LeftField11 wrote:Here's the current process and timeline I've laid out - this has been updated daily for the last week
Generally looks like a good plan.
I do have a few comments / suggestions, though:
* I'm glad to see fill / level on the plan at about the same time as the kill. A lot of the benefit of fallowing is to eliminate weed seeds that come to the surface with disturbed soil or new fill. Accordingly, it's beneficial to do the fill / level step before the fallowing.
* It's good to mow the dead grass as low as your mower can handle as soon as the grass is clearly dead, bagging the clippings to keep from burying the soil under the grass clippings. You can see when to do this from many past renovation threads. (e.g.
see our thread from last year. Typically, it's about 5-7 days after glyphosate. You don't want to wait too long to do this, or the grass will mat down and the mower won't lift it up to cut it. Be aware that this step will make you feel like Pig-Pen from Peanuts due to the amount of dust this step will generate.
* During the fallowing period after the grass is mostly dead, you want to be watering as if you were trying to get grass to grow. This means you'll want to water about 3-5 times a day for a short time during each watering. The goal is to keep the surface of the soil moist, but never water long enough to get any runoff or standing water. Depending upon how much water your irrigation system delivers, it may be only 5-10 minutes per watering. This also gives you a chance to refine your watering approach so that you can fine-tune your watering to minimize erosion and runoff for when you have actually sown seed.
* Power raking *after* the fallowing is all done will disturb the soil surface, countering a lot of the benefit of having fallowed. If the power raking step is really needed, you should do it right after the scalp mowing, so that the fallowing is after the power raking. If your soil is sufficiently non-compacted, you shouldn't need a power raking step. In all honesty, if you still have "stubble" remaining from the old grass, that's actually a good thing -- it will help prevent runoff and erosion, and also will help keep the soil surface moist -- kind of like free "grass seed accelerator" (e.g. PennMulch). I know that conventional wisdom is to get bare soil, but I learned from others on this site that did renovations into "dead grass stubble" seedbeds that it actually works better! You can see the seedbed of our most recent reno
in this post -- the best germination with least erosion runoff was in the areas that still had old grass stubble.
* Weed seeds will be continuing to germinate throughout the whole process. I'd suggest the final glyphosate be the same day of sowing seed to minimize the germinating weeds that survive after the final glyphosate. In my most recent renovation, I applied the final glyphosate about 4 hours before seed-down, basically just giving the glyphosate enough time to dry. (Even that may not be strictly necessary -- I don't think glyphosate will harm just-sown seeds, but I haven't heard of folks doing one last glyphosate right after sowing the seed.)
* The biggest problem we had in our renovation last year was getting our seed down too late (9 September), particularly as we're at least 100 miles north of you. I'm glad to see your plan for a mid-August seed-down!
