Why I Oughta...

A few days ago, I shared some photos of the initial application of municipal biosolids to our parkway - the part of the parkway that is closest to the driveway.  I mentioned that I would need a few more trips of 10-12 gallons of material to finish the parkway.  This past weekend, I made a stop at the biosolids station and filled up my 2+ buckets.  I brought the material home and spread it on the smaller section of parkway that is on the other side of the driveway.  This is the IB2DWs parkway area.  See below for a look at the material after I raked it in: This section of grass is particularly rough to deal with and be successful with grass.  It is not-so-great soil that also sees A LOT of road debris and gets filled up with those tiny Locust leaves each Fall.  My neighbor's section is irrigated (I think), so his does better than mine.   Looking at these photos - including another one below - I'm thinking that I could put a second application on top of this one to try to help i

Yesterday, I posted an update showing that I had spread 120 pounds of pelletized lawn lime on the back yard and gardens and mentioned that I was going to next turn to the application of pre-emergent.  But, I failed to even reference MY OWN PLAN .  In that plan - which I also published last week - I talked about how I wanted to add some biosolids to the parkway.  Just like with the Lime, I wanted to try to beat a storm that was coming.  So, I went out and picked up two five gallon buckets full of the stuff from the Village.  See below - the buckets are NOT QUITE FULL, as I didn't want to risk them tipping over/spilling and getting the smelly stuff all over my car.   I intend to try to spread a layer of these biosolids all across the parkway.  Why?  A couple of reasons.  First....I've never had a lot of luck with the grass down here.  I'm not sure if it is road salt-related.  Or, the soil conditions?  Or both?  So, I figure I'll begin to amend the soil and see if I can

Out in the yard recently - with the snow melting away - and I notice some interesting contrasts appearing in the lawn in a few pockets.  See below for a photo showing what appears to be a darker, finer-blade green patch of lawn in the yard that (at first glance) seems out of place: What the heck is this?  At first, my brain raced to think about if this was an invasive turf - like the Nimbleweed that I discovered last year.  This patch is darker green and a different texture from the rest of the lawn.  I stared at it.  And stared at it.  Then it hit me:  this is a patch of Tall Fescue that I overseeded last year during a renovation .  For the most part, I attempted to mix the Tall Fescue seed in with Kentucky Bluegrass seed, but in the section closest to our patio, I didn't mix them.  Why?  Because that section is/was all KBG.  So, by overseeding with Tall Fescue, I was attempting to get a blend of the two.   That patch above is a bit more Tall-Fescue-exclusive than what I was going

Last week, I posted the details of how I was overseeding and renovating my backyard with a mix of Kentucky Bluegrass and Tall Fescue seeds .  In this post , I went over how I was attempting to pre-germinate the seed by soaking it in water for five days in an attempt to speed-up the process once I scattered the seed.  Well...I went ahead and scattered the seed using e-Corganite as the spreading and drying agent with the wet, pre-germinated seed.  As a reminder, I put down 30 pounds of seed across about 10k square feet in our backyard that was made-up of 10# of KBG and 20# of Tall Fescue seeds.  I applied it at different rates to different parts of the yard.   But, then I panicked.  As I walked around the yard, not only did I NOT see any seedlings, I saw a bunch of what sure seem like blank spots.  Just dirt.  No seeds.  Yikes.  I thought that maybe I didn't put down enough seed.  Or that it had washed away.  Especially on the sides.   So, I rushed out and bought another bag of seed.

The time has come for the backyard Fall lawn project.  What I thought was going to be a total renovation - killing everything and seeding from scratch - has turned into a combination of patch seeding and total overseeding in a couple of ways.  Once I was able to positively identify that I had an infestation of Nimblewill (a warm-season bent grass), I opted for a selective treatment called Tenacity.  After a couple of applications, the spray began to work and has turned the tips of the Nimblewill white as it begins to kill it off .  The killing and eradication of the Nimblewill isn't going to be done in this one season, but rather will be a multi-year program.  But, with the application of Tenacity (while the Nimblewill is/was growing ), I think I've begun to defeat it.  And allow for the application of a new batch of grass seed that will (I hope) take off and begin to grow in the final six or so weeks of the season.   The backyard is a case study in three parts.  The first thi

I started my lawn feeding program this year (2021) with a granular bio solid product called e-Corganite (from Menards) and I'm finishing off the year with the same 40# bags of e-Corganite for my late Fall/early Winter dormant feeding.  I had three bags of this fertilizer on hand and threw it down heavy this weekend.  I'm PRETTY SURE that I did the same thing (an early December feeding) last year, but I don't have it posted on the blog.  Here's a post from early December 2019 showing how I used a few bags of Milorganite on the lawn as it was dormant and cool .   Many folks will tell you that this late Fall/early Winter dormant feeding of the lawn is the *most* important one you can do - and if you were to do JUST ONE feeding per year, this one might be the one to choose.  Penn State's extension office says the benefits of feeding your lawn this time of year include a good 'green up'.  From PSU : Late fall fertilization should take place when shoot growth ce

We have had a particularly difficult grass-growing season this Summer.  The heat and drought sent the majority of our Kentucky Blue Grass into dormancy.  There were a couple of spots that I believe went beyond dormancy into death including the low spot outside of our patio area in back.  At first, I thought that maybe this was grub damage - because it wasn't responding to water - but after digging up the turf and having a look, all I saw was worms.  No grubs.  But, I also found a pretty shallow area of topsoil on top of gravel for our drywell.   I haven't done any sizeable Fall seeding projects, but based on the soil temperature, coupled with a forecast that called for a period of cooler temperatures and some rain, I thought that I'd take on trying to overseed a good portion of this area.   I first used my thatch rake to remove a lot of the dead material , then took out my manual aeration tool to create some holes.  After doing a little bit of research, I decided to buy som

A few days ago, I posted (once again) about the 'in between two driveways' part of our yard and talked about how the hot, Summer sun beats down part of the area so much so that I've had the grass go dormant every year.  In that post, I talked about taking on just a PART of the area - down by the sidewalk - which is the worst-hit portion of the turf each year.  My thinking was to convert this section to a bed and plant it with something a bit more drought-tolerant.    My longer-term thinking is to convert much of this section 'in between two driveways' to a long, linear bed with just a little bit of turf .  But, that's a big project requiring quite a bit of turf removal AND a lot of planting.   That means I'm going to start with a smaller section right now - and I started to carve out the bed last night.  Just to get the contours of the area that I want to transform, I removed the edge and will follow with removing the (now dormant) turf in the coming days.

