Lawn surgery

Hot off the heels of the last application of Tenacity, since most of the creeping bentgrass is now dead (or at least appears to be dead) I didn't want to waste any time since this is the ideal time (for central Indiana) to plant grass seed. But before I did, I wanted to make sure that it's ok to plant so soon after spraying. I found an FAQ page with these questions and answers:

On which grasses has Tenacity been tested for use at or prior to seeding?
Tenacity is safe for use at or prior to seeding on Kentucky bluegrass, tall fescue, perennial ryegrass, and centipedegrass. Application at seeding can be made to fine fescue only if it is less than 20% of a seed mixture.

What are some of the unique benefits of Tenacity herbicide?
Tenacity has pre- and post-emergence activity on 46 dicot and monocot weed species. It can selectively control perennial monocots such as bentgrass and nimblewill and annuals such as crabgrass and goosegrass in many turfgrass species. Tenacity can be applied at the seeding to prevent weed germination and allow the turfgrass species to establish without weed competition.

I remember reading that, but I had to double check because it just seemed so counter-intuitive seeing as it turns mature Kentucky bluegrass tip white, so you'd think that young grass would be even weaker and more susceptible. Apparently not, which is fine by me!

I went ahead with planting some seed on Monday (9/2).

For this project I ended up using up a bunch of remaining stuff I had on the garage from previous years: some Scott's starter fertilizer, a bit of GreenView Grass Seed Accelerator (left over from this project), and hesitantly/fearfully the seed I used for last years reseeding. The other stuff should be fine, but the seed had a sell by date of 4/13 and of course is over a year old. I did a search online regarding the use of expired seed and the (completely unofficial) general consensus I gathered is that most of the seed should be fine as long as it was stored properly (e.g. not exposed to moisture), but to expect germination rates to be be lower (more so the older it is). As I often tend to do, I decided to take the risk, but put down more seed than I normally would to hopefully compensate. If 25% of the seed germinates, I'll be happy. We shall see.

Also "reused" in this project was the dead carcasses of the dead creeping bentgrass in lieu of straw or some other mulch, because I 1) didn't have enough of the Greenview Grass Seed Accelerator left, 2) didn't have any other mulch, and 3) was lazy and didn't feel like going to the store and buying any (I firmly believe that laziness is a prime fuel for creativity). In most places the bentgrass was pretty thick, so it just makes sense to me to use it, plus it made the project easier and cheaper - win, win... maybe?

So I used my manual tiller to loosen up the soil underneath the dead bentgrass and the pulled it back to reveal the soil below as seen in the following photos:

After this, I generously dispensed some seed into the soil using a handheld spreader, and then added some starter fertilizer also using the handheld spreader. Then I mixed it all up a bit into the top layer of the soil, covered it back up with the dead bentgrass clumps, and finally matted it down a bit by walking on a board I laid over top of each area. After which, the finished product looked like this (not much different than before!):

In some areas where there was more soil exposed, I put down
some of the GreenView Grass Seed Accelerator

In addition to the bentgrass areas, I also seeded some other areas that seemed to have died this summer (apparently I didn't irrigate enough!).

North side of the driveway (after tilling)

By the road (after tilling).

By the road (after seeding).

Closer shot of the previous.

As usual, I now anxiously await germination - which I hope does in fact happen! In the meantime I'll be irrigating to keep the soil moist.

I just can't seem to go a year without reseeding - maybe next year!

I'll report back upon germination, or lack thereof.

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 :)

Second crabgrass preventer application

I put down the second application of the crabgrass preventer on May 12th hoping for some rain that night to work it in. That didn't happen and it wasn't until yesterday that we got some rain and only .10" at that, but I irrigated today so that should do the trick. It also give the grass some more fertilizer which is good. I want it to outgrow the diseases. So far no signs of any crabgrass, so the half application seemed to do the trick.

Changes

Well, life happens and things change and what has changed the most as of late is my amount of free time, which has dwindled down to nearly nothing after the birth of our precious son - it's a wonderful change! What this means for this blog, for anyone who actually still follows it, is that my posts will be few and far between and likely sparse in content. I'm planning to continue trying to post things that I do for my records, but the story-like format will likely cease. We'll see what happens, but I'm already behind as it is.

As it stands right now, we finally got our irrigation system fixed and turned on today, which is good because it has been quite dry lately and the grass was starting to show the stress (footprints stay after walking on it)!

Backyard is doing great and still going strong after fertilizing it a few weeks ago. It's also liking the water I gave it today. The backyard is my new pride and joy - it's simply amazing how much it has filled in so quickly. The supina bluegrass seems to be doing great, and it's so soft to walk on. I love it.

