Germination!

It's always with such great joy that I anticipate and finally get to see those little tiny grasslings making their entrance into the world - it's truly amazing!

Looks like I put a bit too much seed here :)

Coming up amidst what's left of the creeping bentgrass.

I planted on 9/2 and I actually saw a few seeds that had germinated yesterday, so that is only 6 days!

It probably helps that I've been watering. My schedule has been 3 times a day for 5 minutes each time (at 7am, 11:30am, and 3pm). This has probably been a bit too much for some areas of the lawn, and I think I'll cut back on it soon, perhaps down to 3-4 minutes each time, and/or down to twice day, especially as the days get cooler.

This makes for my 5th grass seed planting project since 2010 (fall 2010, fall 2011, spring 2012, fall 2012) - a very small project compared to some of those. You might think I have some sort of addition... but really I just don't have a clue what I'm doing. It's fun trying to learn, though (most of the time).

What's up, Supina?

Ok, so I've been focused on the front lawn and haven't said much about the backyard in some time. That's because I don't have a clue what's going on back there, but it sure doesn't look good and it seems to only be getting worse. The following photos show the progression.

Here are some shots from 7/26:

A closer shot of a patch that appears to be dying

And some from 9/1:

It's not a pretty sight. I just wish I knew what was wrong.

This is what I do "know":

1. It doesn't appear to be a fertilization issue. Not long after the first set of shots from July I gave some fertilizer to two small areas of the lawn and it didn't seem to make any difference.
2. I've also been keeping it well irrigated, watering roughly every other day or so. That said, we haven't had much rain since late June.
3. The summer hasn't been particularly hot (unlike last summer). There was a hot stretch in mid-July (7/14 - 7/19) with highs in the low 90s, and also the end of August (8/19 - 8/31).
4. There are some areas that seem to be fairing better than others - why?
5. From what I can tell (which is next to nothing), it doesn't appear to be a disease.

My best theory at this point is that it's simply the heat since supina bluegrass doesn't like it hot. This theory will soon be tested as fall arrives, at which point I'm very much hoping it will spring back to life. At this point since I don't have a clue what to do about it, I'm just going to wait it out and see what happens.

I think it goes without saying that my "experiment" idea is off for this year, which is just as well since I'd barely have the time for such a project.

Front yard fertilization

I put down 6.8 lbs of Espoma Organic Lawn Food on the front lawn on Sunday, which equates to about .75 lbs/1000 sq. ft. N. I intended to do this quite a while ago because we had gotten a lot of rain earlier in the summer, but all things gardening have taken a back seat these days; I do what I can. Lately it has been quite dry, so I've been irrigating a bit.

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...

Caring for turf in times of heat and drought

This post will be a summary of some recent heat/drought-related posts off the always informative Purdue University Turf Tips site. I don't want to forget this great information.

The first post is titled The Heat is On!. This post gives some great information about keeping your lawn healthy in times of heat and drought like we've had this year (and also last year) in central Indiana. Here's my takeaway points:

• Temps above 87 degrees will cause cool season grasses to stop growing (due to photorespiration which occurs instead of photosynthesis)
• Lack of water can cause some grasses to go dormant such as Kentucky bluegrass (but not tall fescue!)
• When in drought, any traffic on the grass can cause damage to the plants, so don't mow and stay off the grass as much as possible
• You can keep grass green through drought by watering about 1 inch per week
• To keep grass alive during drought, water with 1/2 inch of water every 2-4 weeks
• Irrigating in the morning is best

The second post is titled Turf: Dead or Alive? and provides information on how to determine if grass is still alive after a dry period has ended and there has been some rain that has otherwise greened up the lawn. If brown grass still remains in some places, don't despair because it might still be alive. To tell, pull up some of the dead blades and look underneath for new growth. If new blades are coming up, the grass will likely recover. I have noticed a few areas of our lawn that is still quite brown despite the rest of the lawn greening up after our recent rains and I've wondered if it is dead (even though I watered occasionally throughout the drought). I checked and there are a few blades of green that have and are come up, so I guess we'll see if it recovers!

