Lawn and Landscape

drkelly said:
Did you put down any chemicals for the 'kill'? If so, nothing will likely grow there for a few months. You may be stuck waiting until the spring to seed.

Many years ago I was going to plant a garden in the area beside my shed. I sprayed the whole are with round up, then tilled it up really good. Then about a month later planted my garden. Nothing grew, LOL.
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No I keep saying kill and till but it was already dead, it was a first year lawn and the heat this summer killed it all. There was nothing back there before. It came up really nice in the fall, and spring looked good to, but the summer killed it off. Left me with nothing but weeds. I tilled it again and gonna start over now that I have put in an irrigation system.

Roundup says on the bottle that it's safe to reseed after a few days, but I only use roundup on my driveway and around my culverts. I use 2-4-D in the yard for clover n junk
 
I use roundup at 1oz per gallon. It kills things just as dead (not woody vines, just grass and weeds) but uses less product. I also use dish liquid as a surfactant.
24D sticks in the soil for weeks and should be used carefully around shrubs and things.
Roundup won't kill a bush from wind but 24D absolutely can.
 
RobMcBee said:
@R Q , that's a lot of good info! I'm hoping to be able to get my new seed down by next week. All this rain has kept me from doing so. I want to let it dry out a little so I can re aerate the front yard. My backyard just needs to be raked back out since nothing but weeds grew after my kill n till.

What are your opinions on the pennmulch? I was gonna get some to use in the front of my house along my walkways where I don't want to use straw.
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Sorry for the late reply. Pennmulch is fine but not as good as wheat straw which has issues in itself with wheat growing and competing with your grass. Using the Pennmulch you have to put down enough to do the job but not too much where it smothers out your new grass seedlings.
 
And as far as Round Up goes, follow the directions to a T and its fine. It has no residual effects in soil as it's engineered to break down when in contact with soil. The Glyphosate keeps the plant from producing Chlorophyll which starves it. Its not Agent Orange or anything. If you've killed a garden or lawn with it, you can till it and it will not affect anything down the road.
 
My yard mows green and my kids rip through it on 4 wheelers and motorcycles, we use our yard not just look at it. It's a mix of bermuda and god knows what else. It's been here since the late 1800's so it's mature to say the least. I did decide to over seed with rye one fall, holy cow I was mowing between snow being on the ground, it grew all damn winter. I don't quite understand the quest for a perfect yard, nor do I understand driving by houses with the garage doors up and nothing but a couple of cars in there. Kudos to you guys with the time and care to have a master piece of grass, I'll take our 1/4 acre garden to practice growing things, damn shame we don't live in Colorado.
 
R Q said:
3. Between September 15th and October 15th is the optimum time to reseed. If it is still
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This whole thing is only relevant if you're planting tall fescue.
 
Question about using leftover seed from the previous year. I had about a 1/3-1/2 of a 50 lb bag of seed leftover from last fall. I went ahead and put it down last Wednesday with some new seed. Can I expect it to germinate? It was kept up on a shelf inside my garage the entire year. I figure it is probably OK since they have that seed vault thing up in the artic somewhere in case of an apocalypse.
 
drkelly said:
Question about using leftover seed from the previous year. I had about a 1/3-1/2 of a 50 lb bag of seed leftover from last fall. I went ahead and put it down last Wednesday with some new seed. Can I expect it to germinate? It was kept up on a shelf inside my garage the entire year. I figure it is probably OK since they have that seed vault thing up in the artic somewhere in case of an apocalypse.
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You'll a little bit of germination percentage but I would never consider wasting it.
 
Reading the tag on my seed I just bought, tested 8/15 with a 90% germination rate... I'd say it's pretty fresh seed.
 
RobMcBee said:
Reading the tag on my seed I just bought, tested 8/15 with a 90% germination rate... I'd say it's pretty fresh seed.
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Yes fresh enough. What you have to consider is that 10% of your seed won't germinate under the BEST of conditions. My blue tag certified seed has germination rates of 91-94% and there is higher percentages.
Also on your seed tag there is 3 categories for "other crop seeds", "Inert matter", "Weed seed", and "noxious weeds". There should be 0% on all but inert matter which is basically dust.
NCTurffiles Home - TurfFiles is a great place to get good info. Also your local Agriculture Extension Agency.
 
I'm not gong for a golf course lawn either. Just trying to get it to look nice and be thick enough for my kid and I to get out and play some ball in. Right now it's got a lot of bare spots and muddy when it rains. My biggest problem is that when we bought the house it had a lot of trees around it. I cut down 18 trees in the front and back. It had no grass except for a small patch of centipede in the front. When I removed the trees I also dug up all the roots and re-graded the yard. A lot of my topsoil got mixed in with the red clay. Last summer I tilled everything up and added in some topsoil and compost. Planted in the fall, and it came up nice and did well this spring also. Then this summer the heat and drought got it. I installed an irrigation system but I think it was already too late. So I'm pretty much starting over again.

Here's the tag from the seed I got, it's not blue tag, but the strains are top rated
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Here are some before and after pics from when we bought the house in January '14 and in the fall that same year...
 

