[AggravatedMower]

Hi All,

Super glad I found this forum, and even more glad to see it's active. So I'm a first time...DIYer lawn enthusiast. Bought a Fiskars StaySharp reel mower - hedger - and about to purchase a weed wacker electric for the spots the mower does not do a hot job on (edges mostly) with what I saved up.

I live in Corona, CA and the heat here has stepped up to 90F already in spring....and it'll keep climbing to almost 110F I'm certain.

The lawn used to be green, but in order to save for a tight budget etc. I shaved down the watering of the lawn (may not have been smart) to 2 minutes for 500 Square feet patches 3x a week (only in the morning at 5AM) and 1 minute for smaller patches approximately 45-100 square feet. This includes watering for bushes and semi-large trees (I figure I can water trees less....someone correct me if I'm wrong)!

The grass started to go super yellow - almost hay like is the best description....step on it and you hear a light "crunching" noise. So, I decided to buy chemical fertilizer from Scott's - 24-0-2 I believe and spread it with my hands (because I'm too much on a tight budget to be able to afford the broadcaster now). The front yard got more fertilizer than my backyard.

I did measurements and my lawn is under 5,000 sq feet, yet the fertilizer has only marginally improved the grass in the front to show more green to my surprise (I believed the lawn was dead and fertilizer was my last-ditch effort in hoping it might come back to life).

I'm unsure of the solutions to this problematic lawn situation:

• Do I need to use more chemical fertilizer high in Nitrogen (As it seems to have brought back green grass)

• Do I simply WATER more? I have only been giving it .25" of water....A WEEK.

To aid this - I myself aerated manually (and hurt myself badly by scraping my skin in the process) my lawn 3 months ago and then watered it a bit more to get the soil more moist to attempt to fix it - but that seemed to not work as well because the grass was mostly still yellow, and getting yellower (Jan-March) to before I put in fertilizer Mid-April.

The big issue it seems is......to keep a green lawn....it comes down to an important factor: money. Whether through supplies of fertilizer, or watering - I need quite a good budget for this (something I just don't have a lot of). I'm trying to be economical while whipping my grass into shape. What do I do here?

Pictures here for reference with appropriate captions in order:

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Overview 18.6' x 25' of front lawn. Backyard is similar but has less greenery as less 32-0-2 feritlizer was put to it....(5,000 sq feet scotts bag).

Grass got greener after 32-0-2 fertilizer I put in last week.....watering 3x a week for 2 mins on 500 square feet roughly. ...but still kind of dead. Hand distributed as evenly as I could

Another angle

Soil feels dry with little circular lumps of rather semi-hard dirt...not rich deep black soil. Feels like .....clay almost or putting my hand in an old dirt pile....smells like soil but doesn't look like soil from a rich forest, etc!

Anyone know what type of grass I have? I believe it's ST. Augustine!

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[Thor865]

Watering for 2min is about as good as not watering at all

 

[AggravatedMower]

Watering for 2min is about as good as not watering at all

Had to be cut to keep in the budget....I don't think increasing watering at this time would even benefit in enriching or reinvigorating the soil...any more than 2 minutes runs off anyways and I end up with a huge wet driveway. As I mentioned in my post...it seems hydrophobic.

I noticed after aeraring, it didn't runoff as much but still did....not sure if increasing watering will really make much difference

 

[Ral1121]

Welcome to the forum. First thing I would do is read the Bermuda Bible. It is a great starting point.

https://thelawnforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1651

Next, focusing on ammending the soil is a long process and someone can correct me if I am wrong but it takes several seasons. Even then you will still need to water the yard more to keep it green and growing. Lack of water and the yard will just go dormant.

 

[AggravatedMower]

Welcome to the forum. First thing I would do is read the Bermuda Bible. It is a great starting point.

https://thelawnforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1651

Next, focusing on ammending the soil is a long process and someone can correct me if I am wrong but it takes several seasons. Even then you will still need to water the yard more to keep it green and growing. Lack of water and the yard will just go dormant.

