Ken-n-Nancy's 2020 "Driveway Side" Lawn Renovation

Discuss how to and whether you should renovate your lawn
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ken-n-nancy
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Ken-n-Nancy's 2020 "Driveway Side" Lawn Renovation

Post by ken-n-nancy » August 27th, 2020, 5:42 pm

We really hadn't planned to renovate any of our lawn this fall. However, a few different things conspired to lead us to where we are now -- the day after seed-down on what is now our sixth renovation in the last eight years!

(For a bit of historical background, we renovated all lawn areas of our property in the three years from 2013 to 2015, with a different section each year. In 2016, we did "mini-renos" to repair localized lawn damage from a transformer oil spill and septic tank replacement. In 2018, we did our first "re-renovation" of previously renovated lawn, converting the front lawn from northern mix to KBG. This year is a "re-renovation" of the remainder of our original 2013 "northern mix" renovation to the same KBG blend as the front lawn -- 50% Bewitched KBG and 50% Prosperity KBG.)

This year's renovation is the result of two causes:

1 - The "northern mix" just doesn't tolerate July and August as well as the KBG. Fundamentally, the "northern mix" is, by design, a "compromise" lawn. The different grasses in a northern mix have the advantage of never all struggling at the same time (well, except for December through April in New Hampshire) so the lawn survives whatever nature throws at it with at least some of it remaining green. However, other than for two brief stints a year (mid-spring and early fall, which come in mid-May and late September here in New Hampshire), the "northern mix" lawn is never really firing on all cylinders.

Below is what the area under renovation looked like back on 16 July 2020, pretty close to its peak (before summer decline):
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However, after the heat of late July and early August, we get a fair bit of decline in the northern mix every year, I think mostly due to the fine fescue going dormant in any "heat wave" that rolls through.

I didn't end up taking an "immediately before glyphosate" picture, but below is a picture taken two days later, when first starting to drop the HOC. In the photo, the grass between the mower and the road and driveway is "extra-brown" due a lowered HOC, but the bulk of the grass (beyond the mower and lilac bed) is as it looked on August 19th, after a hot and dry 5 weeks since the above photo.

Just starting to drop HOC for renovation, on 19 August 2020:
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(to be continued...)

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Re: Ken-n-Nancy's 2020 "Driveway Side" Lawn Renovation

Post by ken-n-nancy » August 27th, 2020, 5:59 pm

2 - Our street was rebuilt this year through full depth reclamation (FDR).  This ended up leaving us with nice, new pavement, but the roadway ended up being raised from its prior height by about 5-6 inches and widened by at least six inches.  This meant that the slightly sloped "no-mans-land" that we created between the road and our bordering cobblestones became narrower and too steep.

Below is a "moments before" picture of our roadside granite cobblestones -- note that there is a slightly sloped "no-mans-land" between the pavement edge and the granite, with the cobblestones being only a couple inches lower than the pavement.  At the time this photo was taken, the opposite side of the road has been ground up, but our side is still intact. (By the way, this photo is from May 18th, at which time New Hampshire is still emerging from winter -- the grass hasn't fully greened up and many of the trees, mostly the oaks, haven't fully "leafed out" yet.)
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Within an hour of the above photo, the "road reclaimer" came by, turning pavement into base material...
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and then came back for a second pass...
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Then, just a couple hours later, the former pavement has been turned into a new base layer which is higher and wider than the old pavement, even without the forthcoming two new layers of asphalt!
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(to be continued...)

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Re: Ken-n-Nancy's 2020 "Driveway Side" Lawn Renovation

Post by ken-n-nancy » August 27th, 2020, 7:57 pm

On the third day after the road was turned into gravel, the paving crew arrived to put the first layer of asphalt onto the road surface and do a little bit of height accommodation with partial driveway aprons. They worked fast and were only in front of our house for a few minutes, most of which was spent waiting for the dump truck to provide more asphalt!