And finally, another great resource related to irrigation is the Irrigation Practices for Homelawns (AY-7) publication (also by Purdue). Some takeaways from this publication:

• Overwatering can potentially cause just as much if not more damage than underwatering (resulting in increased crabgrass, increased disease, shallow rooting, and a waste of water)
• Water when the first visible signs of stress appear
• First signs of stress include a blueish-green color, and when footprints remain after walking on it (and later the grass will wilt and turn a grayish-green color, before turning brown and dying/going dormant)
• Water only when it's needed instead of a regular set schedule
• Most Indiana lawns need about 1 to 1.5 inches of water per week
• It's best to water all at once so that the water reaches the deepest roots
• To measure the amount of water applied, put a dish out and water for a set amount of time to calculate the rate
• The ideal time to water is 4-8am
• Dormant grass can survive up to 4-6 weeks without water
• Water 1 to 1.5 inches ever 4-6 in drought conditions (this conflicts with info above, so I'm not sure which is correct)

These posts and publications have been extremely useful to me and I'm very grateful for the information that Purdue has and continues to publish!

Backyard grass progress

Well, I figure it's time for an update on the backyard grass project. It seems to be going very slow... and I'm starting to wonder if it's going to succeed. I've been trying to keep the existing grass mowed to about 1.5", mowing every few of days. Here's a shot of what things looks like now:

Close up view. New grass in the middle.

Yard view. Still thin, but new grass is becoming more evident.

I won't be too upset if this project fails. Come fall, I'll just try again, probably killing the existing grass first, but that's getting ahead of things. We'll see how this turns out. What I have found is that it seems to be difficult to grow grass in areas with existing grass. The same thing occurred in the front yard grass project. The seed planted near other grass didn't grow as well or at all. I have also noticed that the grass seems to prefer growing near the straw. My guess is that it's helps keep the area shielded from the sun and more moist.

Earlier this week I got out the hose to water since it was starting to dry up and rain was a few days away. So much work... needless to say, I was quick in calling the irrigation company to come out and turn it back on. They're coming Tuesday, so the new grass'll soon be getting much more frequent waterings, without me having to even think about it! Yay!

The Grass Project II : Backyard Edition

Last year I gave a shot at growing some grass in the front yard (full story), but I didn't have enough time to tend to the backyard even though it was arguably even worse off. I decided that I'd deal with it this spring instead, so here I am. This past weekend, I planted some seed.

Before I get too far, here is what it looked like before:

The leaves on the right side are covering a completely bare spot there.

Another bare spot in the upper right.

Generally very thin and patchy.

And the third bare spot with the brighter green color being moss, not grass.

When we moved in in 2009, the grass was actually quite lush in the back as is somewhat visible in the photos in my "Before" post. I think the sellers planted it that year as I remember noticing it when we first looked at the house earlier in the year. So what happened? I don't know, but I have some theories:

1. Over fertilization (by me). Grass in the shade needs less fertilizer than grass in full sun. When I fertilized the backyard (and I can't remember exactly when or how much, except that I did it each time I also fertilized the front yard which is full sun), I do remember that it appeared to actually make the grass worse.
2. Non-shade tolerant grass. I don't know what kind was grown, but it's possible it wasn't good in shade. It may have grown well at first before the trees had their leaves, but once the trees filled in, the grass received less sunlight leading to unhappiness.

I tend to think it is #1 since I actually noticed it getting worse after fertilizing. It is also the most thin over the most shady parts. Lesson learned. The Purdue Turfgrass Science Program suggests applying 1.0 lb of Nitrogen per 1000 sq. ft. in September and again in November and that should be sufficient for the entire year. I'll try that this year.

This weekend, I generally followed the instructions in the Seeding a Turf Area in the Spring publication using the "Dormant Seeding" approach, although, it's about as late as possible to be able to call it that. Looking at the long-term weather forecasts, it appears that winter may not yet be over, so I think the seed will likely sit dormant for at least a few more weeks (at least I hope so!).

