Why I Oughta...

I have some light-green colored (new) patches of grass in our backyard right now.  When I pull up a section of it, this is what it looks like below:  There is A LOT of root-structure at play, isn't there?  Is this a weed - like the dreaded Poa Annua?  Or...could this be Kentucky Blue Grass that I germinated and planted last year?  The color...of the patch (lime-ish green) has me worried that it is Poa. Any grass experts out there that can confirm what I'm dealing with here?  And, what I should do? One thought I had was to try an application of Tenacity?  It doesn't harm KBG and turf-type Tall Fescue .  So, it if does *anything* on this grass, that tells me it is Poa? 

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 abo...

Well, woulda look at that.  We have seedlings emerging in the blank spaces of our backyard lawn.  Specifically, we have seedlings taking off that were spread around our backyard a week or so ago after undergoing a pre-germination process of soaking them for five days .  I threw down 30# of seed (mix of KBG and Tall Fescue) and hand-spread some of it in some bare spots in the far back.  Below is a photo of one of those blank spots.  Have a look to see the grass seedlings coming up and filling in the space: A few things to note about this photo:  I spread a combination of Tall Fescue and Kentucky Bluegrass seeds back here, so I'm not totally sure what I'm seeing here, but based on germination time estimates, I'd say that this is more likely than not to be Tall Fescue.  You'll also note that there is a bunch of white blades in the photo.  That is a nice sight to see as that is Nimblewill that has been treated with Tenacity and is (hopefully) damaged ...

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 t...

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...

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 ...