Why I Oughta...

I waited as long as I could: but, I finally cut the lawn last week.  Posting this on Wednesday, May 3rd, but I ended up cutting the lawn on Thursday,  April 27th.  It was long and ready for a cut.  Here, below, is a peek at the deep-green color of the lawn right now.  It never looks better than mid-Spring. I cut it on the 4-setting on the mower - that's two slots from the tallest.  One of my 2023 items on my lawn care list is to try to cut front a bit lower, so this 4 setting is exactly where I was last year.  My 2022 list says that I cut the front on 6 in 2020.  5 in 2021.  So, it was 4 in 2022 .   This first mow, I used the bagger to keep the cuttings out of the lawn.  As I get more regular, I'll switch to mulching it in as I've done every other year. 

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 Cond...

The hot, hot heat has hit the Chicago Suburbs.  We've had 90-degree temperatures for the past few weeks and it has NOT been a good environment for anything living outside - including our grass.  Lawns in our neighborhood are struggling.  Even ones with built-in irrigation.  Ours is no different.  I've been cutting it VERY LONG (setting #5 on the mower - all the way up) and watering it as frequently as I can - typically in the very early morning.  Here's how it is looking right before I feed it the usual "4th of July" application: It is green, thick and lush - which I'm happy with for the most part.  I'm almost 100% certain that the reason for the partial success this season is due to the tall cutting height.  I have other parts - like in the back where the Automower cuts - that are cut shorter that aren't as healthy and other parts where the grass appears to have gone dormant.  As for the timing of this post and the lawn schedule,...

Our Home Depot is doing curbside pickup with online orders, so I put through an order for some lawn care products including pelletized lawn lime and (wait for it....) ten bags of Milorganite.  Yeah...it seems like they've figured out their supply chain issues this year?  Our local Home Depot is showing over 600 bags in inventory right now.  Based on my 2020 plan , I need 18 bags for the season, so perhaps I should buy the balance and store them (hoard them) for a few months.  Also, based on the 2020 lawn plan , I outlined a 4 bag application of lawn lime to the back in Mid-April.  You can't get any *more* Mid-April than April 15th, right?  That's a bag of the stuff from Home Depot (curbside FTW.) in the Chapin spreader that I was sent last Fall.  Mark it down.  Lawn lime applied.    #5 on the 2020 to-do list was to continue to wage battle against the Wild Onions .  This lawn lime is *supposed* to help do just that.  ...

Over the years, I've done a few [Christmas Haul] posts that show off some of the things that people have gifted me for the yard and garage and shop.  This year, my first "haul" post (despite not being labeled that in the title) was this heated bird bath post from my mother-in-law.  Today, is another gift, but from my Sister-in-Law:  this rake called " The Groundskeeper II ". I came across it on someone in the lawn care community YouTube channel (wish I could remember who it was?  But, just search [Groundskeeper II rake] on YT and you'll find plenty of review posts). What is it? It is a rake.  Yep.  A rake.  But, it is a thatch rake.  And it is unique in design.  Here (below) is the rake laying in the ground in our yard.  You can see that I pulled up a little dead grass in the photo, too.   The Groundskeeper II has a couple of stickers on the handle that talk up the value prop of the tool: 1.  Easy o...

We had a weird Fall this year - with some warm temperatures then cold temperatures then back to warm.  And then there was the early November snow event that came when many of the trees in our neighborhood still had almost all of their leaves on the limbs.  That caused a bunch of snow damage including taking down a good-sized major limb from one of the big Oak trees in our backyard .  When I say 'good-size', I'm talking about 40+ years old.  Check out the photos in the post to see the growth rings . But that tree damage was just one part of the lasting impact on the yard.  The other you can see in this photo above.  When the snow arrived, I did like I do pretty often:  created a little path out back for Lizzie.  If I don't make her a little path, she doesn't get out in the yard to do her business very easily.  Yes...she's a wimp.  Through and through. And...I also normally cut or shovel a path that gets us to our bird feeder so we ...

I have been keeping the grass in front longer than I normally have in the past.  I should say...the *I* and *normally*  here aren't quite fair, as this is the first year that I've been cutting my own front yard after having a service do it the past few seasons.  I wasn't that satisfied with how they were cutting it and after doing a bit of research into the whole turf-building process, I've learned quite a bit and have changed some things. This post is about the length.  You can see that it is somewhere between 3.5" and 4" tall with some blades reaching even higher than that.  But, those blades aren't the normal - and haven't been cut.  Between the low suction on the Ego Self-Propelled mower and having the wheels 'bend' the blades in some cases, there are - on occasion - some blades that are higher than others.   This is Kentucky Bluegrass and I've been mowing it on the second highest setting on the mower.  A month ago, I posted...

I mentioned in the post about our King Crimson Maple tree last month that we had planted nine trees including a Magnolia tree that we put in our front yard.  That's it above.  After I 'limbed it up' a bit by taking the leaves/shoots/small branches off the bottom few feet of the main trunks of this Saucer Magnolia.  We've never had a Magnolia of our own, but Equation Boy/Man and Vic had one at their house and Greg, our former neighbor had one.  Nat has long fancied them, so in working with Chris Paul at Green Grass Landscaping , we decided to put in a Saucer Magnolia in the front yard. In looking through the care and pruning advice in this piece , I decided to work on the tree to put more of the energy into the top range of the young tree to try to grow it up a bit.  Ours had leaves all the way to the ground, but if you look at photos of intermediate growth Saucers or larger, mature Saucer Magnolias , the successful ones have been 'limbed up' to get the f...

About a month ago, I showed the last pictures of our #NewOldFarmhouse where we were having our driveway poured out front.  More recently, the crew moved on to the landscaping and that includes the underground routing of drain pipes.  We're putting the downspouts and the sump pump drain into pipes underground.  You can see one of the big runs in the image above.  They're taking some of the pipes and running them towards a dry well and others...they're running into the yard and installing some 'pop ups' and then letting the grading of the property take over.   I took some photos of the drywells (yes...there's more than one) that we put in underground and I'll post the details of those over time.  It seemed that we had a few choices:  put in the drywells or include a water garden - like the one that the City of Elmhurst recently installed as a demonstration .   From a landscaping perspective, I had a really unique experience.  ...