SNOWBOB11 Bewitched Monostand Renovation 2017

[SNOWBOB11]

Did a bunch of raking today. Got up a lot of thatch. It's been a week since first app of glyphosate and i'd say it's about 95% brown. There's a couple small areas of what looks like creeping bentgrass that are still a little green so i'll hit them again when I do app #2 of glyphosate. Overall good coverage from just one app.

Also began to water the hole lawn trying to germinate any weeds that I can before I spray the lawn again. Soil is a bit compact and I know I should of been spraying aerify plus or BLSC from the last few week but I never did and it just got too late to order any aerify plus or the ingredients for the BLSC. There's been a lot of rain this year and the soil seemed fairly soft for most of the year but it's been dryer recently and it's become a bit compact. It's not terrible though so I think i'll be ok and if I keep up the everyday watering until seed down hopefully it will become less compact.

I'll try and get some pics up tomorrow of how it looks now that it's nuked.

[SNOWBOB11]

Here's a few pics from a couple days ago of how the lawn looks post glyphosate, scalp and rake.

[SNOWBOB11]

A few more

[Jackpine]

Looking good, should make a great seed bed.

[SNOWBOB11]

Looking good, should make a great seed bed.

I'm hoping so. I had been going over whether I should spread some soil before seed down so that the seeds get good seed/soil contact or if I should just spread the seed then top dress with peat. After scalping and raking I think i'm going to go with seeding on the soil that's there now and spread peat with a peat moss spreader if I can rent one. The last time I renovated I spread top soil over most of the yard first, but seeing others on this site not add any top soil other than to level areas on the lawn, and most have great results I think i'm going that route as well this time.

[SNOWBOB11]

Second round of glyphosate went down today. Did a full blanket spray even though most areas were fully brown. There were a couple areas I think of creeping bentgrass that were still a bit green so made sure to concentrate on them. There were also a few blades of grass and a few weeds that germinated I'm guessing because of the daily watering I've been doing since I started the fallowing process.

Probably will do one more spot spray in a week or so just to make sure I've got everywhere.

Overall things are going well.

[Jackpine]

Look like you are on track for your seed down date. Although not normally mentioned on here I have had good germination and early growth rates by putting down starter at half rate 2 weeks before seed down and the other half at seeding.

[SNOWBOB11]

Interesting, I need to give that some thought. If I was going to do that I'd have to get the half rate of starter down now.

[SNOWBOB11]

Figured I'd share some pics of some stuff I've been up to. I took down the fence I had in the yard and replaced it with a green mountain boxwood hedge. Right now there still smaller shrubs but the green mountain varieties grow faster than some of the other boxwood varieties so they should fill in fairly fast. There the same shrubs that I have dividing the yard between the neighbors yard as I really like the way they look. Also like that they keep there leaves all year even through the depths of winter. Here's some pics.








I also started 30 bewitched pots today. I have never really seen up close the size of real elite kbg seeds and wow there so small! I didn't open the bag I had until today and I couldn't believe they were that small. I filled the pots with scotts lawn soil, sprinkled the seed then put a bit of the lawn soil on top as a light top dress. I left 2 pots not too dressed just to see if they germinate quicker or not. I'm attaching some pics. Can anyone tell me if they think I seeded too heavily or if they look ok?

[SNOWBOB11]

Here's the pics of the bewitched pots. First one is after top dressing, second is one pot before top dress.

[SNOWBOB11]

Should of said first pic is before top dress, second pic is all the pots after top dressing.

[kwarny]

Those shrubs look nice. Hopefully they won't hide your lawn striping . Those pots should be fine. Hopefully you don't lose as many pots to squirrels as I did this last round. I had some densely seeded pots I started in April and transplanted to my parents rougher areas. They have been growing better than the rest of their TTTF.

[llO0DQLE]

Looks good to me. The hedge looks much better than the fence!

[SNOWBOB11]

Thanks guys. I figure i'm going to get some squirrel damage as there are a lot of squirrels that live around my neighborhood and they love to dig lol. Hopefully 30 pots should be enough so that if the squirrels do get to some of them i'll have enough left for plug planting if needs be.

My original seed down date was going to be today actually but with the time it's taken to do the hedge and some other stuff I've pushed it to the 14th. Still have one more cut and some raking to finish. Good thing though as I see there's thunderstorms in the forecast tomorrow so I wouldn't of dropped seed today anyways. Next week the weather looks good so that's what i'm going with. I'm almost there now.

[SNOWBOB11]

Quick question for the peeps of aty. I cant find anywhere that rents or sells a peat moss spreader. Is there another good way of putting the peat down? Or is the only other option to dust it on by hand? I was really looking forward to trying out using a peat spreader but zero luck with finding it anywhere. Thanks in advance.

[probasesteal]

Your shrubs look good.

You can purchase peat moss roller, but I think most of us spread peat by hand, either from the bag or wheelbarrow. Really not much science to it...

[SNOWBOB11]

Thank you. If most spread by hand then that's good enough for me and that's what I'll do.

[northeastlawn]

I really hate spreading peat moss, I have done it by hand plenty of times. If you can rent a peat moss spreader (compost spreader) it is really worth it. It breaks up the peat moss as you go and makes sure no big clumps get through the screen.

I totally agree its not necessary, but for a smooth even coating it is worth the rental fee if you can find one, try asking for a compost spreader, that is what many people know them by.

[SNOWBOB11]

I'm going to try one more time and call a few more places to see if anyone rents the spreader. I'm going to ask for a compost spreader like you suggested and see if they know it better by that name.

[SNOWBOB11]

Got the seed down today. Bit later than I initially wanted, but with t-storms and heavy rain at times this last week it was better to wait to get the seed down. Order of sequence

Spread soil to level low spots - yesterday.
Tenacity at 4oz acre rate.
Seed down, tried for 3lb per k spread by hand but ended up going a bit heavier than that. Hopefully won't have problems from going a bit heavy.
Peat moss also spread by hand. Ended up using 5 - 2.2 cu ft bales for the 3k.
Applyed scotts starter fertilizer.
Watered everything in.

Overall everything went well and I'm glad with how it turned out. Spreading the peat by hand without a peat moss spreader went better than I thought it was going to and overall didn't take that long.

Now the waiting begins. The pots I planted 9 days ago are really starting to come up. The good thing with planting the pots is I know about what to expect timing wise for the lawn. They started to germinate around day 5-6 and now like I said are really filling in by day 9.

I snapped a couple pics a bit after I finished the first watering.

Main lawn




Side lawn



We'll see how it goes.