My large scale reno.

[flyin-lowe]

Some of you remember my thread a year or two ago about my 5 acre front yard that was horribly rough. More recently I had thread going in the cool season section discussing starting a reno. I had a few more questions and issues come up so here I am with a reno thread.

QUICK update to get everyone caught up. 5 acre yard, never was graded or anything when the house was built. Literally had crop rows in it with humps and valleys 8-10 inches in some parts. Last spring I rented a full size asphalt roller and that helped a lot. Still the yard is horribly rough. Last week I marked off an acre and sprayed round up (1 gallon/25 gallons of water). Tonight I took the mower out and scalped it down to about 2 inches (was mowing at 4.5).
Initially I was going to have a friend of mine who farms use a disk and work the ground with that. Another friend of mine owned a landscaping company and had an implement that would rake, seed, drag, and smooth all at once. He sold his business last week so I went to the new owners for an estimate. They wanted $450.00 just for labor to seed one acre, that was me providing the seed.
Now I am thinking about doing more of it myself. One person recommended a Harley rake, then drag, then seed. I have some farmer friends so I can get a disk, rent a Harley rake, or what ever other tools might be needed.
My main objective is to smooth the ground. I am trying to get seed down within the next week or two.
So the questions I have right now, do you think a 10 foot disk would do a better job or will a Harley rake be better. Some say the Harley rake is not the best idea for ground that still has grass, others say it will work.

I don't plan right now to do any more applications of round up, mainly because of time constraints. Once I get the ground smooth I can use 24D and over seeding in the future to get the grass right.
Depending on how this year goes I plan on doing an acre to an acre and half each fall the next several years. Again I am more focused right now on getting the ground smooth.

[Jackpine]

I'd go with the Harley rake. One pass, drag and done. Discing will not come close to leaving a level surface and require many passes with the drag. Either one will leave a few clumps of grass/sod to take care of but the Harley shuld be better.

[flyin-lowe]

I checked around and no places near here have a Harley rack to rent. The place I thought had one does not and nothing close at all. Looks like a few days of dragging.

[GaryCinChicago]

Discing looks like furrows when done. That's what you are trying eliminate.

You want a box blade on a 3 point hitch.

[HoosierLawnGnome]

Where are you? Did you try sunbelt rentals on the south side off of Indy @ 37 / 465? They have a lot of heavy equipment.

[flyin-lowe]

I'm over by the Ohio state line.
We are disking it multiple times and will be using some type of drag to smooth it out. This year is a big experiment on the side yard. Depending on how I do I will be starting next year on the rest of the yard which is in front of the house.

[HoosierLawnGnome]

Yeah I'm not much help that far east. I bet there are some farm Co ops that have what you need though.

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[flyin-lowe]

I am doing some checking, my goal is to get the seed in the ground this week. So far it looks like no rain. I am hoping the farmer gets here in the next day or two to start disking. If I can't get an implement to smooth I will spend a could days dragging and then spread the seed.

[flyin-lowe]

Well I was hoping to get my seed down today, calling for rain tonight but no luck. The lawn was disked and tilled yesterday and today I started dragging it. I had two different drags to try. The first was a 10'x5' chain link fence gate. It wasn't doing much so I went to plan B. A 6t foot wide piece of iron rail road track. A friend of mine had it that he used for a drag. It worked decent but there was so much thatch/sod and dead grass that it was piling up everywhere. I kept dragging thinking I could spread it out enough but there was several places is kept piling up. So I spent the afternoon back dragging the surface lightly and piling up the dead grass and roots from the round up job. I was hoping to drag it someone but it started raining as I was finishing picking up the piles of dead grass and thatch. Hopefully we don't get too much rain tonight and in a couple days it dries out and I can drag it some more and get seed in the ground. I want it in last week but now I am in crunch time.

[flyin-lowe]

Another question for tonight. I can get my hands on ammonium sulfate pretty cheap in my neighborhood. I think it is 24-0-0 or something like that. Could I use this as a "starter" fertilizer and if so how much would you recommend per 1000 square feet?

[andy10917]

Ammonium Sulfate is a pure Nitrogen source, and a strong acidifier as fertilizers go. That makes it a pretty poor "Starter".

Do you have a link to your latest soil test?

[flyin-lowe]

Any reason to stay away from this blend of seed, it is at Rural King, I can't find it on their web site. It is "Estate sun and shade mix" Shows Perennial Rye Grass 34.53, Creeping red fescue 34.26, Chewings fescue 14.77, and KY Bluegrass 14.51. All show Germ H % at 85. As you can see from the picture this is my side yard and it does not need to be show quality. Just a decent seed, my neighbor used K31 which I don't want. A local co op has a mix they sell for $2.00 per pound, he said it is 50/50 fescue and rye, but not sure anymore specific then that.

[pwking]

In my experience the creeping red fescue gets scorched in full sun. I'd find something else. Are you able to irrigate it well or are you relying on Mother Nature?

[ken-n-nancy]

Any reason to stay away from this blend of seed, it is at Rural King, I can't find it on their web site. It is "Estate sun and shade mix" Shows Perennial Rye Grass 34.53, Creeping red fescue 34.26, Chewings fescue 14.77, and KY Bluegrass 14.51. All show Germ H % at 85. As you can see from the picture this is my side yard and it does not need to be show quality. Just a decent seed, my neighbor used K31 which I don't want. A local co op has a mix they sell for $2.00 per pound, he said it is 50/50 fescue and rye, but not sure anymore specific then that.

