John's 2019 renovation

[john5246]

Against the advice of many here I went ahead and did a spring renovation. I sprayed my first round of glyphosate the week of April. This lawn was neglected for many years. With our old mower and dull blade I used to mow once a week, sometimes 10days would pass. The grass would be very tall and as a result a thatch layer had built up.
After giving the grass a week to start turning yellow (I used the generic HDX brand from Home Depot) I proceeded to manually dethatch by hand with a dethatch rake. It was hard work but I had a brilliant idea:

I would go online and find a dethatch attachment for my lawn mower. For around $20 bucks I could not only dethatch really well but also scarify the ground a bit. Except the blade doesn't work with the Toro Recycler mower. It will come loose no matter how much you tighten (I went 165 ft lbs of torque). The blade is by Arnold and has the orange plastic inserts. Do not use it with a toro recycler. You've been warned.

I ended up doing it all by hand. I added 25lbs of top soil and spread the seed over that. I used around 3 bags of peat moss over 2000sq ft. Just enough to lightly cover it.


The seed went down May 18th at a rate of 3lbs/1000sqft (KBG Midnight/Bewitched). About week later just as the seed is starting to come up we get hit with torrential rain





I would definitely call this a partial failure at least. It looks worse in the photo than it I'd like to believe. This is at 3 weeks! Where the seed took the little guys are going great. I did have to reseed the bare parts and they are starting to come up now.






I will add more images as time goes on. This is going to be a tough reno and we'll see how the grass looks coming out of July/August. I will add to this post later.

[Green]

I used the generic HDX brand from Home Depot.

Does your local store still sell that? It's what I used, but but I bought it years ago. They no longer have it in the stores here. Only Roundup brand now.

[KBGkicksazz]

You’re committed now.

Keep going with water. Grass will eventually come in and grow.

[john5246]

I used the generic HDX brand from Home Depot.

Does your local store still sell that? It's what I used, but but I bought it years ago. They no longer have it in the stores here. Only Roundup brand now.

Nope, mine is from last year. They stopped carrying it. I think it resulted in too many returns because customers think they will see visible results in 24-48hrs like with round up. That's why round up has additional ingredients because people complain, return your product, and leave bad reviews online.

[KBGkicksazz]

Lowe’s is still selling their generic Knock-out product for $10 a gallon.

Using it recently it’s taken two weeks to show full effect of grass turning brown.

Needing quicker results is also a practical matter. You don’t know if you missed any spots. Plus in shrub beds when you zap the weeds you want it dead not standing proud for another two weeks.

Next time I used what’s left of my generic I’m going to add some MSO to see if it speed up the results.

I used the generic HDX brand from Home Depot.

Does your local store still sell that? It's what I used, but but I bought it years ago. They no longer have it in the stores here. Only Roundup brand now.

Nope, mine is from last year. They stopped carrying it. I think it resulted in too many returns because customers think they will see visible results in 24-48hrs like with round up. That's why round up has additional ingredients because people complain, return your product, and leave bad reviews online.