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While they were here though, I had a chance to talk to the town DPW lead for the project. He said he thought the cobblestones were great and wanted to talk to me to decide what to do between the cobblestones and pavement. The next step of the project was going to be that a crew would return in a few weeks to adjust the grade for the shoulders. The standard things they were planning were to either (1) install additional topsoil along the road edge to "ramp down" to the adjoining soil about 2-3 feet away from the pavement, or (2) install crushed rock in places where the property owner already had crushed rock or something similar along the road. He offered that if we would raise the cobblestones to just below the road height, the town would fill in the area between the cobblestones and the pavement, as well as grade their new topsoil down into the lawn on the lawn side of the cobblestone. After considering those things, realizing the effort involved with raising all those cobblestones and the roadside irrigation heads as well as reseeding much of the front lawn, I asked if they could just leave the packed gravel between the edge of the pavement and the cobblestone, as I wanted a surface that would be mostly inhospitable to weeds, but wouldn't get picked up by the plow in the winter and thrown into the lawn. He said that if I preferred it left as packed gravel, they could do that. I was relieved that we wouldn't have to deal with new topsoil or crushed rock (we've tried both of those approaches in the past -- growing grass right to the pavement, and having crushed rock between the lawn and the pavement, and both of those ended up being pretty high maintenance.)

Sure enough, a few weeks later, crews came to do the shoulder grading. Just as requested, they skipped over the road section in front of our house, neither adding topsoil or adding crushed rock! I was still concerned about the steepness of the packed gravel between the road and the cobblestones being a potential problem in the winter, but I figured we'd get through this winter and maybe it would be a project for a future year if we ever decided to renovate the front lawn. As part of the shoulder grading project, a crew arrived to grind an edge into the driveway a few feet back from the road, for eventual installation of inclined driveway aprons. All was still well, and the lawn looked good!

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A couple weeks after that, the paving crew returned to put down the final coat of asphalt. They did the entire street in a morning. The aprons were not yet installed; the crew would come back on a future day to do that.

During the next few weeks, we realized that although the difference in height between the road and lawn wasn't optimal, that we would be glad to not be doing any major lawn projects this fall. We also agreed that having the northern mix section look only "better than average" during July and August was fine with us. So, we decided NOT to take on any lawn projects this year and headed off to vacation to enjoy some time with family and not even think about renovating the lawn this fall...

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Re: Ken-n-Nancy's 2020 "Driveway Side" Lawn Renovation

Post by ken-n-nancy » August 27th, 2020, 9:17 pm

Not quite two weeks ago, we returned home from having been on vacation for for 2+ weeks. While we were away, one of my sons mowed the lawn twice, following my guidance and mowing the lawn a notch higher than my usual cut due to the longer interval. He did a good job, saving me the hassle of having 10-12" tall grass upon our return, and keeping it looking good while we were gone.

The irrigation was on automatic while we were gone, with almost zero natural rainfall. The KBG sections looked great. A little bit of disease pressure had started to show up, since it had been nearly three weeks since last applying Serenade. The northern mix sections had a lot of brown in them, but at least looked no worse than everybody else's lawn on our street. However, compared to the front lawn, the northern mix area was downright bad.

More significantly, while we were gone, the town contractors came back after the final paving, graded the roadside edge in a couple spots and hydro-seeded their who-knows-what seed!! (Probably mostly annual ryegrass with perennial rye and fine fescue likely mixed in.)

What more, they didn't just do the grading in the area between the cobblestones and the road, but went a fair bit of the way into our lawn! Ugh. In doing so, they even buried cobblestones near the mailbox!

Photo from 2020-08-11 showing regrading over top of cobblestones, new topsoil and lousy seed mix hydroseeded into our lawn! (Note: this is also a good photo to show our original driveway pavement, the slightly higher pavement of the first layer, and the final top layer of pavement.)
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They also added crushed rock between the cobblestones and the road, which although it currently looks nice, I know from experience will be a problem -- the plow will throw rocks into the lawn in the winter; the 3/4" crushed rock is too small to use a leaf blower to keep the rocks free of leaves or grass clippings; and the rock layer isn't deep enough to prevent weeds from germinating. The crushed rocks will look good for a few months and then become a long-term maintenance hassle. Sigh.

Photo from 2020-08-11 showing regrading of topsoil in "buffer zone" between our yard's cobblestone edging and our neighbor's wide gravel buffer:
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We decided that we would need to reset our roadside cobblestones in those areas and do something different with the topsoil they added. It wasn't in the plan, but with vacation behind us, we felt we had to take the time to put it right again.