The front yard - not good. The rust just took over and infested the new grass and much of it has died. My hope is that it might spring back, but I don't give it very good odds of that happening. We'll see. I sprayed the rust and powdery mildew with some fungicide today - I hate doing that, but it's that or I watch more of the lawn get killed off. I'll hopefully have a post on this as well. It will have some sad photos. I should have paid more attention to this line in the Purdue leaf rust publication:

On newly seeded stands, apply fungicides at the first sign of disease.

Live and learn...

Fertilization stories

I've got two stories to tell: one of the backyard grass and one of the front yard. I'll start with the front yard.

As mentioned previously the new grass in the front yard just hasn't been growing very quickly and as a result was getting diseased, so I thought perhaps it needed some nitrogen to spur some growth. So several weeks ago (I can't remember the exact date) I put down some fertilizer - .75 lbs N / 1000 sq. ft. on the whole front yard using the Scotts 32-0-4 that I've used several times in the past. I wish it had more phosphorous and potassium in case the grass needed some of those nutrients as well (who knows), but it's what I had in the garage, so I used it. Thus far after several rains, there has been some growth, but not a whole lot. I'm beginning to cut some of it when I mow so that is a good sign, but it wasn't the rapid growth that I was hoping for. At the same time, both diseases have spread, so hopefully the growth will continue and keep the disease at bay. I'm also planning to trim the trees a bit more allow more sunlight to reach those areas - one of these days (hopefully this weekend).

The backyard is a much more successful story. The problem I don't think I have mentioned before, but what I noticed was that the vigorous growth that was occurring seemed to come to a halt. I noticed that the supina bluegrass even started to yellow at the tips and die off some in addition to the lack of growth. But one day I made this observation near the area where we let our dog out to go to the bathroom:

Note the greener, happily growing grass near the edge by the fence. This areas has likely been fertilized by my dog's urine (high in nitrogen)! So I felt pretty confident that the lawn simply needed some fertilizer. I put down a combination of the remaining Scott's fertilizer that I used on the front lawn and the Endure Premium Lawn Food Plus that I used last summer. The scott's is mostly quick-release nitrogen and the Endure is almost 100% slow-release. This took a little bit of calculating, but I put down a little over .75 lbs. N / 1000 sq. ft. The result after a substantial amount of rain over a few days was a complete flip back to the vigorous growth of before! Yay! Here's a look:

This made my day!

The grass I planted earlier this year has also been doing well:

Young fine fescue

I've very happy with the backyard and I have hope for the new grass in the front yard! I'll soon be putting down the second half of the crabgrass preventer application.

Turf problems

What else is new?

So, something isn't quite right. While the rest of the lawn has been greening up quite well, the new Kentucky bluegrass that I planted in the front yard last fall just isn't. It's still very short and hasn't been nearly long enough to mow even though I've mowed the rest of the lawn several times already.

Some shots I took today of the lawn:

New grass (in center)

New grass

Mmm, look at that grass!

Recovering from weeds

New gress

Also, I have noticed some patches of disease.

Up close

This looks a lot like the disease I noticed last year, but contrary to what I thought last year, I'm thinking that it's actually leaf rust. When I rubbed it with my fingers it left an orange coloring. The Purdue publication on the disease says (my emphasis added):

Rust outbreaks are most common in late summer and early fall, although sometimes the disease is active in the early spring (especially on poorly nourished turf). Rust is a disease of slow growing turf, so factors that contribute to poor growth tend to favor rust development. Such factors include summer heat and drought stress, low nitrogen fertility, compaction, and shade.

I can certainly rule out summer head and drought stress. Also:

Maintaining a healthy and vigorous turf stand is the most effective and efficient method of rust control. Since slow growing turf in mid- to late summer is most vulnerable to outbreaks, small amounts of nitrogen fertilizer (0.2-0.5 pound of N per 1,000 square feet) in chronic trouble spots (shaded and possibly compacted areas) will help control the disease. The nitrogen will promote leaf growth and allow for regular mowing, which helps the turf outgrow rust's relatively slow infection cycle.

Additionally, I'm seeing another apparent disease that looks like this:

Up close

I'm thinking that this is likely powdery mildew. Thankfully the Purdue publication on this disease describes it as being more or less harmless:

The disease is rarely responsible for any lasting damage to turf, so its effects are primarily aesthetic.

And:

Powdery mildew occurs most often on slow-growing turf, usually in shaded areas. Pathogen activity is favored by cool, cloudy conditions that prevail in spring and fall. Prolonged periods of dew or wet weather are not needed for disease establishment and spread, although periods of high humidity favor disease development.