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Lawn looks great! The PO's must have not done squat with that lawn.

Why did you cut that Maple or whatever it was down right in the middle of the front yard?
 
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drkelly said:
Lawn looks great! The PO's must have not done squat with that lawn.

Why did you cut that Maple or whatever it was down right in the middle of the front yard?
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It was a Bradford Pear, I cut it down b/c I can't stand them. Lol they break in the slightest bit of wind and it was tall enough to reach the house. My neighbors that have lived here since the house was built said that they have never seen the yard with grass. It doesn't look that good now hopefully it will soon.... If it ever dries out.

Just got done talking to my neighbor (does lawn care) and he's gonna let me borrow his 21" WB aerator when it dries up a lil. My tow behind just wasn't poking through the harder stuff. Score!
 
drkelly said:
Question about using leftover seed from the previous year. I had about a 1/3-1/2 of a 50 lb bag of seed leftover from last fall. I went ahead and put it down last Wednesday with some new seed. Can I expect it to germinate? It was kept up on a shelf inside my garage the entire year. I figure it is probably OK since they have that seed vault thing up in the artic somewhere in case of an apocalypse.
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I had a 1/2 bag of leftover that I threw out about 3-4 weeks ago just to get it out of the garage. Put it in a bare area with no preparation and no fertilizer. That stuff is coming up GREAT at the moment.
 
RobMcBee said:
I'm not gong for a golf course lawn either. Just trying to get it to look nice and be thick enough for my kid and I to get out and play some ball in. Right now it's got a lot of bare spots and muddy when it rains. My biggest problem is that when we bought the house it had a lot of trees around it. I cut down 18 trees in the front and back. It had no grass except for a small patch of centipede in the front. When I removed the trees I also dug up all the roots and re-graded the yard. A lot of my topsoil got mixed in with the red clay. Last summer I tilled everything up and added in some topsoil and compost. Planted in the fall, and it came up nice and did well this spring also. Then this summer the heat and drought got it. I installed an irrigation system but I think it was already too late. So I'm pretty much starting over again.

Here's the tag from the seed I got, it's not blue tag, but the strains are top ratedView attachment 198197
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All that the blue tag means is that the seed lot is tested more vigorously than the rest but to me its worth the $2 more per bag that I pay. You are doing fine on your grass, this past summer was brutal. Do a soil test for pH and do what's recommended. If you havent added lime, do so (@ 40# per 1000 sq ft) and use Fast Lime, it's way better than standard dolomitic. Also you can get Gypsum (same rate as lime) from Lowes and its great for breaking up compact soil. It doesn't make it loose and loamy but changes the molecular structure of the soil so that nutrients and moisture can flow through it more freely.
 
I have done lime in the past but never gypsum. I may go and pick some up and put it down after I aerate again.
 
RobMcBee said:
It was a Bradford Pear, I cut it down b/c I can't stand them. Lol they break in the slightest bit of wind and it was tall enough to reach the house. My neighbors that have lived here since the house was built said that they have never seen the yard with grass. It doesn't look that good now hopefully it will soon.... If it ever dries out.

Just got done talking to my neighbor (does lawn care) and he's gonna let me borrow his 21" WB aerator when it dries up a lil. My tow behind just wasn't poking through the harder stuff. Score!
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Ahh, I would have cut it down too. It is only a matter of time with those trees. My father planted two of them in the front yard at their old house when I was about 7 or 8 years old. They were both gone by the time I was about 30 yrs old. I remember him bringing them home in the back of his old 79 Pontiac station wagon, LOL.

I did part of my yard Wednesday the 23rd. Some of it was so hard that even with 200 lbs on the aerator, it was only going in about 1/4-1/2", so I didn't bother seeding that part.
 
One of our big Bradford pears broke at the fork the other winter from snow/ice weight and laid across the back deck, just missing the house. It's right on the property line, else I would take it and its 4 brothers completely out. I like the pseudo privacy screen, and they're pretty, but damn if those things aren't breaking all the time.
 
Fabrik8 said:
One of our big Bradford pears broke at the fork the other winter from snow/ice weight and laid across the back deck, just missing the house. It's right on the property line, else I would take it and its 4 brothers completely out. I like the pseudo privacy screen, and they're pretty, but damn if those things aren't breaking all the time.
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Cut them down and replace them with Cryptomeria Radicans for all year privacy.
 
R Q said:
Or Green Giant Arborvitae
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I'm almost done getting rid of our arborvitae at the corners of the house. One left to go. Don't care for them and they're too big and starting to die at the bottom, and they make the house look too 1980s because of the placement. They are emerald I think, tall and pointy. I'm going to replace with a few of the thousands of Japanese maple cultivars, don't know which one. So pretty.
All of the 20-25 year old landscaping is going to die (by my hand), including the shrubs with 6" diameter trunks and no branches for the first few feet. They've become trees, not the foundation planting they started out as.. The holly and boxwood hedges have already met their end, and 11 smaller shrubs have too. Old and mange-y, all of it.
 
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