday to get any remaining debris from de thatching. 8 bags later and a layer of dirt over my mower and me. I don’t know if my mower will forgive me. Hoping to till this weekend but rain is in the forecast from Thursday-Tuesday, so I’m not sure if tilling is gonna be doable yet. Anyone know exactly how dry it needs to be to successfully till?

 

Started tilling today. It rained 3/4” in about 30 mins as soon as I started! Perfect timing! We’ll see how much it dries out the rest of today and tomorrow morning

 

What’s your plan to level everything out? I Harley raked my yard and flattened it out but it ended up settling unevenly. My biggest regret is not taking the time to make sure everything is super level and settled. Might also depend on your soil type, I have pretty sandy soil mixed with clay.

 

Day 3 of tilling. I am almost done but man is this hard work. I have decided to abandon the back yard for now. Having 2 dogs wrecking it everyday, I ordered some Monaco seed to put down in the back. It just makes more sense financially, physically, and mentally to seed the back yard.

 

Update on the tilling: I’m throwing in the flag on the dirt work. I do not have the time or patience to rake up everything. I’m gonna hire out the ground prep. Hopefully this week they can scrape the excess material/grass from the yard, Harley rake, and top dress with the 7 yards of sand I thought I could manage. With that being said, I’m gonna return the Monaco seed and stay true to the plan of sprigging the entire yard with T31 now that I’m not doing the dirt work.

 

I changed the title of the journal slightly because the plans have changed quite a bit since this weekend. With enough convincing from my wife, I am going to hire someone to scrape my yard and Harley rake. After that, I will install 11 pallets of T31 sod on the front and sides, and I will sprig the back yard with T31. I have the sod delivery scheduled for 6/7. I will pick up the sprigs for the rear after the sod is down- probably the following week. I’m sure plenty of these things will go wrong to keep the journal entertaining.

 

Just picked up a greensmaster 1000 on marketplace. I’m really committed now!

 

I cleaned up the GM as best I could today. Went through a ton of rags and sponges cleaning the reel. I greased all the fittings and lubed up the reel with some fluid film. It’s looking a lot better than when I got it. At least the reel is. The recoil starter is broken so I’m waiting on a replacement for that. Outside of that, I am planning on doing all the grading on the yard tomorrow. I have 14 pallets of T31 coming next Friday. I’ll use 12 on the front yard and then I will make sprigs with a power rake out of the 2 leftover pallets for the backyard.

 

I laid all the sod in the front yard today. It ended up being about 12 pallets. The sod looked awesome when it was delivered. Prior to sod install, the yard was Harley raked after all the old fescue was scraped off. I put down starter fert the morning of the sod install. Sod got delivered at 8am this morning, and it took me and a couple buddies every bit of 11 hours to lay it. I rolled the left side after the initial watering, but didn’t have anymore energy to roll the right side, so I’ll do that tomorrow morning. The plan for tomorrow is to sprig the back yard. At this point, I can hardly walk, so that should be interesting.

 

Very nice job prepping and getting that down so cleanly!

 

I sprigged the backyard today (appx 5500 sf). I ended up using a little over a pallet of sod. I don’t think the coverage is very good, nor are my irrigation heads covering it well. Im running the irrigation about every 2 hours for the sprigs. That’s the most I could set up on my controller. I am mainly following the UT sprigging fertilization calendar with some tweaks. I’ll be throwing down .5lbs N via AS weekly as well as a foliar app of urea at .15lbs N. I’ll probably wait till the first of July to throw down some fertilizer on the front yard since I put down a starter fertilizer prior to the sod.

 

I guess this would be day 2 for the sprigs. My expectations of this going well are very low. I’m gonna give it my very best effort, but I’d be lying if I said I’m confident in this. I am currently watering them for 10 mins every two hours during the day and 6 mins every two hours at night. They stay very moist between about 5:00pm and 10am, but I can’t seem to water enough during the day to keep them as wet as I want. We have a hot, dry week ahead. I think I will start my fertilizer program on the sprigs once I’m able to dial back the irrigation. My backyard is a mud pit most of the day now.

