rtomek's 2016 reno

[GeorgiaDad]

Did you start any pots?

[rtomek]

Yes, I had 42 4" pots. I planted them over the weekend because I could tell where the grass was going to germinate and where it wasn't, and I figured if I don't use them now that I'm probably not going to use them by the end of the year. There's actually two pots in the upper-left corner of that photo near the mulch bed. I was able to reduce all of the completely bare spots in the parkway to under 1' across (probably more like 6") so I'm hoping all of the seedlings that are visible actually take hold.

[GeorgiaDad]

After I super sized the pic I could see them.

[rtomek]

2 straight days of rain so I searched and found brown patch in a bunch of areas, and powdery mildew behind the shed. Didn't see it when I mowed on Tuesday. Mancozeb was the only thing I had in the garage, so I spot sprayed with that and will have to get some Heritage tomorrow.


Sent from my iOS device using the Yard Help App

[rtomek]

Saturday was another full day of rain During a break I was able to get some good close up photos during better light and it turns out that what I thought was brown patch throughout the yard is more like 90% rust and 10% brown patch. I'm glad it's not as bad as I initially thought. I tried to get Heritage but it was out of stock so I grabbed some Eagle and used that over the weekend. Also emptied a bag of urea (about 1/3 lb/k of N) on Saturday during a short break in the rain, plus bag and a half rate of Milorganite on Sunday. Finally sprayed for the weeds using Quinclorac (still holding off on Tenacity) and used some other synthetic hormones to try to boost kbg spreading.

[LoneRanger]

.. used some other synthetic hormones to try to boost kbg spreading.

??

[rtomek]

Triacontanol, benzylaminopurine, and gibberillic acid. I skipped the IAA in the 'more typical' mix since I was using quinclorac and they are both auxins. I used polysorbate 80 as a solvent/emulsifier (didn't have polysorbate 20) for everything and it worked pretty well. If you go this route, you will want (require?) a balance that has a draft shield.

I saw a noticeable response within 36 hours with 100% cloud cover and wish I had used it since I put the seed down, but still too many variables to know for sure what caused the rapid growth. Only downside so far is that this morning there was some chlorosis to the desired turf from the quinclorac. It should be as normal as Tenacity bleaching, but quinclorac is a standard part of my arsenal and I'm not used to seeing chlorosis in desired turf so its effect might be boosted by the other chemicals. Newer quinclorac labeling http://www.dbcirrigation.com/wp-content ... _Final.pdf states that it is safe anytime with kbg seedlings, and the papers I read indicate that the chlorosis caused to seedlings was considered a big negative in the past, but is offset by the reduced weed pressure for a net overall benefit.

Of course, I could be wrong with all of this but my parkway is so bad right now that there's not much downside if my hypotheses are wrong.

[rtomek]

Here's my day 54 photo of the same area in the front yard. Didn't have to time to do a mid-week mow, but the grass is growing like crazy even though there's some bleaching. The amount of growth and spreading during the last 5 days has been incredible, I have some other shots compared to last week that better emphasize the explosion of grass but want to make sure the grass doesn't die from hormone overdose before sharing.

[g-man]

The grass in the back top right side looks really nice with a nice green color. oh! that's not the reno, that's the neighbor lawn. Your looks nice too.


The above normal temperatures in the midwest are really helping our yards squeeze out a bit more grow for the season. Congrats on a the new lawn.

[rtomek]

I cut my mutant grass over the weekend The new growth was all floppy and white, like I had a yard full of bean sprouts. I had to pull out the gas mower to mow it, a bunch of areas had 6-8" of growth and I needed that vacuum action. The grass under the floppy white stuff looks normal, so now it's kind of patchy based on where I was able to cut off all of the white grass. There were even blades that I could tell were cut last time I mowed, but mutant grass does not care and they grew to more than 6" long

It felt strange, but good, to actually mow my yard normally again. Also no signs of any fungal issues.

The grass in the back top right side looks really nice with a nice green color. oh! that's not the reno, that's the neighbor lawn. Your looks nice too.

I agree that my neighbor's yard looks great. Ever since Google last updated their satellite view, it has been really easy to pick out my yard because it was the darkest green in the entire neighborhood. The 2nd and 3rd darkest green are my two neighbors; they've started doing things differently since I've moved in. I killed a showcase lawn to start my reno because it was the only thing left I could do to get darker shades of green

[rtomek]

Day 92 already! It's been a while since I last posted an update. Between the hormones and aggressive N, the grass has really been spreading even this late into the year. I did slow down the fertilization almost a month ago now because the milo pellets weren't breaking down and the yard was still covered in them. The grass finally has consistent color after the hormone bleaching and is darker than the neighbors. FAS certainly helped with the color too.

OK, this is way more aggressive than the grass that I used to have. I used the string trimmer to cut back around the stepping stones in two weeks ago and didn't notice it, so this has to be pretty recent.



Here's a set of images to show the reno recovery, and my last attempt at overseeding was day 28.
Left: Prior to hormones (day 46)
Center: 3 days after hormone treatment (day 54)
Right: Recent photo (day 81)

[rtomek]

Well it's the Spring and my grass hasn't woke up uniformly. The areas that were slowest to come in woke up the fastest. The areas that came in the fastest last year, basically anywhere with grass in my day 32 pics, still hasn't started growing yet. Those areas only turned green 10-14 days ago, and they haven't been hit with a mower yet and still look about an inch tall. I noticed some rust last week so I used serenade and spot sprayed with some fungicide, but this week it's gotten way worse.

I'm still inclined to think "it's just rust, it will eventually go away" but what really worries me is that the grass hasn't grown at all this year. When will it wake up and start growing? I did start spoon feeding N the weekend of 4/8, when over 90% of the yard was green, but that hasn't helped to kickstart growth either. Actually, if it wasn't for the rust, I would consider it the perfect grass because it's a deep dark green and never needs to be cut.

[rtomek]

Mowed over the weekend for the first time in 15 days, and I finally took some off the top which got rid of most of my orange/brown color. We had over 5" of rain during that time, it's just staying so low to the ground that it didn't even look like more than 2-3 days had gone between mows. Here it is after my mow:

[edenl01]

What cultivars did you end up choosing?

[rtomek]

I went with two cultivars in the Midnight group: Blue Velvet and Arcadia. I think of it as my semi-monostand. I was torn between the two due to small (probably insignificant) differences in salt/shade/disease tolerance, and they both had similar NTEP results so I just went with it. I haven't been able to tell the difference between the two yet.

[rtomek]

I put down my second primo app last weekend, since the grass finally started growing upright. Even with my weekly spoon feedings which add up to about 1.5 lb/k of N so far this year, the new grass just seems to grow out instead of up. A drastic difference from my old KBG with primo. It's funny that g-man mentioned how good my neighbor's yard looks above, I chatted with him last night and he said my lawn is so dark now that his (and my other neighbor's) grass looks white now. I don't know what he's talking about, I don't see a difference...



Well maybe that's just bad timing of the photo because I took it right after mowing so I lost some color, and the neighbor had a few days to get his color back. I also finally finished replacing every single sprinkler head with an MP rotator, fixed two valves that were not working properly, and also repaired an underground leak. This probably should have all been done before I started, as the poor watering could explain a lot of my problem spots, but it's too late now for that.

As far as spreading goes, here's a really bad area from the first week of April, first week of May, and first week of June. That's just spreading, no seed in this area since September of last year. I told my wife before I started that it would look good on June 30 this year. Looks like I may hit that mark after all

[g-man]

^ it looks really good. The spreading in the last image is impressive.