Reserved for front yard

 

Scalped on 1/31 down to 1.25" and hit it with 1lb of N. Planning on keeping it at 1.5", Its been 3days and its really starting to grow. After much reading, I am discovering all the varieties of weeds I have. The three largest infestation are, nutsedge, poa annua, crabgrass. I am still haven't figured out a pre-emergent and post emergent herbicide plan yet. We have fruit tees along the far wall that I want to keep edible, so I need to figure something out. For now, I have been doing hand pulling.

I am also picked up a couple rain gauges and I have been working on dialing in my irrigation to target 1" per week. Not quit there yet, I may need to adjust and replace some sprinkler heads to get the proper coverage.

I was able to improve my drainage problem in the mud pit. I plug aerated and added a few bags of sand. It is still the wetter part of the yard, but not as much pooling and standing water as before. The whole yard will need to be leveled, but I need to get the lawn healthier, before taking that on.



This kids got a swingset and sanbox, so the bermuda is getting much more traffic over here.

 

8 days after scalp. Mowing at 1.5"

 

20 days past scalp.

 

Keeping it honest, it looks worse from where I started, but its been a bit of a renovation and mistakes were made. Thats how we learn, right?

So here is another twist in the story. I was right before when I said the lawn was mostly weeds. I just didn't know which weed.



I just about wiped out my lawn which I thought was mostly crabgrass. I was a little frustrated as it was coming back strong and so I posted up here to confirm what I thought was a type crabgrass was indeed crabgrass.



Nope Kikuyu, and actually a desirable grass here in Socal and that explains why the Quinclorac burn up most of my lawn. So I have accepted the fact that my lawn will be a bermuda/kikuyu blend, something I am calling Kikmuda,

My goal is to take the Kikmuda low, so I aquired a McLane 20" Reel and took it down to 7/8" to maintain at 1". I may go lower if I can get it heathly this summer after I attempted to kill it. Maybe it will forgive me.

There are patches of PRG and Dallisgrass that has mostly lost the battle to the Kikmuda at 1". At 1" it pops up over the kikmuda where it easily pulls out and the Kikmuda fills in. I have been mostly hand weeding and slowing working my way across the yard. I have some fairly large bare areas that were super low and heavily nutsedge and boggy. I have been working those areas with sand and topsoil to level and sprayed out the nutsedge that poked through with glyphosate. The kikmuda is finally started to fill in those spots. Beyond that is a poa annua green I am keeping at 1", that will be temporary until I can get the Kikmuda to keep spreading. May do some plugging later on.

Here it is 7 weeks from where I attempted to murder my Kikuyu. Both the bermuda and kikyu are coming back strong. Hitting it with some balanced fertilizer, water and praying for some warmer days, then got a fungal infection and just treated that last week. It doing better now, but not quite cured.



It is faintly striping with the Mclane. I was practicing some double wides. Hoping it in another 7 weeks it will be thick.

 

It's getting thick. Took it down to 7/8".

 

Another week, and now less scalping with the DIY front roller.

 

Post Iron and AS spray and keeping HOC at 7/8.

 

It's getting thick. Took it down to 7/8".

Is that st Augustine at 7/8?

 

It's getting thick. Took it down to 7/8".

Is that st Augustine at 7/8?

No that's is mostly Kikuyu, especially the closeup.

My St Augustine Is in the front yard at about 2".

 

I always post pics from this angle because it captures most of the yard and it tends to look best, minimizing the trouble spots far off in the distance and directly underfoot.

I have had some fairly large bare areas that were a result of heavily weed infested and poor health Kikuyu. Kikuyu with roots so shallow that chunks would pull out like lifting a rug. I recently got a pro plugger and after some experimenting I found that the Kikuyu takes well to being plugged. I use Scott's Lawn Soil with fertilizer and it the grass seems to love it. I top dress the newly plugged areas and the donor areas and keep it wet a few times a day.




In this photo the Kikuyu is most of the frame and I have common bermuda in the upper right. I am noticing that the bermuda is faster to cover the bare areas, but is eventually taken over by the Kikuyu.

I will post some after photos after these hopefully fill in over the next month or so.

 

The kikuyu was getting a little spongy at 7/8" so I wanted to drop the cut and reset my HOC.

Dropped it to 5/8", I was surprised by the lack of scalping, so I pushed it a little more and went down to 3/8. First time going this low on my McLane with my DIY roller.

 

Back at 5/8. Not sure if I will keep it this low. Maybe let it go back to 7/8. I am scalping in a few bumpy areas around my bare spots at 5/8.

The weather is warming up, and my regular localized fert, water and top dressing application is helping lateral growth of my plugs in the bare areas.

 

It's only been 4 days since my last update, but the warm weather has speeded things up.

Bare spots almost filled in.

 

So it has been about 6 months since I got serious about my lawn. Here is a before and after. Still a work in progress, but I am happy with the progress. There is still plenty of time this season.

 

I wanted to share this as Kikuyu is rather rare on this forum. Every morning, the Kikuyu sprouts these seed heads. They last until about noon, from when the wind, or foot traffic knock them down and they disappear. It is an excellent way for me to see the percentage of Kikuyu vs bermuda in my lawn. Kikuyu is taking over the bermuda.

My guess is that this is a stress response to being mowed at 5/8. My other yard has Kikuyu and St. Augustine at 3"+ and had one showing a month or so ago, and has not done anything since.