Personally, having tried to nurse along a front lawn with nearly all fescue, some perennial ryegrass, and nearly no kentucky bluegrass for the better part of a decade until renovating last year with a mix with 33% KBG, I would be inclined to go for 100% kbg in that field of yours.

The ryegrass isn't going to self-repair. Without irrigation in that full sun, a hot dry stretch in the summer will kill the ryegrass. Ryegrass is great for a "contractor's mix" where the goal is a quick fix for the next 1-2 years, but future attention will be needed.

The fescue is low-maintenance, needing hardly any fertilizer. However, it doesn't self-repair either (even the creeping red fescue is very slow in comparison to KBG). Hot dry conditions will try to kill it, too -- it doesn't have a good dormancy tactic, either.

The kentucky bluegrass is a hungrier grass, needing more fertilization in mid-spring and fall. However, it self-spreads to fill in small bare spots (think saucer-sized) when adequately fertilized in spring and fall. Summer is just about survival for any grass, but the KBG has a self-preservation method of going dormant and then recovering again in the fall. If small spots did die out, the KBG will spread back into those spots.

My personal opinion on a full sun lawn like yours in the midwest would be to put down a 100% KBG blend. The seed will cost you more up front and you'll have to fertilize it at least 3#N / 1K sqft each year, but you won't be having to overseed every couple of years and it will more aggressively crowd out weeds. The contra-indication for KBG is shade. However, you appear to have almost none of that, so I'd go 100% KBG.

For seeding costs, you also can't compare Ryegrass / Fescue / KBG seeds directly by weight. Ryegrass and Fescue seeds are much larger and heavier, needing about 4 to 5 pounds for 1K square feet. KBG seeds are tiny; you'll only need about 2 pounds of KBG seeds per 1K square feet. (In other words, for your 1 acre (44K) reno, you'll need about 175-220 pounds of rye or fescue seed, but only about 90-100 pounds of KBG.)

When I was in Illinois a few weeks ago, I saw some 100% KBG seed blends at Menards that looked fine and weren't too expensive (is anything at Menards too expensive?). I picked up a real small bag (3#) for patching spots in my son's lawn, but they had big bags (20 or 25 pounds?) too.

With where you are in the country, there's just got to be a seed store within an hour of your house that has lots of seed choices.

[ken-n-nancy]

Oh, by the way, the biggest challenge of establishing grass is proper watering for the grass seeds to germinate. The top surface of the soil where the seeds are needs to be kept moist but not soaked for about 7-21 days for KBG. This is going to be a big challenge on an acre without irrigation. Fescue and ryegrass don't take as long to germinate -- about 5-10 days can be sufficient.

However, any grass establishment either requires just about perfect weather conditions (a week of occasional gentle rain) or watering via sprinklers. I didn't see in your renovation thread what your watering plan will be...

[flyin-lowe]

Thanks for all the advice. Still learning, not sure what he used but my neighbor put down all KGB when he built his house and he hates it. He said for a small yard it would be fine but it is too large to water and without water and fert it browns out very easily in the summer. I am wanting to get it seeded tomorrow or the next day. The next week or so the weather is supposed to be nice, however no rain. I have a couple miles (LOL) of garden hose and plan on watering it myself, when mother nature doesn't cooperate. The front half closest to the road is pretty narrow so that won't be a huge deal. It widens out when it gets close to the house. I have a few sprinklers, some standard and a couple tractor types. I'm just going to do the best I can with those.

[HoosierLawnGnome]

Unless you have all day watering an acre every day by hand is extremely challenging.

PR browns out more quickly than KBG once it's established from what I've seen.

Most important thing for you is to figure out a realistic strategy to water an acre several times a day to keep it moist.

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[flyin-lowe]

Update.
I finally got seed in the ground earlier this week. I was wanting to get in down a couple weeks ago but due to schedule issues it did not happen. We have not had rain for over 2 weeks so probably a good thing I did not get it in. We are forecasted to get almost an inch of rain tomorrow into the next day. I did end up doing most of the ground prep myself so the landscape company agreed to come and seed for quite a bit less then what they had quoted me. They had an implement that worked the top soil, dropped the seed, then covered and rolled it.
I ended up with a blend of Crossfire III TTTF and PR. A local co op sells seed and said it is their best blend for this area and best seller. My neighbor has a similar sized yard and his front is all KBG and he told me he hates it. It is too large to water and fert so every time we go a week or two in the summer it browns really quick. I was also surprised to see that quite a bit of the old grass has started to pop back up, we only disked a couple inches deep, enough to be able to drag it smooth. I have enough hose to watery it manually if I need to but there is rain in the forecast several days in the next week. Hopefully in a week or two I will have some pics to show.
I also put down an application of fertilizer down tonight that should get rained in tomorrow morning.

[HoosierLawnGnome]

Yeah, if you'd seeded two weeks ago it would have all died. It's been that dry, and really we had some hot days.

Good luck!

[ken-n-nancy]

I finally got seed in the ground earlier this week.

Congrats on all the prep work and getting the seed down! Now the tense part of waiting and watering!

We'll be looking for those pics!