When I put together my 2021 to-do list , I included as #3 the idea of working the 'in between two driveways' area.  I mentioned that I needed to add a layer of mulch and think about doing even more.  I did some of that - mulched AND added a trio of Serendipity Allium to the bed .  And, the Chanticleer Pear Tree (after some hard pruning) seems to be on track.  (I'm not sure that's a good thing...but that's for another day.) But that's the extent of the work over there so far. Revisiting what I wrote back in late February about this area, I mentioned doing more: Later on (after I published my list), I wrote a post expounding on this area and even had some thinking about the area and converting it from turf grass .  But, I never got around to doing that very thing. Why post about it now?  Because, after a hard Summer of sun beating down on it, I am reminded why this area is so problematic.  See below for what it looks like right now:  Hard, dry, brittle and brown. 

Putting a few things in the [ lawn diary ] in this post: cut length + domination line.  First, the cut length.  Back in June, I posted about how I was using Hydretain to try to reduce watering while bringing my front yard lawn down one notch on my mower - to 4 out of 6.   The past few Summers, I cut the lawn at 6/6 and while it was dark green and lush, it started to fall over a bit and was probably *too long*.  I mean...the lawn looked great ( 2019 early August when it should be failing ), but I wanted to push things a bit this year and see if I could handle the shorter cut. I posted this image in 2019 showing how when my mower was set to 6/6, I was getting between 3.5" and 4" of grass length .  Knocking two spots off the mower height setting, I'm now seeing between 2" and 2.5" of height right now.  See below for the current length: So far, so good.  We'll check back in with the lawn in late August after the full month of hot, hot heat has beaten the turf

Marking down a few items in my [lawn care diary] for the season with this post that have taken place over the past few weeks.   The last time I posted a lawn update was when I put down Hydretain at the beginning of June on the front lawn and 'between two driveways' strip.   This post is marking four other applications that I've done and figured it was best to wrap up in one post. The first (that I don't have a photo of) was the application of 2 total bags of Grub Control from Menards on the front and back lawn and even some of the beds at the very beginning of June.   Then, I put down a second spoon-feeding of the Sea Kelp, Biochar, Iron and Humic from The Andersons.  At the end of May.  Here's a look at the bag of this stuff in the garage below.  I think I'll get two more applications of this still this Summer:  #3 at the end of June.  #4 at the end of July. In June, I put down two new products:  First this Slow Mow Lawn Conditioner - a growth regulator - to

I've adopted the approach to limit feeding my lawn until May.  Why?  Because I want to avoid having to cut the lawn more than I need to in Spring.  That means that all during March and April, when the big box stores are pushing their various Step 1 programs and I see all the fertilizer on pallets, I don't apply it to my lawn.   I feed late in the season (Thanksgiving time) and know that my lawn greens up on it's own in April.  And, like I said....I don't want to have to start cutting it just yet.   Last year I published my lawn care schedule .  In that post, I include a few April items that aren't feeding the lawn like Humic Acid and Lime (soil conditioners) as well as using Ironite in the front to get that dark green look (without ALL THE GROWTH).   I'm posting this on April 24, but that bag of Ironite you see in this post went down on April 18th.  I put it on the full front yard - main yard, parkway and 'in between two driveways'.  5K square feet. Note

By the time the middle of November comes around, I've been doing leaf clean-up in our yard for at least four weeks.  We get early drops (Walnut), constant drops (Catalpa, Maple, Kentucky Coffee Tree) and late drops (Oaks) and it lasts more than a month.  If I waited until they all came down, it would be a huge mess.  Not that it isn't a good idea.  It just isn't how I address the situation.  When I started this year, I spent time using the mower and bagged up all the leaves as they dropped - by mowing about once per week.  I filled our compost bins pretty quickly.   But, with our bins filled, what do I do with leaves still on the grass?  I decided to try something new this year:  I just mulched them in the lawn.   You can see it below - this is mostly a lot of oak leaves (which are hard to break down) that have been mulched up and left behind.   I don't love this look, but I wanted to try it.  Here - below - is a close-up look of the mulched in leaves.   And here's

A little over a month ago, I posted a photo of the pair of soil tests that I was planning on conducting for my lawn - both front and back - from SoilSavvy.  These tests require you to take a composite set of soil plugs and combine them into a little tray that you ship off.  When SoilSavvy's lab receives the samples, they run them through their system and then send you off this analysis.   I ended up doing one test for my front yard and one for the backyard.  This is a little different in approach than I did last year, but I'm thinking this is the best way forward.  First, a quick review of where things were last year .  This year, the results show higher levels of just about everything aside from Boron.   First up, the front yard.  The N-P-K analysis shows that the Potassium is below the target area.  Surprised?  Not really.  Milorganite's N-P-K is 6-4-0 - so I haven't added any Potassium to the yard this year.   The Calcium, Magnesium and Sulfur are all off the char