Lawn and Landscape

Has anyone used liquid fertilizer? If so what.. and how did it work. Just bought a nice 21gal pull behind sprayer for weed control and figured I might get another use out of it.
 
This was all bare dirt at the end of September last year when they finished building our patio in the back yard. The front yard seen below was where all the materials were dumped and staged. It was completely destroyed. I made three passes with the tiller and seeded HEAVILY about the second week of October last year.

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drkelly said:
This was all bare dirt at the end of September last year when they finished building our patio in the back yard. The front yard seen below was where all the materials were dumped and staged. It was completely destroyed. I made three passes with the tiller and seeded HEAVILY about the second week of October last year.
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How do you scale that up 20x? Harley rake and a bobcat is the best I've come up with.
 
LBZ_Duramax said:
What grass is that?
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That is the cheap Pennington K31 from Lowes. Nothing special at all. I set my drop spreader on 'full open' and made two passes over all the bare area in my front and back yard. The second pass was perpendicular to the first pass. I also made two passes with starter fertilizer with my broadcast spreader. I fertilized again in late fall/early winter and again about the first/second week of March.
 
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shawn said:
How do you scale that up 20x? Harley rake and a bobcat is the best I've come up with.
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I'm not a landscaper, but you shouldn't need to do what I did (add compost and make three passes with a tiller). My front and back yard are a bad situation of VERY compacted sandy/fine rock subgrade soil, not typical top soil. A coworker of mine is very good with grass. He said if you have a standard lawn of fescue and weed grasses like most people, you can turn it around, but expect it to take three years of work. Put down a pre-emergent in late February, spray in the spring to kill any weeds, then aerate and over seed HEAVILY in September. Apply fertilizer in the early fall when you seed, end of fall/early winter, and again at the end of the winter. Also apply lime once a year if you have clay.

If you need to amend your soil like I did, but on a much larger scale, I would think you are talking about dump trucks of topsoil/compost (what I used) a bobcat to spread it around, and most likely a tractor with a tiller attachment to mix it all up. Or possibly just spreading a 2" layer of good topsoil over your existing soil. Either way, 20x my shown area sounds expensive. Round up and cover it with pine needles, LOL?

I didn't amend the soil on the rest of my property, only the stuff immediately around the house because the hill was graded down 4-6' in that area to build the house and the dirt was almost as hard as a rock and horrible. The rest of it I just follow what I posted above and so far so good.
 
drkelly said:
Put down a pre-emergent in late February, spray in the spring to kill any weeds, then aerate and over seed HEAVILY in September.
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If I do that, I'm going to have a dustbowl from April until October.

Should cut down on the mower time, though.
 
shawn said:
If I do that, I'm going to have a dustbowl from April until October.

Should cut down on the mower time, though.
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That would suck. Maybe start the 3yr plan in September with the over seeding.
 
shawn said:
Did that last year. Didn't amount to much.
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There is a place in Greensboro where you can take or mail a sample of your soil in for analysis. They will tell you exactly what to put down (type of fertilizer amount of lime etc). They probably have somewhere like that where you live. That might be worth a shot.

The grass in my 'shade garden' (septic field in the woods, lol) isn't doing as well as the rest of the grass on my property despite giving it all the same treatment. I'm considering sending off some of the soil for a report. The ground is also very lumpy or wavy due to removing tree stumps and those areas have now settled. I'm considering just having someone bring in a bunch of good top soil to level it out, but I'm sure that won't be cheap. I'm only talking about a 3,500-4,000 sqft area though.
 
I spent a few hundred dollars every year in seed/fertilizer, and got tired of throwing money away on my red clay and weeds. About 2 years ago, I brought in 2-3" of topsoil and then seeded fescue. It came up great in the fall, but quickly dried out in the summer heat. The part on the shaded side of the house still looked good. So I but the bullet and installed an irrigation system last summer. It did really well last fall and all through the winter and is looking better than ever. Normally this time of year it's thin and immature, but now it's thick and fully developed and I don't even hesitate to drive cars or ride the tractor across it.
 