I didn't go as crazy as I did in the front yard last year tearing up the whole yard, thank goodness. Instead, since much of the yard was already grass-free, I first thoroughly raked the whole yard to better expose the soil using a fine-tooth leaf rake. Last fall, I mulched all of the leaves that fell on the grass and left them there as a natural fertilizer. Sure enough, it was all still there this year, so I had to rake it away. Once I had raked away as much as I possibly could, I used a hard-tooth rake to loosen up the soil, particularly in the completely bare spots. In the thin spots with some grass present, this removed some of the clumps of existing grass, however, I figured this to be acceptable since new grass will soon take it's place (or so I hope!). This is what it looked like after I completed this step:

The bare spots are more clearly visible now.

Should I have just dug up the existing grass here? Hm...

I tried as best I could to rake away the moss.

Now I was ready to lay down the seed. But first let me talk about the seed that I purchased. After doing some online research, I determined that a fescue/bluegrass mix would probably be best. Surprisingly, some areas get a decent amount of sun and perhaps even full sun, while other areas probably struggle to get even an hour of direct sunlight a day. I considered trying Supina Bluegrass, but due to it's high cost, I decided against it. Most places were only selling it in a larger quantity than I needed.

Not knowing what to get, while at the store one day I decided to just purchase a bag there. So, I bought a bag of Scotts Dense Shade Mix:

Scotts Dense Shade Mix

11.75% Fenway Creeping Red Fescue
11.68% Crossbow Creeping Red Fescue
10.53% Ambrose Chewings Fescue
9.36% 04-2-LH Intermediate Ryegrass
2.53% Thermal Blue Kentucky Bluegrass
1.89% Abbey Kentucky Bluegrass

It had some Kentucky Bluegrass in it, but not much (about 8.8% - can't forget that 50% of the bag is the coating!). Maybe last year's experience with the coating throwing me off left a bad taste in my mouth, but when I bought this it was as if I was buying it as a fall back plan to save a trip to the store if I couldn't find anything better.

So I kept looking around and eventually found seedsuperstore.com. They have what appear to be all the latest and greatest varieties and are also quite informative. I used their "Seed Express" service and entered my zipcode and selected that my lawn was shady in the next step and it suggested a fescue/Kentucky bluegrass mix called SS6000, which is what I ended up ordering. They also offer Supina bluegrass which I considered, but it is expensive. I bought a 5 lb. bag of the SS6000 mix and this is what arrived a few days later:

5 lb. bag of SS6000 mix from seedsuperstore.com

19.55% Spartan II Hard Fescue
19.76% Zodiac Chewings Fescue
19.44% Garnet Creeping Red Fescue
19.77% Bewitched Kentucky Bluegrass
19.81% Intrigue Chewings Fescue

At this point, I'm a satisfied customer, assuming the grass grows, which I'm sure it will. I should note that I almost made a purchase from another online retailer called outsidepride.com, but in the nick of time I stumbled upon a review site that actually caught the owner fluffing up their rating with bogus positive reviews! I cancelled my order (actually hadn't submitted it yet) and started looking elsewhere. For the record, superseedstore.com has only one review at the same site at this time.

Anyway, on to planting. Seed Super Store suggested a seeding rate of 4 lbs. per 1000 sq. ft. I estimated (as best I could considering that the area is nowhere near rectangular) that I had roughly 1400 sq. ft. or so to cover, so 5. lbs is just about right, especially considering that I was overseeding probably 1/2 of the area.

The next day I went to the store and purchased a bale of straw to use as mulch, primarily for the bare areas to keep rain from possibly washing the seeds away. Interestingly, this wasn't in the publication mentioned above, but is in the Establishing Lawn Areas From Seed publication. I asked if the straw was weed-free, but they didn't know and said that they've been selling it for 4 years without any complaints, so I figured it would be fine. I only ended up using about 1/4 of the bale, and was careful to put it down lightly, following the suggestion to make it so that you can see approximately 50% of the soil through the mulch later - it was difficult to gauge. This is what it looked like after mulching:

I put up a little fence to keep the dog off of it.