Do you believe my lawn is dormant or dead? I can't tell the difference...guessing dormant as I noticed green again after fertilizing...please note...I can increase watering...but seems like it would run off...I don't mind increasing watering if it's actually effective! Hence if I obviously compost....I would water more frequently as originally mentioned.

My goal would be to create a naturally rich soil so I wouldn't need to keep spending money on crappy chemical fertilizers...

 

[Ral1121]

Yes I believe it is dormant. As far as the runoff issues,. There are several things that can cause that. Soil type, compacted soil, or a thatch problem can all cause excess run off.

Couple of things that would probably help out
What kind of soil do you have?
Do you have a sprinkler system?
If so what kind of spray heads?
Could you possibly get a core sample picture so we can see more closely what you are dealing with?

 

[Ral1121]

I missed the part where you said you think you have St Augustine. I am not sure what kind of grass you have. Maybe someone else will chime in. If you have Bermuda, it is definitely dormant. If it is st Augustine I'm not so sure.

 

[TC2]

You could try shampooing the lawn to see whether it will help with the hydrophobicity issue.

 

[Ral1121]

Shampooing is cheap. Get baby shampoo and put it down at a rate of 3oz/1000. It might take a few treatment but it should help out.

 

[Txag12]

Your issue is a complex one. I would suggest aerating and watering more first. Getting your soil out of it's hydrophobic state is the first thing you need to accomplish. With regards to your tree, your shallow watering will lead to it's roots coming to the surface (depending on tree species) otherwise it'll get it's water deep. I wouldn't put any more fertilizer out (for your budgetting reasons). Once you get the soil back I would use a humic acid or Milorganite instead of Scott's fert.

 

[Cory]

95% sure it's tall fescue. Lived in Temecula for 10 years in 4 different houses and they all had fescue. Needs a lot of water early in the morning.

 

[Colonel K0rn]

Welcome to TLF, we're glad you're here. :thumbup:

From the looks of some of those pictures, it appears that you don't have St. Augustine, nor Bermuda (I didn't see any stolons, and the grass blades aren't wide enough for St. Aug/too wide for Bermuda). It more closely resembles Zoysia/Fescue that is deficient of water. When grass gets dried out and placed under high heat and drought stress, the leaves will fold/curl up to slow down transpiration(water loss). You'll see a needling effect. That's what it appears to be to me regarding your grass blades. I'd like to see some closer pictures of the blades, from the crowns (what's just above the surface) to the top of the leaf blade. Grab a plugger, trowel, something to get us a profile that we can closely help you identify your grass type with. That's going to be the key thing to helping us provide you with a better direction to point you in.

Irrigating based of time is a poor practice when it comes to thinking that you're doing your wallet and your yard any favors. Watering deep and infrequently is going to be the best thing for your yard rather than 5 minutes every other day. The root systems will be shallow, and never have to stretch themselves to get to cooler soil temps, nutrients and more importantly, deeper sources of water. An irrigation audit would be a good thing to perform, as our site admin said succinctly in another irrigation related post:

Hard to say... "10 minutes" doesn't really define anything meaningful unless it is coupled with the precipitation rate. Are you using a hose end sprinkler or in-ground system?

For example, MP Rotators have a precipitation rate of 0.4 in/hr, so 10 minutes of runtime on a properly designed system is only ~0.07" of irrigation. A similar zone using sprays could have a precipitation rate of 1.50 in/hr, so 10 minutes of runtime would put down ~0.25" in that scenario. Rotors can vary wildly depending on which nozzle is installed. The best way to determine your actual precipitation rate is to do an irrigation audit with some gauges like these.

I'd recommend a soil test as well, and that's another bucket of worms to kick open. For the budget-friendly approach, you can visit your local extension office/university that can provide you with a soil test to tell you if you're at least in the neighborhood of having decent soil to start with. Your agent/Master Gardener there can be a very valuable local resource that you can become pals with. There's other options from other labs available, and nothing wrong with Soil Savvy either. Frankly, I'd rather go with Waypoint Analytical or Logan Labs as there are more experienced people here that can help you interpret your results for less than what the SS test cost, and you'll generally get your results back quicker.

