Germination!

I looked today and sure enough I saw many young little grasslings sprouting in most of the areas that I put down seed. Sorry, no photos (not much to see anyway unless you're really close)! So that means it took about 1 week since I planted - not bad!

Fertilization

I put down some fertilizer on Sunday. I ended up putting roughly 6lbs of Endure Premium Lawn Food Plus (same as I've used before) on the whole lawn, but with less on the areas where I planted seed. On those areas I put roughly 2 lbs or so of Scott's Starter Fertilizer which I had lying around from previous trials. I watered it all in this morning with a bit of irrigation. I'll be irrigating as much as I need to to keep the soil moist. So far no signs germination!

So, this is what happened earlier this year in the backyard (I believe it was around late June)... As I mentioned I successfully fertilized the backyard back in early May. Despite the fact that we had not had much rain, I had been irrigating 2-3 times a week. I noticed the grass starting to get more yellow again and die off a bit like before, so I thought "hey, maybe it just needs some more fertilization, after all it's been growing pretty vigorously" (however, notably there wasn't that ring of happy grass near the dog's "area"), so I put down some fertilizer. I don't recall how much (probably .75lbs/1000 sq. ft.), but it was some of this stuff:

Espoma Organic Lawn Food

18-8-6 (11% slow release N)

Soon after the lawn began dying off even more, and I was kicking myself. Then, to make matters worse, a few weeks later came the watering ban.

By the end of the summer, the whole backyard was completely brown. I wish I had taken some photos, but you can see the damage after in my previous post.

Needless to say I won't be putting any fertilizer down in the backyard this fall :)

Planting time!

Wow, it has been a while - a whole season in fact!

But you didn't miss much. Here's the summary: drought.

From May 2nd through August 3rd we received a total of 2.06" of rain. Also during this period we had extreme heat with 9 days over 100 degrees and 42 days in the 90s. To make matters worse, on July 13th a watering ban went into effect, prohibiting watering of lawns and limiting watering of plants. Up until that point I was irrigating about 2-3 times per week, but even that wasn't enough to keep the whole lawn green, particularly the areas that got the most sun. This was particularly devastating for the backyard since supia bluegrass doesn't like it dry, and I had just planted the fine fescue earlier in the year (this is why fall is the preferred time to plant).

Since then, however, we have received 13.64" of rain, enough to prompt the lifting of the water ban on September 5th!

But the damage is done. The backyard lawn now looks like it looked back in March, worse actually. Here's a look as of today:

It's not a pretty sight, but I'm hoping for a big comeback like what happened this spring as some of the bluegrass survived. I'm not planning on do any renovations in the backyard for this reason, so we'll see! I must admit that this damage probably wasn't entirely due to the drought - I fertilized it earlier in the season (before the watering ban), which it did not like (whoops)... but I'll save that story for another post.

The front yard fared much better than the back, but not without some damage. Here's a look:

Possible grub damage

Possible grub damage

This patch was killed by leaf rust

As a followup to the fungicide application back in May, it seemed to take care of the problem and I haven't noticed anymore since, which is great! However, it did do a number on the grass it infected and most of it died, so the patch noted above can't be blamed on the drought - it died well before.

The rest of the yard isn't looking too shabby:

As noted, some of the damage might actually have been from grubs. I'm not certain it was necessarily the drought since the majority of the rest of the grass went dormant and survived just fine.

Now what you don't see in these photos is the seed I put down on Thursday in those dead areas. I used the same approach for planting it that I used with the fine fescue in the spring:

1. With a hard-toothed rake, I removed as much of the dead grass as possible, working up the soil beneath as much as possible
2. Then I put down the seed, just eyeballing the amount. I'd say I probably put down about 3 lbs.
3. Next I used a hand-held tiller to work the seed into the top layer of the soil where it was feasible (basically just the most damaged areas where the soil was more exposed)
4. Finally I pat it down and walked over the areas to pack the loosened soil back down (and then 2.79" of heavy rain occurred last night to mat it down even more!)

The seed I used I found at a local nursery:

Endure Execu-Turf Premium Sod Blend

19.90% Midnight Kentucky Bluegrass
19.90% Nu Destiny Kentucky Bluegrass
19.86% Sudden Impact Kentucky Bluegrass
19.84% Beyond Kentucky Bluegrass
19.79% Ruby II Kentucky Bluegrass

I thought it was a good find with some good varieties! We'll see how it does. I noticed that it's the same brand as some good quality fertilizer I've used before.

I will probably put down some fertilizer at some point soon, too, but I haven't figured that out yet (as usual), so I'll save that for another post.

I'll be keeping my eye out for germination!