STL's Backyard Transition Zone KBG Renovation

[STL]

Hey guys! I'm documenting my 2018 backyard Kentucky bluegrass renovation. As some of you may know, I live in the St. Louis area and am among the other members who fight the good fight of managing kbg in the transition zone.

I first picked up the lawn hobby after moving to a new home in 2016. The house was the rundown one of the neighborhood and was completely redone before we bought it. The property was still a bit of a mess though and I've slowly been making it nicer here and there.

In the fall of 2016, two weeks after I moved in, I renovated the front to turf type tall fescue and it turned out well.

August, 2018:


I read more threads and decided to take the kbg plunge in the fall of 2017 and renovated the side yard with bewitched, mazama, and blue velvet. It also turned out great and is going very well in its first season and our hot summers.

July, 2018:


That leads me to this renovation and my pièce de résistance, the backyard. It was mainly weeds with some tall fescue and fine fescue mixed in.



Among the improvements, I took down some. unpleasant pines, silver maples, and a black walnut. I've since added a new fence and built my kids a play fort around my big beautiful redbud. I'm still working on landscaping, added irrigation, and a fire pit.

Since moving in to this house my family has increased by quite a bit when we had our twins last fall. The twin boys were "supposed to" be one girl. Lol. We'll likely move again in a couple years to a bigger house. (Yay! More renos!) These guys are great, but they sure make finding time for working in the yard challenging! I'm typically left to running "night ops" with my headlamp after they go to bed to get my lawn stuff done. And, yes, my neighbors think I'm crazy. My wife has come to accept it though.

I killed the back yard in July and seeded the shade half under the redbud on August 18. I'm going with the same blend as my side yard, bewitched, mazama, and blue velvet. I'll doing a couple test plots of individual cultivars as well.

Here we go...

[STL]

Here's a couple test plots I worked up to compare in bewitched and mazama I'm dappled shade prior to top dressing.ill have a couple more in the full sun section as well.

[STL]

Got some washout from the 1.5" we got this morning. Nothing too terrible, but I wasn't expecting it to be this bad when I left for work. A little river ran through it in the worst spot and the rain made little wavy piles of compost scattered throughout. I'm going to get out there tomorrow and smooth out the thick spots a bit as long as I don't see germination. Mother Nature, you sure are a fickle B.

[STL]

P.S. just kidding Mother Nature! Please don't rain on my reno anymore!

[STL]

Giddyup!

[STL]

Got the second half seeded a week or so ago and test plots of Mazama, Bewitched, Blue Velvet, Midnight, and NuGlade are a go as well.

[STL]

Looks like I'll be having an unwanted guest paying a visit this week. Some jerk with his "tropical depression" and "torrential rains" who will remain nameless other than it starts with a "G" and ends in "ordon."

[ken-n-nancy]

Ooh! Love the test plots!

Sorry to hear about the washout troubles! Hopefully the worst of the upcoming deluge avoids your lawn!

[STL]

Two weeks since germination on the second part. Still not much in the Nuglade test plot, the closest one in the pic, but the other midnight's are catching up. The last two weeks in the 90s were rough. I had fungal damage, especially in the shade, but it's doing OK now. I noticed that two of my MPs aren't always spinning consistently either.

Coverage is still plenty for things to fill in this fall in most areas. I also did some final reseeding in a few spots. Weed pressure is increasing. I'm going to evaluate probably next week for an N app. I hope the lower temps in the 70s coming up help things take off.

[STL]

Sprout and pout ended for the majority and the grass is starting to thicken up. I applied ~0.2#N from the last if my starter.



The areas I reseeded are germinating and appear to be coming in well. I think the lower temps are helping. I'm going to put the last little bit of the NuGlade seed down to help out the test plot.



Nothing seems to want to grow in some trouble spots, so I'm going to transplant those areas and rely on it spreading. Still not sure what's going on there.

I had some guests over last night and a few of the kids played out in the yard a little. The grass handled it really well. It's not quite ready for a lot of traffic, but here and there with some time to recover and I think it'll be just fine.

[Marinegrunt]

Looking great Stl! That's going to fill in nicely.