 

This looks exactly like how my sprigs started. I couldn't step foot in my yard the first week. I probably could have watered a little less - was doing 5-10 mins every hour from 8am - 8pm. Funny enough, the areas where I had the least amount of sprigs is almost completely filled in after a month. I put a starter fertilizer out in 2 applications when I first saw roots

 

It will go better than you think. I promise. Wait for day 7-8. You will start to see the green haze appearing and new roots.

 

Day 4. I rolled the front yard again and put some fungicide down since I’m watering so much. I noticed a few patches of nutsedge popping up too. The back yard is still a swamp, BUT, there are promising signs of life in the sprigs! Should I just wait until I can dial back the irrigation to spray it? I have sedgehammer, but I probably need to get some certainty and Celsius now that I’ve got skin in the Bermuda game.

 

Day 5. Not much change on the sprigs, but the sod is rooting very well. I’ll probably be able to mow for the first time next week.

 

It has been 7 days since I sprigged the back yard. 8 days for the sod in the front. I made a few test passes at .75” with the GM1000 on the front. It is certainly ready for a mow. Lots of scalping because the sod has grown so much. I am going to dial back the irrigation on the front tomorrow. Should I just mow and bag all the clippings and let the scalping happen or try something else? I need some advice on that. As for the sprigs, I am seeing a lot more green, but nothing crazy yet. Still watering every 2 hours for 5 mins per zone.

 

Day 9. The sprigs have are noticeably growing every day. I have green nearly everywhere. I applied 0.5lbs of AS to the sprigs today. This is my first fertilizer app outside of the starter fertilizer I applied prior to sprigging. I will continue to apply 0.5lbs N via AS at least every week until it’s established. The hardest part is walking through the muddy yard. Other than that, the sod is doing really well. I mowed at 1” with the GM1000 yesterday. I’ll eventually get it down to 3/4” and go from there. It’s starting to grow laterally as well.

 

Told ya!! It’s heart breaking but once it fills in the satisfaction is worth it!

 

Day 16. Things are certainly growing. I put another .5lbs N on the sprigs. It finally rained after 16 days yesterday. I mowed the sprigs with the manual reel mower today, which was pretty challenging. I think we’re just a few weeks away from having a usable back yard. As for the front, I am mowing every other day. Once my accugage comes in, I’m going to lower the HOC to 3/4”. I will probably treat the front yard for nutsedge this weekend. I noticed a large amount of weeds in the back. I’m not sure how long I should wait to treat those.

 

Weeds are the worst when it comes to sprigging but there’s no rush to combat them. Celsius and certainty combo can take care of most. Celsius can be applied after 2 weeks sprigged. Certainty is vague but some have had good results after sprigging. I’d determine what you have and then go from there. No harm in waiting, just an annoyance I know.

 

Day 23. T31 is the thickest grass I’ve ever seen. I started mowing the front at 3/4” last week, but I think I’ll raise HOC to about 0.85” because I have to double cut at 3/4” while mowing every other day. I mowed the back at 2” with the rotary. This past weekend I applied 0.7lbs N via AS, as well as 0.15lbs N via foliar urea app. I Also put down some sea kelp with the urea. To say the T31 reacted quickly to it is an understatement. At this point, the back yard is usable, but not pretty. At least my dogs can run around again.

 

Soooo dark!

 

I believe this is day 30. The back yard is filling in slowly but surely. I sprayed some quinclorac and sedge hammer in the back in hopes of controlling the crab grass and nutsedge problems. I am still mowing the back at 2” with the Honda rotary. As for the front, the gm1000 is currently out of order. The control cable broke the other day, so I’m waiting on the replacement. I mowed at 1.5” with the rotary this past Sunday, and it turned out surprisingly well. I also applied iron by means of green effect the day before the 4th, and I am really happy with the results. Hopefully I can get the Gm up and running again shortly. It’s weird to say I miss mowing every other day.