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Re: Ken-n-Nancy's 2020 "Driveway Side" Lawn Renovation

Post by JHazzardB » August 28th, 2020, 10:33 am

I feel like I just spent the summer at your place after reading this complete account of the road process!

Sorry about the hydroseed, but I bet you guys will get it back in tip top shape soon enough. I still can't believe how well your yard looks for August. It's amazing.

Good luck guys can't wait to read more!


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Re: Ken-n-Nancy's 2020 "Driveway Side" Lawn Renovation

Post by ken-n-nancy » August 28th, 2020, 9:00 pm

We decided to start our fixes to the re-grading performed by the town's contractor in the area that previously did not have any cobblestones, since it seemed like it would be relatively straightforward to remove the excess soil that had been added, and set a new line of cobblestones at a height closer to that of the road. We had been considering adding cobblestones to that area anyway, as it looked kind of odd to not have cobblestones proceed all the way to where our neighbor's crushed rock started.

Needing cobblestones for that area added "one more straw" to the reasons to undertake the renovation of the remaining "northern mix" portion of our lawn, because we happened to have exactly the right number of cobblestones in the foundation for the basketball hoop along that side of our driveway! Ever since our youngest child had "aged out" of her basketball team, the basketball hoop had received less and less use. At some point a year or more ago, the backglass had broken, making it pretty much unplayable except for "swish" shots, so the hoop was really no longer serving any purpose other than that of being a bit of an eyesore. That, combined with the fact that renovating that side of the lawn would allow us to add about 3-4 inches of soil near the road to raise the grade on that side of the driveway and reset all the roadside cobblestones to better match the height of the road tipped the scales in favor of renovating that portion of the lawn. We also had all the seed we would need for the project left over from the front lawn renovation of two years ago -- we had purchased extra seed for that renovation which ended up not being needed due to perfect renovation weather in the two weeks after seed down that year.

So, we did it. On August 17th, we sprayed glyphosate on all of the northern mix lawn on the side of our driveway, an area of about 2250 sqft. (For those that note such things, we used 11.25 ounces of 41% glyphosate for those 2250 sqft, mixed at a rate of 1.5 ounces per gallon of water to cover 300 square feet, per the label directions.) The momentous step only took about half an hour, but marked the point of no return -- now we were committed to the renovation!

So, we removed and dismantled the basketball hoop, harvested the cobblestones, and headed to the far end of the line of cobblestones to start fixing things up!

The process of laying cobblestones was one that we were familiar with from in 2018, when we laid the cobblestones in the first place! (See photo below, follow the link to our old post for more photos.)
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One complication of lawn work in this area is that neither we or are neighbor are sure where the property boundary is, and there's no reason for either of us to spend money on getting it surveyed, as it's too far from either of our houses to matter much. Back in 2018, we laid cobblestones only to a point that we were pretty sure was still on our property. Similarly, our neighbor's lawn stops at a point that he's pretty sure is his property, but there's this area in between that's about 20 feet wide -- that's the area that the town decided they'd botch things up. I had included that area in our 2018 lawn renovation and have been maintaining it ever since, but it may really belong to my neighbor for all I know. Some time in the past couple years, I'd asked our neighbor if he'd mind if I were to eventually lay cobblestones there, and he thought that'd be fine, so now was the time to do it!

The process actually went pretty smoothly -- the elevated road surface and new loam brought in by the town meant that we didn't need to excavate very far into the nitpack near the road to set the cobblestones. (That had been the most time consuming part of the project back in 2018.) We bridged the height difference between the old line of cobblestones and the new ones by removing three of the old cobblestones and resetting them on a gradual incline, to make the whole thing look like it belonged that way. We scavenged crushed rock from the rest of the area along the road to even make it look like all the rest. Working together we knocked out the job in a few hours. We prepared the soil for seed, sprayed glyphosate on any sections that seemed like the town's hydroseed mix had been sprayed there, and decided we'd tackle the cobblestones near the driveway the next day.