The last two yrs I've paid a buddy of mine that has a ride on sprayer-spreader to come over and hit my yard with broadleaf killer and fertilizer and it's done great. This yr my grass is decent other than your normal weeds that I'm going to spray this weekend. He charged like 185 to do it which is convenient but I bought a pull behind sprayer to test out this yr. Here is a few pics from last yr. Hopefully it will turn out as good this yr.
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cgm147 said:
Has anyone used liquid fertilizer? If so what.. and how did it work. Just bought a nice 21gal pull behind sprayer for weed control and figured I might get another use out of it.
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Liquid fert won't last long at all. Your best bet is to spray the broadleaf weed killer and mix in some iron for a QUICK green up. Use slow release granular fert for extended feeding. Be sure to add surfactant to your broadleaf weed killer to make it effective. Don't spray on a windy day either. 24D travels...
 
drkelly said:
There is a place in Greensboro where you can take or mail a sample of your soil in for analysis. They will tell you exactly what to put down (type of fertilizer amount of lime etc). They probably have somewhere like that where you live. That might be worth a shot.

The grass in my 'shade garden' (septic field in the woods, lol) isn't doing as well as the rest of the grass on my property despite giving it all the same treatment. I'm considering sending off some of the soil for a report. The ground is also very lumpy or wavy due to removing tree stumps and those areas have now settled. I'm considering just having someone bring in a bunch of good top soil to level it out, but I'm sure that won't be cheap. I'm only talking about a 3,500-4,000 sqft area though.
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NC Dept of Agriculture NCDA&CS Agronomic Division - Soil Test Forms and Information will also test your soil for free during certin times of the year. It's $15 during bust times. Your local Site One dealer will also test soil for a cost.
 
In the fall I put down some rye grass just to stop the dirt from moving around in the backyard after we ripped up the yard from construction and I had half a bag left over so my 8 year old son asked if he could spread it in the front yard and me not thinking it would do anything said sure. Well here is what happened :)

I can't complain due to him wanting to help but I did learn a valuable lesson :)

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BRUISER said:
In the fall I put down some rye grass just to stop the dirt from moving around in the backyard after we ripped up the yard from construction and I had half a bag left over so my 8 year old son asked if he could spread it in the front yard and me not thinking it would do anything said sure. Well here is what happened :)

I can't complain due to him wanting to help but I did learn a valuable lesson :)

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I laughed really hard at this one!
 
Love how love how penning tons new commercial says it'll cover bald spots in two weeks or less when my (half price) fescue is up in seven days...... Pennington sucks
 
BRUISER said:
In the fall I put down some rye grass just to stop the dirt from moving around in the backyard after we ripped up the yard from construction and I had half a bag left over so my 8 year old son asked if he could spread it in the front yard and me not thinking it would do anything said sure. Well here is what happened :)

I can't complain due to him wanting to help but I did learn a valuable lesson :)

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A friend of mine had a neighbor who,no matter what he had,always went on about how his (the neighbor)stuff was better.One spring the neighbor bought a new mower and kept bragging how good is was to my friend.So my friend starting sneaking over at night or when they were gone and putting triple 19 on his yard.Done that off and on for about a month,buddy said the guy was mowin 2/3 times a week depending on the rain.
 
shawn said:
Where are you getting it for half price?
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X2

Where are you getting grass seed for 1/2 what the Pennington stuff costs? I've had great luck with the cheap Pennington K31 stuff from Lowes and the only thing that I have seen cheaper is the standard K31 in the big white bags, but it is only maybe $5-$10 less for a 50 lb bag. I put down 200lbs of Pennington grass seed last fall.
 
In Charlotte I buy from Green Resource.
Its about $45/ 50 lb bag. Certainly not half price of regular Pennington but much higher quality seed. So the pros tell me.

I suspect what @RobMcBee is talking about is the expensive ass patch repair stuff that is $40 for a 20/lb bag and is mostly shredded newspaper.
 
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