 

[TC2]

95% sure it's tall fescue. Lived in Temecula for 10 years in 4 different houses and they all had fescue. Needs a lot of water early in the morning.

When I started getting into lawns I read about people being recommended, or planning to plant, "drought tolerant" fescue for the socal region (I lived in San Diego for a few years). Doesn't make any sense to me.

 

[Bunnysarefat]

You can calculate how much watering your lawn actually costs by looking at your water bill and doing some calculations on your irrigation. Your lawn needs about an inch of water per week, so assuming no rain falls we can look at it like this:

To provide your lawn with one inch of water takes a little over half a gallon per square foot (0.623 gallons).

So if you have 5,000 sq ft of lawn, you need 3,160 gallons of water. Now you need to look at your water bill, assuming your sewer rates are constant, calculate how much your water costs per gallon. I've been paying $0.003944 per gallon recently. So to irrigate your lawn with no supplemental rainfall would be about $12.45 per week.

So you can see if you can really afford, then do some calculations on how fast your sprinklers put out the water to find out how long to run your sprinklers. Hope this helps you start to see if more irritation is doable for you.

 

[Cory]

95% sure it's tall fescue. Lived in Temecula for 10 years in 4 different houses and they all had fescue. Needs a lot of water early in the morning.

When I started getting into lawns I read about people being recommended, or planning to plant, "drought tolerant" fescue for the socal region (I lived in San Diego for a few years). Doesn't make any sense to me.

It's because it goes dormant in the summer so you technically don't need to water as much and it will still retain some green if it's healthy. However most people don't know that and run their sprinklers the same amount all year. And if you have enough shade you can keep it green all year. If you go to most Home Depots or Lowe's in SoCal and look at their pallets of sod they keep in stock 99% of the time it will be tall fescue or bluegrass, the exception would be the high desert and Palm Springs areas.

 

[AggravatedMower]

95% sure it's tall fescue. Lived in Temecula for 10 years in 4 different houses and they all had fescue. Needs a lot of water early in the morning.

Woah Temecula is super close to me.

 

[AggravatedMower]

You could try shampooing the lawn to see whether it will help with the hydrophobicity issue.

Never heard of shampooing a lawn! o_o Doesn't shampoo have a lot of.....chemicals? Oh man I hope you are talking about Hair Shampoo or I'll sound silly.

 

[Spammage]

@AggravatedMower I believe you have a TTTF (turf type tall fescue) lawn, which does go dormant with drought stress, but not for long before it just dies. I would get water to that lawn immediately. You should not apply fertilizer to a lawn under drought stress either, as this can exacerbate the problem.

Two minutes of water should not run off like you are describing, unless you are using a fireman's hose. Watch the irrigation system and make sure you don't have heads spraying directly onto the concrete. Some soils can become more hydrophobic as they dry out. The shampoo is an easy and inexpensive way to try to increase the soil's ability to accept water and can be applied through a hose end sprayer.

 

[Cory]

Woah Temecula is super close to me.

Lived next to Pechanga :thumbup:

 

[AggravatedMower]

You can calculate how much watering your lawn actually costs by looking at your water bill and doing some calculations on your irrigation. Your lawn needs about an inch of water per week, so assuming no rain falls we can look at it like this:

To provide your lawn with one inch of water takes a little over half a gallon per square foot (0.623 gallons).

So if you have 5,000 sq ft of lawn, you need 3,160 gallons of water. Now you need to look at your water bill, assuming your sewer rates are constant, calculate how much your water costs per gallon. I've been paying $0.003944 per gallon recently. So to irrigate your lawn with no supplemental rainfall would be about $12.45 per week.

So you can see if you can really afford, then do some calculations on how fast your sprinklers put out the water to find out how long to run your sprinklers. Hope this helps you start to see if more irritation is doable for you.

Amazing. I will admit I did not think of it in terms of proper cubic feet.