Lawn care?

I felt terrible. I still do. The ONLY animals I would kill without thinking twice are moles, possums, coyotes, and a great white shark if it was attacking me. But ONLY if it were attacking me.

 

Confession: I may have killed a bird the other day with an air soft gun. He was eating my seeds that I planted. Didn't think it would kill him,but it did.

 

Raccoons are also on that list.

 

Had to kill a woodpecker when I first moved in. Felt terrible but he was really doing a number on the house.

 

Yard is fucking full of clovers. Is there anything I can do at this point in the year to remedy this?

 

Ive had a bumper crop of fucking clovers this year too.
Usually my st Augustin seems to drown it out, but so fat it seems to be putting up a good fight
The chickes seem to do a good number on it though, so ive been concentrating on moving their coop over areas of clovers so far

 

Ortho weed b gone broad leaf killer.

 

Yards looking good these days with the walk-behind I've been using this year.

 

Moved in to my new house a month ago, and I'm ready to make the yard healthy. I identified the turf as Kentucky Bluegrass. Problem is I have a substantial clover infestation. I live in NJ, so temperate climate. Small yard, 6100 sq. ft.

Any suggestions on where to start?

 

My fescue is burning out so badly. Fuuuccckkkk

 

I have to buy a riding lawn mower this week. I know nothing about them except that they are expensive. I also know I don't want to spend a shitload of money. However, I don't want one that will break down in 2 years.

Any suggestions?

 

Found this on google...

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/lawn-mowers/buying-guide.htm

We got lucky and as we were moving into our house, a friend was having to move out of state. Had a John Deere and sold it to us for like $800. Maybe find a few you like and search for the best price. Maybe even look at Craig's List for used ones.

 

Yep. Buy some EndRun.aftee your clover is gone, mix 50/50 top soil and play sand. Spread it in the bare spots. Water. Water. Water. The bluegrass will spread.

 

Thanks. Saw that during my cursory search.

My lawn is right at 1/2 acre, so I've been kind of wavering b/t riding and self propelled. But time is really my biggest consideration here, and I just don't have the time to devote 2+ hours to mowing it every weekend.

 

Spend a little extra, get a zero turn. If time is your issue no question you want a zero turn

 

Forgot to add they're also a lot more fun to drive and pretty easy to work on.

 

For a half acre? Why the fuck is it taking two hours to push mow and bag 1/2 acre?

 

Good deal or not?

http://www.woot.com/offers/8-zone-i...erm=0_c5ca76da11-2ad060ab06-283834646#tracked

 

Getting half my front lawn done with new sod next week. Did one half last year when we bought the house myself but putting in 6 pallets of sod is something I do not want to do again.

 

I'm going to be getting a pallet of emerald zoysia in the next week to start my back yard. I don't have a very big back yard, about 1500-2000 square feet. Plan is to get the main areas covered and then next year I'll finish the rest of the yard with plugs. I'm ok with it taking a few seasons to fully grow in (mostly because I'm not trying to spend the money to fully sod it in one go)

 

I have a pretty big lot. 4,000 sq ft in the front and another 6,000 sq ft in the back. The back is about 75% grass but we have 4 oak trees which makes some area tough. In the process of eradicating all the weeds and then putting in plugs in the spring.

 

Random question about zoysia. I plan on getting some here in the next week, I am only getting one pallet though because I am a cheap ass and for some reason the cheapest I can find it around here is $250. I plan on cutting the strips into 2x2 or 3x3 pieces and then kind of laying them in a checker pattern. This way I can get a little better coverage than plugging but can also stretch it a little further then butting all the strips together. The thing I am concerned about is them growing in evenly with this approach. With plugging you are having the sod all at the same height, but with the way I am going about it the ground level will be below the sod in between where I lay it. Should I be putting some topsoil in between the sod? I just don't want to make it more hilly than it already is when the zoysia starts to spread.

It'll look like this:

 

I think one concern with checkboard is an uneven lawn. Like it's bumpy cutting the grass. There may be a way to avoid that but I've never researched it.

 

That is my main concern. I saw one youtube video were the guy laid his sod like this and he said that he was going to put topsoil in between the sod to help with it growing even. Other than this, I can't find any information one way or the other.

 

Yea, i'd want to put sand or top soil in between just for my own piece of mind if I were doing it.

 

Seems like the hassle and cost of doing top soil- might as well spend the $250 for another pallet?

 

Not really. I can get a yard of topsoil for about $20, two yards would be plenty.

 

You definitely want to fill in the bare squares with a layer of topsoil up to even with the top of the sod square. As long as you do that pretty much evenly you wont have to worry about bumps and hills when it fills in. All of the sod and topsoil is going to settle a little on its own so it should pretty much even itself out as long as you make it close to start with. I'd also mix some sand in the topsoil. Grass loves that shit.

