HoosierLawnGnome fall 2016 renovation - the spring after

[Main_sail22]

Nice digs Hoos! Good luck on the reno!

[HoosierLawnGnome]

^ Ditto. I'd also like to see how those brs trees come out.

I lost a lot of the bare root stock I planted several years ago. Probably half.

I couldn't plant them immediately, so I potted some of them for a while, then planted them. That was a mistake. Too much stress methinks. This time I'm going straight into the ground.

[LoneRanger]

I couldn't plant them immediately, so I potted some of them for a while, then planted them. That was a mistake. Too much stress methinks.

That's what I've read. I decided to stray from brs and shop locally for my trees. It's difficult to impossible finding the specific hybrids I want though, going this route.

[HoosierLawnGnome]

I got all but one of my brs planted within a day of them arriving in the mail. Very pleased, so far. I packed them tightly with soil, then poured buckets of water on them. Probably two apiece. One the last bucket I mixed in some liquid starter fertilizer.

Let's see - what else have I done - the new driveway end beds are coming in, I sparyed twwice with glyphosate over a few weeks and scalped them tonight. Once this polar vortex moves on I'll get the plants in the ground and mulch it in. I'm putting in blue phlox, red double knockout roses, and some azaleas.

The blueberry plug plots finally germinated. But the mid 20 temps tonight might mean a reseed.

I mulched in some more new beds around trees too.

Oh - and I started spraying patches of quack with glyphosate again. I hate quack. Hate it. And I have a lot of it. I hate it. It must die. I don't care if I have brown spots for months, I don't want to deal with it in my reno next spring.

[HoosierLawnGnome]

Ran the dethatcher over the renovation area today.


Not something I normally recommend, but I don't particularly care if I stir up weed seeds right now since it's all getting killed in several months, and this area of turf had a decent amount of dead grass heading into winter. Plus all the dead patches of quack I've been spraying have thatch.

[edenl01]

Are you only doing quackicide in the Reno area at this time? I have a bunch and am surrounded by it. It's overwhelming to think about getting it all.

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[nclawnguy]

Ran the dethatcher over the renovation area today.

How much of your lawn are you renovating this fall? You breaking it up and doing the whole thing?

[HoosierLawnGnome]

I'm renovating about 2/3 of it this fall which is a bit over an acre. maybe less depending on how my germination testing goes this spring. I have about 200 square feet planted with seed this spring that will be for plug transplanting that I seeded without top dressing. I'm nervous about no top dressing as I've always top dressed but there is no way I can top dress that much area. so far I've had decent germination so I am optimistic.

Here's what a big patch of quack looks like in my backyard:


I am killing all quack I find. I haven't hit the above non renovation area yet but I intend to as it has the worse spot. on the other side of the fence is another area.

Anyways this is a marathon not a sprint.

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[HoosierLawnGnome]

Thought I'd post a pic of my sod plots for plugs this fall:


I played around with the sprinkler system. The previous owners did a pretty good job about keeping the spray off the sidewalks and planning good locations for future beds. They also left an area uncovered by sprinklers in the middle of the backyard perfect for a pool. Good thing I'm not renovating that area this fall.

On one side, they left the sprinklers about 6' in from the property line, so I'm going to need to adjust the sprinklers to cover them. I do plan on putting in some more trees on the perimeter. So much to do though.

Set the system up to run on the sod plug area every 3 hours - getting hot and drying out. We had 2 1/2 inches of rain in my yard 2 days ago and the soil is already cracking where it's not covered. The clay likes to crack!

[BuckeyeChuck]

Maybe they left that space from the property line to the sprinklers for a possible hedge? That's what I did on one side.

[HoosierLawnGnome]

Maybe they left that space from the property line to the sprinklers for a possible hedge? That's what I did on one side.

I think that's a good probability. Another is that there is a landscaping drain on the property line between the two lots. I'm leary of putting big trees there that may disrupt the drainage.

[HoosierLawnGnome]

Did my 2nd spray of 24D tonight - went heavy @ 3 pints / acre rate, more slowly over some areas so it's probably higher like 4, and spot sprayed. I still have a lot of dandelions in the renovation area. Pre-emergent is definitely showing its value as the back that I'm not planning on renovating this fall has a lot fewer weeds.

[HoosierLawnGnome]

Here are some of the quack spots I've been spraying.



I hate quackgrass, and there's a lot of it out there. Better this spring than next spring!

[HoosierLawnGnome]

I had the crappy fence torn down this week.


I'm thinking I may as well just go ahead and renovate the back as well, provided I can find enough blueberry seed for it too. The good news is the fence tear down left a couple big bare spots so I turned them into transplant plots for the fall. The ones I have are filling in nicely but I need to spray them with the four week Tenacity app as a lot of weeds are coming in now.

[bernstem]

Looks much better without the fence!

[HoosierLawnGnome]

Looks much better without the fence!

Thanks! Took some convincing of Mrs. HoosierLawnGnome but she loves seeing the treeline. I also love not having to fix it every other month too!

I want to put some colorful hedges around the back of the property's perimeter, and a hosta bed in the back.

[HoosierLawnGnome]

Well, I needed to spray Tenacity on my transplant plots, so I mixed up a backpack full of Tenacity and sprayed them, then used the rest to spot spray clover in the yard.

I'm pretty decided on renovating the entire lawn at this point now that the fence is down. To pull that off I'll need to irrigate one area and get some more seed.

My quackgrass kill spots are getting to tennis ball phase.

Other than that, I've been spending a lot of time edging future beds and planting trees to get them rooted this spring.

[HoosierLawnGnome]

My wife's grandmother passed away and I inherited all the tools from her grandfather's mower workshop. I've been cleaning everything up a little at a time. I basically have all the mower tools I could ever need now.

Here I am stripping down this old tool chest to repaint it:

[ken-n-nancy]

Looks much better without the fence!

Thanks! Took some convincing of Mrs. HoosierLawnGnome but she loves seeing the treeline. I also love not having to fix it every other month too!

You'll also love not having to trim along both sides of it and be able to do longer passes when mowing -- getting rid of the fence will probably knock at least 10 minutes off of your mowing time. When we've been redoing sections of the yard, simplifying lawn maintenance has been a primary consideration.

[ken-n-nancy]

Here I am stripping down this old tool chest to repaint it:

Very nice! Most people would just chuck that out and buy a new one. Repairing / refinishing stuff like that is commendable!