So, I'm starting to think that all of the above problems could be caused by malnutrition. Perhaps it needs some fertilizer? I applied some with the crabgrass preventer a few weeks ago, but since I only applied a half "dose", I only ended up applying around about .33 lbs N/1000 sq ft. I think I'll give it a try and put down some fertilizer and see what happens (as usual).

"Dormant" seeding again...

So, on somewhat of a whim a few weeks ago (March 5) I decided to put down some seed in the backyard - much like last year, only 2 weeks earlier, but ironically it's much warmer, so there's nothing dormant about it. Go figure.

I purchased the same seed as last year: SS6000 shade mix from SeedSuperStore.com, a 80% mix of 4 varieties of fine fescues (although 2 varieties are different from the batch I got last year) and 20% Bewitched Kentucky Bluegrass.

19.96% Predator Hard Fescue
19.66% Zodiac Chewings Fescue
19.80% Garnet Creeping Red Fescue
19.85% Bewitched Kentucky Bluegrass
19.80% Intrigue2 Chewings Fescue

Unfortunately, I really didn't give the grass I planted last year much of a chance when I destroyed it with the overseeder last fall... but let's try to forget about that. New beginnings... again.

As soon as the seed arrived, I put it down. I didn't do any soil preparation hoping for some more below freezing temps to help expand and contract the soil and allow the seed get deeper into the ground. Yeah, I think there have been two nights of below freezing temps since then. One of which was the first night (one of the reasons that I wanted to get it down so quickly):

Seed on frozen ground the next morning

Otherwise it's been too warm for even below freezing nights, so due to rain in the forecast I decided to help work the seed in the ground in places where I could do so without harming the existing grass. I went to Lowes and purchased a hand tiller and tilled almost the whole lawn by hand. It took me over an hour, but I felt like I could sleep better knowing that the rain wouldn't wash or displace the seeds away as easily and it appears to have worked (granted the rain wasn't terribly heavy). It also should help the seed to germinate better (that was one of my mistakes last spring, not working the seed into the top layer of soil).

I then used the rest of the GreenView Grass Seed Accelerator that I leftover from the 2010 front yard project, but it wasn't enough so I picked some more up and put most of it down as well. This should also help with germination and hopefully help deter erosion (probably not as effectively as straw, though).

So far, I don't see any seeds germinating. I wouldn't expect it so soon anyway, but with the warm weather we've been having I wouldn't be surprised to see it either. This is how the backyard is looking as of yesterday:

And just for the record and comparison (because I think that the Poa Supina has already started greening up), these shots were from a few weeks earlier (February 27th):

Other than the small amount of fertilizer that is in the mulch, I haven't put down any starter fertilizer. I have some in the garage. Should I put some down??

Last fertilization of 2011

I got a little eager for winter this fall and forgot (i.e. got lazy and let time slip by) to fertilize according to schedule. Following the guide, I should have fertilized the newly seeded areas about 8-10 weeks after germination which would have been around early November - whoops, here it is 3 weeks later. I fertilized the whole lawn with 1.5 lbs. N/1000 sq. ft. after the last mowing of the season (which is the appropriate time if I hadn't seeded) using the same fertilizer I used in the previous fertilization. I also decided to fertilize the backyard with .75 lbs. N/1000 sq. ft. which I hadn't fertilized at all since germination. Sorry, no pictures (wish I had taken some!).

(Note: this is a back-post, posted on 2/26/12, details subject to error)

Seven week post-germination fertilization

Today marks seven weeks after germination, which means it's time to fertilize according to the Purdue guide I've been following. Since we are forecast to get rain tonight and/or tomorrow, I decided to get it done today. I applied 5 lbs of 32-0-4 Scott's fertilizer (5.7% slow release Nitrogen, which I think is a good amount for this time of year since there isn't much growing time left) over the 1600 sq. ft. of the front yard using my little broadcast spreader which resulted in roughly 1 lb Nitrogen per 1000 sq ft. I didn't apply any to the backyard - I never know what to do back there...

As promised, here are some photos of the front and backyard taken yesterday.

The front yard is looking decent. There are some streaks of thin to no grass due to uneven seeding, but overall I think it'll turn out ok eventually... I hope...

Unfortunately, there isn't much to see in the backyard. Supina bluegrass grows extremely slowly and didn't appear to germinate very well. The few patches of grass that there are look pretty nice, but overall I think it was a flop. I don't know what I'm going to do...

I think I'm about ready for winter...