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Good job! I need to get my backyard in order. It used to be luscious green grass but it has big patches of yellow and brown now.
Thanks ken! For me it;s tough to get motivated to do yard work this time of year...
When you get out there, make sure your sprinklers are getting good coverage on the brown areas. Then buy yourself a bag of Milorganite at HD and apply it before a good watering. Repeat monthly.
Honestly, I wish it were harder than that because then I could brag about how awesome I am at "lawning", but golf courses use Milorganite like it's gravy on turkey, so I gave it a shot. Holy crap it worked well.
Fill in is complete. The grass is as thick as a carpet now. I need to cut back on the amount of fertilizer as I really only get one chance per week to cut the grass and you are only supposed to cut the top third off each time. I just mowed and it was closer to the top half. Hopefully it won't brown much on the tips.
Yeah when I aerate my yard at the end of September/beginning of October, I plan on dropping a bunch of lime, milorganite and grass seed. I've given up on it this year - the weeds have taken over everyones yard in the neighborhood.
I took a look at what it might cost me to take care of my lawn myself (26,000 sq ft of turf) and the money/time/equipment costs were pretty daunting. I also learned that I had some pretty serious gaps/misconceptions in my knowledge of the annual cycle of turf grass.
I got an estimate from the service ( NutriMax) that fed our old lawn, and it came in $200 cheaper than we were paying the same guys in our old town for 1/3 the area — $500 for an annual program of 4 applications. If the results are as good as we got at the old house I will have a beautiful healthy weed-free lawn.
Thanks Mike, I am not sure I would be so eager to DIY if I had 26k sqft!
Having said that, you could pick up 26 bags (1 bag per 1000sqft) of milorganite (or just have them delivered) for about $400 (it's about $14/bag here). An hour of "tractor time" later, it would be down on the turf and you could do just that (plus spot weed control as needed) four times a year. Monthly would be best, but with 26K sqft of grass, that might be burdensome. Hell, if you have a tow-behind broadcast spreader, you could even do it as you mow.
Either way, I am looking forward to seeing come grass pics!
I took a look at what it might cost me to take care of my lawn myself (26,000 sq ft of turf) and the money/time/equipment costs were pretty daunting. I also learned that I had some pretty serious gaps/misconceptions in my knowledge of the annual cycle of turf grass.
I got an estimate from the service ( NutriMax) that fed our old lawn, and it came in $200 cheaper than we were paying the same guys in our old town for 1/3 the area — $500 for an annual program of 4 applications. If the results are as good as we got at the old house I will have a beautiful healthy weed-free lawn.
So that’s how I am going to play it.
That sounds like a good deal. If I could get something that cheap in my area I would let someone come once a quarter for that.
The seeded part of my yard is not looking good. It’s got a lot of foxtail and crabgrass.
I do think I am going to look into a pull behind spreader and a roller for overseeding this fall.
Weeds are a tough nut to crack. I have the benefit of my lawn actually being a really prolific weed, bermuda grass, and it literally chokes out most other weeds on it's own.
The multitude of chemicals (and their costs) that the guys on that lawn forum use to prevent weeds is astonishing, and it's done over and over on the same lawn. I would opt for someone else to do it, too, if I had 26K sqft of issues.
Like I said, I am looking forward to some lawn porn pics...
Time to scalp the beautiful bermuda and overseed with Rye for the winter. All the area golf courses are in the midst of overseeding.
I ordered 10# of Champion GQ rye seed, should be here within the week.
I also ordered a pint of Bifenthrin to spray the lawn, yard and house for bugs. The mosquitoes here right now are brutal because we had rains last week and the week prior and nothing drains into the hard clay soil. Lot's of runoff areas that are normally dry rock or grass look like small ponds and they are breeding tons of mosquitoes.
Time to scalp the beautiful bermuda and overseed with Rye for the winter. All the area golf courses are in the midst of overseeding.
I ordered 10# of Champion GQ rye seed, should be here within the week.
I also ordered a pint of Bifenthrin to spray the lawn, yard and house for bugs. The mosquitoes here right now are brutal because we had rains last week and the week prior and nothing drains into the hard clay soil. Lot's of runoff areas that are normally dry rock or grass look like small ponds and they are breeding tons of mosquitoes.
So...will you be telling your 2 Princesses to "get off your lawn"...?
Why do you need to do that? Never seen anything like this.
Overseeding is common in AZ because the Bermuda grass everyone grows here goes dormant and brown in the cooler temps from Late October to March. If you want a green lawn in those months, you scalp the Bermuda as low as you can and put a cool weather grass down. The common one is Perennial Rye (all the golf courses and landscapers use it). The Rye grows well in these cooler months, and then as soon as it warms up the Rye cannot survive, and the Bermuda comes out of dormancy and greens up. I could leave the Bermuda alone over the winter and have a brown lawn (and lower water bills), but I like the green lawn.
Originally Posted by SamDoe1
Why are you putting down rye with the intention of chemically killing it?
Great question. The answer is that while the Rye will naturally die on it's own as the soil/air temps warm up (even the perennial, it does not survive the summers), allowing it to dye on it's own causes a chemical release by the rye that inhibits the spring green-up and growth of the Bermuda. This is the reason I had to scalp and re-seed Bermuda this past spring. I didn't know about the effect of Allelopathy on the green-up of the Bermuda, and my Bermuda never really came out of dormancy well.
That's a lot of work to have a lush green lawn.
I'd be happy with a dormant lawn & easier/cheaper maintenance, but I'm a cheap-ass, so there's that too.
Since my yard is so small, I don't have/use the proper equipment. As a result, it took me 6 hours total, including a sprinkler head repair. Not bad to have grass all winter.
Winter... Ha! I wish I could see a little bit of my lawn in Winter. Backyard is a muddy, snowy, shit filled area thanks to my dogs and the cold weather!