 

Expanded the lawn at my cabin to make it about 1.5 acres, can't wait for the grass to grow in in the new area. Once the trees were cut down, pulled the stumps then used a drag to level everything out and then threw down some grass seed. Hoping for moist conditions for the next week or two so can get stuff established before winter

 

Moving in to my new place in a few weeks. Got about a half acre lot of centipede that's mostly doing well, but have some areas of crabgrass, dollar weed and clover mixed in. Should I attempt to manage it all now or should I just wait until the spring and hit it with a pre-emergent? Same with fertilizer? Any point in doing anything at all this year?

 

how many days a year do you get to enjoy grass?

 

Where are you?
How many more growing months you have?

 

I would try and kill the weeds now and make sure you pre-emerge to keep the weeds from germinating next year. Be careful that whatever you use is safe for centipede.

 

Yea, I'd just pull the weeds. I have centipede and you might have a month left of growing.

 

30 mins from the coast in SC. Probably have a month-ish left growing wise.

 

My fescue lawn has turned to shit this summer (I'm in Georgia). I think I'm going to switch it over to a Zenith Zoysia lawn next year. Has anyone made a change like that before and have any experience. I'm assuming it will be difficult, but I think the Zoysia will be a hell of a lot easier to maintain in these parts. Every lawn in my neighborhood that's rocking Zoysia looks great, and all the fescue lawns have been burning out badly.

 

I mixed in some fescue this spring. Looked amazing for a month or two. Then summer killed it all and bermuda took over. I've determined that I love rhizomes.

 

I'm so over fescue. I spent two full weekend working on that shit earlier this year and it just burned.

I'm all about that zoysia game now.

 

If you're really serious about it, kill everything now and get the zoysia to germinate before winter. That way the rhizome will have a little bit of time to spread. Will be much better off in spring.

 

Also, you will have zoysia till the end of time. Very hard to kill off.

 

I did a pretty large yard renovation this year. Took down about 23 pine trees, brought in a bunch of dirt and did grading. I really wanted fescue so I could have year round color but knew it was a gamble because most of my yard is 100% sun. It looked great for a while until our first heat wave, went to shit quickly and wasted a bunch of water trying to save it. About a month ago said fuck it and went got a pallet of compadre zoysia and a tiller. Tilled up a bunch and spread the pallet down. This is what it looks like now.

Spoiler

I went behind and filled all those gaps in with a 1:1 sand and topsoil mix so it would be level and fill in nicely. Plan is to get one more pallet in the spring when it starts to green up and plug the rest of the yard from that original pallet. Also going to plug the front yard off that pallet which isn't too big. Would have loved to done the whole yard with sod but the cheapest I could find it in my area was $270 a pallet so wasn't trying to shell out that kind of money. Hopefully at the end of next season the yard is mostly filled in. I'm ok with waiting that long doing it this way.

 

Be sure to water vigorously and re-apply the topsoil/sand mix as needed. It'll fill in by summer next year.

 

My buddy has zeon zoysia. Mows it with a reel mower. It's not quite like a putting green, but he's got it looking like a world class tee box.

Several high end golf clubs are going to zeon zoysia for their tee boxes. Looks amazing fwiw.

 

I saw on some random TV show a genetically modified grass (maybe thats the wrong terminology) that has really deep root system to pull water and stay green / drought resistant, while also trained to grow slow and short so you don't have to mow often at all. Anyone have thoughts, or experiences with it?

Google may have found it for me... It's a good looking grass also. If I ever have to start a yard over, or build I want to do this (assuming it grows well in Louisiana)

 

Once I've got the zoysia down, I'm good to have it that way in perpetuity. Most of my neighborhood seems to be going to zoysia anyway, so I'll keep that trend going.

I was going with the zenith zoysia because it looks like that's the only one you can put down using seed. I'm going to give that a shot and see how it goes. If I need to fill in with plugs in the months after, then I can do that. I pretty much did my entire lawn again using fescue seed and it looked great until the first heat wave cooked it out. I had my neighbors coming over and asking what I did to make it look so damn good. Now it looks like a dust bowl, and I wasted a ton of money running the sprinklers trying to save it.

But yea, I've always been a big fan of the zoysia look since it looks like a nice tee box. I'll probably rent a riding tiller from the tool rental place across the street from me and use that to get all the current fescue up, aerate the soil beneath, then I'll level some things out, put down the seed, and then roll it. After that...

 

Pay to have it title. Pay. Pay. Pay.

 

*tilled