New cobblestones, looking towards neighbor's house, as of 2020-08-16:
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New cobblestones, looking towards our driveway, as of 2020-08-16:
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Re: Ken-n-Nancy's 2020 "Driveway Side" Lawn Renovation

Post by DevilDawg81 » August 28th, 2020, 9:28 pm

That is a very neat look from the road, crushed stone and the cobblestones. If I was your neighbor, I’d let you continuing maintaining the unknown property line area based off the pic of his yard :rotfl: Your lawn looks 1000x better!

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Re: Ken-n-Nancy's 2020 "Driveway Side" Lawn Renovation

Post by ken-n-nancy » August 28th, 2020, 9:46 pm

DevilDawg81 wrote:
August 28th, 2020, 9:28 pm
That is a very neat look from the road, crushed stone and the cobblestones. If I was your neighbor, I’d let you continuing maintaining the unknown property line area based off the pic of his yard :rotfl: Your lawn looks 1000x better!
Thanks! The crushed stone sure does look nice, but we're concerned it will turn out to be a maintenance hassle. We'll see how it goes for a while, though...

Our neighbor's lawn looked great this spring and early summer, but hit a wall within the past two months. I'm not sure if it's grubs, or mostly grasses that don't tolerate heat, or poor soil, or a combination of all of those things, but it went from good to being mostly dead-looking in a very short time.

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Re: Ken-n-Nancy's 2020 "Driveway Side" Lawn Renovation

Post by ken-n-nancy » August 28th, 2020, 10:14 pm

Work and other responsibilities ended up taking priority in the next few days, so we didn't get a chance to work on the cobblestones after all.

However, on Wednesday, 19 August 2020, two days after spraying the glyphosate, I decided I'd start to lower the height-of-cut of the renovation area. We'd made the mistake in a previous renovation of waiting too long before starting to cut the dying grass -- if one waits too long until the grass is completely dry and brown, it easily becomes matted down and requires raking. We weren't going to make that mistake this time!

Our normal cutting height for the northern mix area is 3.75 inches. For our first mowing after applying glyphosate we cut it at 2.75 inches and bagged the clippings to help expose the soil.

On 2020-08-19, Starting to Lower Height-of-Cut -- Two Days After Glyphosate
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Half-Done with Mowing at the Lower HOC, on 2020-08-19
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Done with Mowing at the Lower HOC, on 2020-08-19
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Re: Ken-n-Nancy's 2020 "Driveway Side" Lawn Renovation

Post by ken-n-nancy » August 28th, 2020, 10:35 pm

It wasn't until Friday that we had a chance to have a day to work together on the cobblestone project. We decided we'd tackle the left apron edge first, as it seemed like that edge would be easier, given that there was less new pavement on top of the cobblestones.

Our plan was to remove the old cobblestones along the apron, raise the grade where the cobblestones had been using sand harvested from the basketball hoop demolition to gradually ramp up the blocks to the correct height for the future apron, and then raise the entire line of blocks along the road by about 4 inches, so that the difference between the top of the cobblestones and the road would be only about 2-3 inches, rather than the current 6-8 inches.

However, before getting started on the cobblestones, we decided we should scalp the grass all the way down to the renovation height, partly because raising the cobblestones would make it hard to mow right to the edge, and partly because we knew that working on the dead grass to place cobblestones would surely cause the dying grass to become matted down. We ended up scalping the lawn as low as we could, bagging all the clippings. We ended up needing to mow the area three times, successively lowering the height of cut about a half-inch each time, to keep from clogging the entrace to the bag.

Eventually, though, we were able to start working on cobblestones!

Left Apron Edge, Before, as of 2020-08-19:
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Left Apron Edge, Midway, as of 2020-08-21:
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Left Apron Edge, From Grass, as of 2020-08-21:
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Left Apron Edge, Finished, as of 2020-08-21:
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ken-n-nancy
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Re: Ken-n-Nancy's 2020 "Driveway Side" Lawn Renovation

Post by ken-n-nancy » August 28th, 2020, 10:58 pm

The next day, we started on the right apron edge, using the same approach. On this side, however, we needed to first remove the hydroseeded "junk seed" and soil to get to the cobblestones, then excavate them, fill underneath where they had been, and reset the cobblestones at the right elevation. However, we've done this enough lately to be quicker at it than we had been the first time we did this!

Having nice sand for placing under the cobblestones is a big help in providing a solid, compacted foundation that is easy to adjust to the proper height. We forgot to take a picture when we finished, so I took one today and added it to this batch.