The last thing I need to do fairly soon is fertilize. I haven't done it yet, although I have purchased some starter fertilizer that is high in Phosphorous. I figure I'll do it sometime before it starts germinating. I'm also somewhat scared to do it knowing that it may have been what caused the grass to die in the first place. Perhaps I should get a soil test done. I need to research this as I haven't found out how to do that yet, but it would certainly be nice to know. I'm going to look into this.

Once the weather warms back up and the grass in the front yard starts growing, I'll know that the soil is probably warm enough for germination (55 degrees) and will start watering. Hopefully by then our irrigation system will be back up and running (I'm so spoiled by that!), then I'll anxiously wait for the first seedlings to start growing.

I'll have more posts on the status of this project soon!

2010: Part 2 - The Grass Project

Ok, so I like grass. Soft, plush, green healthy grass. We have some in our yard, actually, one spot of grass that has probably had just the right amount of sun and shade to protect it from the summer heat and keep it healthy without much maintenance over the years. I always enjoyed mowing that part of the lawn and I wished the whole lawn were like it.  A few years ago, it was probably a very nice lawn, but it wasn't any longer (at least to me). Like the rest of the gardens were when we moved in, the grass was thin in many spots and had various different types of grass present, and then crabgrass filled in the rest.

But even so, 2010 was a rough year on the lawn as it was for many lawns in the region. A lengthy drought occurred starting in late July that didn't end until November. But to make matters worse, earlier in the year I had spilled fertilizer in several places that ended up killing the grass in several spots. And, we had grubs that killed some large sections of the lawn. Here is how it looked:

Count the robins.

Note the thinned areas of dead grass, particularly the far right and the perimeter. Also, note the many robins feasting on the grubs. I count 15 in this photo. A few days later, there were over 40, but unfortunately they flew away before I could get a photo. Mmm... grubs! I'm glad they were happy, at least.

So, of course, I needed to do something, but what could I do? So, I started researching, first about grubs and then about repairing the grass. I quickly discovered the wonderfully informative Purdue Turfgrass Program site and the many great publications and subsequently started dreaming of a nice new lawn.

I found these instructions for establishing turfgrass from seed. But, there was a problem: it was already September and nearing the end of the optimum time period for planting new grass (August 15 to September 15 in Central Indiana). So, I decided to act fast and to try to squeeze it in. In hindsight, I probably should have waited or at least not gone straight to the deep-end like I ended up doing.

So much to do and so little time, I went to the hardware store and purchased a manual tiller. I took a day off of work and went to work on the dead areas to prepare the soil for replanting. But, then I got a crazy idea: why not replant some of the grass that I don't like while I'm at it? I think I was blinded by my desire for nice lush grass, because I started digging up the "old" grass and this is not how that should typically be done. You're supposed to kill it all first, then remove it, but this process can take a week or two - time I didn't have, so I decided to "improvise."

Soon, after several hours, blisters upon blisters, and with my shoulder about ready to come out of its socket, I could till no more, and I was nowhere near done. I probably should have just stopped here, but instead I decided to go to the store and rent a large power tiller. This made the job much easier and in turn allowed me to rip up even more of the lawn. Foolishly, I didn't even think about the sprinkler heads scattered throughout the lawn that were part of the (disabled) sprinkler system until I hit one of them - and then another, and another. Not to mention any buried cables, which thankfully I didn't encounter.

I'm not quite sure what I was thinking with all of this. It was turning into a nightmare and there was no turning back. What I thought would take a day of work, ended up taking over a week, working every evening, sometimes into the night. My neighbors probably thought I was nuts. I was!

Once I finished tilling the soil, I had to remove all of the old grass that I tore up. This turned out to be a very difficult task. The tiller worked the grass all over the place, sometimes 6 inches down. I basically had to sift through it and pull it out, trying to keep as much of the soil in place as possible. This step took many evenings to complete.

At this point, I was getting closer. The next step according to the instructions I was trying to follow was:

The soil should be allowed to settle after tilling or compacted slightly with the tires of a tractor or other suitable implement. Heavy rains and/or irrigation will hasten settling. Allowing the soil to settle with prevent undulations and difficult mowing in the future.