I'm anxious to see what you have to say about the NuGlade. Not that I can notice mine but it's in my tttf mix.

I'm in Central IL so a couple hours northeast of you. We had an extremely hot and humid summer probably more like what your summers are normally like. I got hit with round patch all summer. All my neighbors all had dollar spot on there 20 year old or so northern mix. I thought it was interesting I was the only one with round patch but must just be due to my grass being less than a year old. I only broke out the propicozanole one time tho. We finally have cooler temps so it's coming out of it. I have a feeling it's going to be an every year battle so I'm going to have to be more proactive in preventing the fungus.

Anyways, great job on the reno and all of your other projects. I'm sure your neighbors are extremely happy you have done so much to clean it up! Be sure to keep updating and especially with pictures!

[STL]

Looking great Stl! That's going to fill in nicely.

I'm anxious to see what you have to say about the NuGlade. Not that I can notice mine but it's in my tttf mix.

I'm in Central IL so a couple hours northeast of you. We had an extremely hot and humid summer probably more like what your summers are normally like. I got hit with round patch all summer. All my neighbors all had dollar spot on there 20 year old or so northern mix. I thought it was interesting I was the only one with round patch but must just be due to my grass being less than a year old. I only broke out the propicozanole one time tho. We finally have cooler temps so it's coming out of it. I have a feeling it's going to be an every year battle so I'm going to have to be more proactive in preventing the fungus.

Anyways, great job on the reno and all of your other projects. I'm sure your neighbors are extremely happy you have done so much to clean it up! Be sure to keep updating and especially with pictures!

Thanks! Yeah, the reno is doing well so far but still has a ways to go. Looking forward spoon feeding the N for a few more weeks.

The NuGlade is the test plot closest to the camera in bottom right of the pic first pic and on the left in the second pic. It didn't germinate well and is quite a bit behind the other test plots. I'm going g to reseed it with the last of the seed that I have. Hopefully that'll help.

With how hot and humid it gets here, a preventative fungus plan is pretty much a necessity imo. My TTTF gets brown patch as well in the areas that stress the most. This year wasn't that bad though, probably due to it being another year mature and the preventative that I use.

I'll definitely keep the thread updated and thanks again!

[STL]

Pic from the weekend. I wasn't able to mow before the all the rain came in, so no fresh cut pic unfortunately. I reseeded the NuGlade plot and giving it about another week and a half to show more signs of life. If not, it's going to get plugs from my side yard since my wife is starting to complain.

Progress has been slow but steady. Temps have cooled off quite a bit today. I'm going out of town for a week and interested in seeing the change when I get back. Another urea app, mow, then off to the beach! The break will be welcome for sure!

[southern-ct-4]

STL, do you have any final thoughts on what worked best/didn't work? Seems like the NuGlade wasn't that great perhaps? How's the Mazama?

Also, did you guy gold tag of these varieties? If so, can I ask from where?

Thanks.

[STL]

STL, do you have any final thoughts on what worked best/didn't work? Seems like the NuGlade wasn't that great perhaps? How's the Mazama?

Also, did you guy gold tag of these varieties? If so, can I ask from where?

Thanks.

Hey, sorry for the late reply. It all worked pretty decently overall. I have spots that'll need plugging since nothing would really take in those areas. Other than that it was standard reno practises.

I did use sod quality seed (0.00 weed and other crop). I got the Mazama from NY Cauliflower Association, Bewitched from SSS, and Blue Velvet from Pawnee Butte. Samples of Midnight and NuGlade came from some friends of mine. I think the issue with the NuGlade was the particular batch of seed, not the cultivar itself. I believe others have used it with better success.

I'm considering a monostand in the future and wanted to compare the cultivars individually. They are all pretty similar right now being so young. The midnight's aren't growing quite as tall or as much generally though as the Mazama and Bewitched. Those two also established faster too. The darkest as of now is Mazama by a little bit. I have a suspicion that Mazama has a faster vertical growth rate than the others as it matures, so will be interested in comparing next year. The Mazama is nice though and if I had to pick one today based solely on observations from this reno, I would probably pick it over Bewitched, but time will tell which one I actually prefer long term.

[southern-ct-4]

Thanks for the update!