 

I sprayed 3oz/K of this Iron 36hrs ago. The color has turned out great. I think I need to pull back on the Nitrogen. I was going at 1lb/K per month via granule, and I am starting to get too much growth to keep up with when moving every other day. Kikuyu can grow up to 1" per day, and just today I was cutting off .5" after mowing on Sunday.

For the the mature areas of the yard, I don't need any more additional density, so I think I am going to pull back and start spraying .10lb/K with the iron every two weeks, and supplement the bare areas with the 0.8lb/k/mo of N via granule.

I also am going to start experimenting with including PGR in my bi-weeky iron/N program and see if I can further reduce mowing without losing color and density, suppress seed heads, while keep it spreading in my bare areas.

Iron - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07V4NJ53H/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

PGR: https://www.domyown.com/pramaxis-mec-plant-growth-regulator-p-23245.html





You can see here my donor plug holes. The bare areas in the center of the. yard all all but gone. The plugs take a while to recover from the transplant, but once they bounce back they spread quickly.

 

Just completed what might be my last reel mow for a while. My Mclane motor keeps dying under load and now wont stay running. It did this when I first got it, and I had to spend a lot of time cleaning up the carb. Will give that another shot, before going with the Predator swap. The Predator is out of stock within 150miles, so I hope I can get it running, or I will be back on the rotary at 1.5". This will definitely change my plans to start PGR.

 

The Predator swap was not an option, so I decided to clean and refurbish the carb. Got her running again, and now back to mowing. It was now over an 1", and I wondered if I should give up on my 5/8 and go to 7/8 given the length.

I decided to go for it at 5/8 and see what happens.

I am not sure if it is the heat or the extra days growing, but I feel like I have lost some momentum. Its not looking as good as it was on Monday.

Before:



After:

 

Now that my reel mower is back running reliably, I can go ahead with my plans for pgr.

Today I reset the HOC, by scalping down the 3/8". There is still plenty of green when going down lower. Hopefully can keep cutting at 5/8 without further scalping.

After bringing it down I sprayed 0.15 fl oz per k of Pramaxis, some Iron and nitrogen. Also put down some granular balanced fertilizer too.

 

Went ahead a mowed again today (keeping my every-other day schedule). This time at 5/8. Some of the scalped areas have not recovered yet. I wanted to see how much the PGR was working. There really wasn't much to mow compared to normal, so it definitely helped in suppressing growth. Still had seed heads this morning.

I won't be able to mow again until Sunday, so we will see how much suppression I get. Last time I went 3days between mowing, and I got almost 1" of growth. This time it will be at least 4 days.

Its looking more yellow than normal. I am hoping the color will bounce back with iron and fert that I put down with the PGR.

 

Mowed again 4 days after my last mow, and 6 days into my PGR. After 4 days of not mowing, I got 3/8 of growth even after a N application. In the prior week, unregulated I got 1" of growth in 3 days. So It's looking good so far. It has been ideal growing temps over the last few days too.

If the trend continues, I could see my new mow schedule to be every 4 or 5 days rather than every other day, especially when temps are cooler and I have not just spread a granular fert.

For Pramaxis, I started at a 50% rate, so I could possibly raise the rate to dial in a once a week mow schedule. However, I still need to wait and see if the application will last the 14day interval, without bounce-back. I am also excited to see the impact to density, if it will have similar impact that I have seen on the forum with Bermuda.

 

Mowed again after 2 days. Tried to hold off, but I like mowing and had the opportunity.

You can see patches of lighter green, these are areas with lots of new growth. It seems that Kikuyu starts out much lighter and darkens at is matures. I expect this to even out as I keep the same HOC or move up.

Almost fully recovered from the HOC reset last week. Still have some areas that need to green up more. most of the bare areas in the middle of the lawn have fully filled in, and I am spending more time cultivating the far edge under the tree that still is fairly bare. Now that I have a bigger area of healthy Kikuyu. I can start plugging or sprigging the far area.

 

It has been 12 days since the pgr application and over the last two weeks I was doing research on Kikuyu and the GDD. I found some research that applications of Trinexapac-ethyl 11.3% at similar rates that I applied were good for 268 GDD. I had planned to reapply at 14 days, but given the warmer temps, my GDD hit 291.5 today, I opted to reapply today and start tracking GDD using Lawn Track.

I measured the grass today, and it was at 7/8. At the PGR rate, I was getting 1/8 per day of growth. Which means I was able to stretch my mowing to every 3-4 days. So I increased the rate from 0.15 to 0.20 /k with the hopes of getting an extra day in between mows.

Also put down 0.14lbs /k of N via AS, and 3floz /k of Iron.

I also started a sprigging experiment in the bare spots at the far end of the yard. I have long Kikuyu runners with long blades in the front yard (kept at 4") and it hardly is noticeable when removed. But since the grass has been kept long the space between the grass blades is much bigger. In a separate are area I have pulled runners from my rear lawn that is kept at 5/8. The grass blades are more dense on these runners, as it has adapted to being cut low.

I feel like the long grass runners are more viable and may be a better to establish over the shot cut runners. I am hoping they establish quicker than the plugs. I will get some pictures tomorrow and get in another mow.

Short cut regulated


Unregulated long cut

 

Looking good after a mow!