Um, let's see, I had no tractor, no time to wait for rain (guess I probably could have irrigated, but I wanted to plant that day). In the end, I used a piece of peg board and stomped on it over all of the soil. Surprisingly, it looked pretty good, but will it end up even? I guess we'll see. And now, my neighbors officially knew I was nuts - really, who jumps on their lawn?

Next I raked it over and made it look even nicer. At this point, I was pretty happy with how it all had turned out. Now it was time to seed it. But uh oh, what seed should I use? I was no expert, but had researched a little and knew that Bluegrass is the type of grass that I like, so I went to the store and bought a bag of Scotts Bluegrass mix:

Scotts Kentucky Bluegrass Mix

29.43% Abbey Kentucky Bluegrass
13.26% Courtyard Kentucky Bluegrass
5.05% Thermal Blue Kentucky Bluegrass
50% Water Smart Coating

In hindsight, doing more grass seed research would have been beneficial. There are many varieties of bluegrass grass, some better and more advanced than others. While the kind I used will probably be just fine, I also probably could have done better. The National Turfgrass Evaluation Program is a great resource for researching different varieties for various locations. I'm still baffled by all of the different types.

For mulch, I also purchased a bag of GreenView Grass Seed Accelerator:

GreenView Grass Seed Accelerator

0.7 - 1.1 - 0.4

With these two products, I made two mistakes:

1. I didn't plant enough seed
2. Since the mulch had fertilizer in it, I didn't fertilize

The seeding rate was probably the biggest mistake because I only put down about half of the bag of seed (approximately 1.5 lbs). What threw me off is the 50% coating. The experts said to put down 1.5-2 lbs of seed per 1000 sq. ft. Since I was working with roughly 1000 sq. ft., I figured half the bag would be about right. Well, I forgot that half of the bag was actually the coating on the seeds! So, instead of putting about 1.5 lbs. or so down, I only put roughly half that. Unfortunately, I didn't realize this until several weeks later when the grass started to germinate and I noticed that it looked rather thin. As soon as I could, I planted the rest of the bag hoping it would have enough time to become established before winter.

The second mistake I made was to use the mulch as the fertilizer. I failed to actually look at the bag and see how much fertilizer it had in it: 0.7-1.1-0.4 - not much at all; certainly nowhere close to the recommended 1.5 lb of Phosphorus per 1000 sq. ft. So, essentially, I didn't fertilize. This may or may not have been a big issue because I didn't do a soil test.

This is what it looked like after it was all said and "done" (with half the seed on at the time of this photo):

September 11, 2010 : After the seed was planted and the first watering.

I watered as frequently as I could, which ended up being two times a day: once in the morning and once in the evening. Eventually, after about 2 weeks, the grass started to grow. It grew very slowly and never very tall. I know that bluegrass is not very quick to establish, but I wonder if it could also have been impacted by not having much Phosphorus, or some other factor.

As soon as the first blades were roughly 2" tall, I followed the instructions to mow at 1.5" for the first few times. It was strange to be stepping on the grass when it was so new, but it seemed to be ok. It never grew much taller than that, though. After about 4 weeks, I applied about 0.75 Nitrogen and then again 8 weeks after germination. Thankfully, temperatures stayed fairly warm late into the fall giving more time for the grass to grow. Also, after about three weeks of twice daily waterings, I caved in and called someone out to take a look at the irrigation system to see how much it would take to get it working. Several hundred dollars later, I was a very happy man.

After a much needed winter's rest (for me!), here is how it looks now:

March 2010

This is only showing the top left side of the before photo and from a different angle - not the greatest before/after sequence, but it shows that something grew there - it wasn't a complete flop!

However, there are still several potential issues to contend with:

1. It still isn't very thick and in some places, particularly near the edges of the existing grass, there are even bare spots.
2. It is still pretty short, and the edge of the existing grass is very evident since it's much taller.
3. There are quite a number of weeds.

It'll be interesting to see what happens once it starts growing again this spring when temperatures get warmer. Will it fill in and thicken up? Will it grow taller? Will it grow at a comparable speed to the existing grass? Will the weeds be overcome? We'll see.

I'll have another post on the weed problem soon.