Right Apron Edge, Before, as of 2020-08-19:
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Right Apron Edge, Midway, as of 2020-08-22:
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Right Apron Edge, Finished, as of 2020-08-28:
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ken-n-nancy
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Re: Ken-n-Nancy's 2020 "Driveway Side" Lawn Renovation

Post by ken-n-nancy » August 29th, 2020, 9:52 am

First thing Saturday morning (2020-08-22), just before we started working on the right side apron, we received the delivery of "SuperSoil" (a loam / compost mix) that we would use to raise the grade about 3 inches in the area between the road and the lilac bed. We calculated that we would need 6 cubic yards of soil, which would hopefully also leave us a bit extra to fill in low spots throughout the renovation area.

The delivery was reminiscent of a similar deliveries we received in the first renovation we ever did ourselves back in 2014 on the back lawn.
Just enough time has passed since then that we had partially forgotten that we had said "never again" after spreading those 16 yards of dirt by wheelbarrow, shovel, and landscaping rake. Having only 6 yards to spread was much more manageable than the prior 16 tons!

Image

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Re: Ken-n-Nancy's 2020 "Driveway Side" Lawn Renovation

Post by ken-n-nancy » August 29th, 2020, 10:07 am

First thing Saturday morning, just before we started working on the right side apron, we received the delivery of "SuperSoil" (a loam / compost mix) that we would use to raise the grade about 3 inches in the area between the road and the lilac bed. We calculated that we would need 6 cubic yards of soil, which would hopefully also leave us a bit extra to fill in low spots throughout the renovation area.

The remainder of the weekend was a bit of a blur, as we tried to remain focused on evenly spreading wheelbarrows full of soil in the appropriate places. We fell into a rhythm of Nancy filling up wheelbarrows of soil and Ken rolling them to their destination, dumping them out, and spreading them out with the landscaping rake. When we did this previously in 2014, a trick we used to get even spreading was using bricks as "depth markers" and the landscaping rake as a screed between them. However, we didn't need to do that this time, since we had a height-controlled edge made by the roadside cobblestones and the lilac border cobblestones about 6 feet apart from one another. The goal was simply to be at the correct height at both edges, with a steady elevation change in between. This arrangement made it pretty straightforward to get the desired grade with a careful eye and patience.

The delivery was reminiscent of similar deliveries we received in the first renovation we ever did ourselves back in 2014 on the back lawn.
Just enough time has passed since then that we had partially forgotten that we had said "never again" after spreading those 16 yards of dirt by wheelbarrow, shovel, and landscaping rake. Having only 6 yards to spread this time was much more manageable than the prior 16 tons!

Below is an old photo from back in 2014 showing the "depth marker" technique. I highly recommend something like this for spreading new soil at a uniform depth.
Image

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Some Notes on Irrigation Heads...

Post by ken-n-nancy » August 29th, 2020, 10:49 am

There were a few other miscellaneous things we did before seed-down, some of which I've now gotten out of order, and others of which I've probably forgotten about completely, as we didn't take any photos on the day of seed-down. However, I should probably mention what we did with the irrigation heads...

We needed to raise the roadside sprinkler heads in the renovation area so that they would be at the proper height after the addition of 3 inches of topsoil. This really isn't a difficult thing to do, as long as the sprinkler heads were installed on swing joint risers. Ours were installed with flexible swing joint risers (aka "funny pipe") which I would highly recommend for anybody doing a sprinkler system installation. We actually did this before spreading the new soil.

We also upgraded the sprinkler heads in the roadside portion of our front lawn in the same zone as the little "unknown property line" area, switching from Hunter PGP-ADJ rotors to Hunter I-20SS rotors. The reason for this is that the I-20 rotors have an on/off control at the rotor itself, allowing them to be turned off directly at the head. The on/off feature is very useful for renovations where a single zone has both renovated and un-renovated areas. Watering the established lawn according to "germination watering" means it is very damp all the time, which sets up the perfect conditions for fungal trouble. A way to avoid the overwatering problem on established lawn areas is to turn off individual rotors that are in areas of established lawn. If stuck with PGP-ADJ rotors, there is a "blank nozzle" (a nozzle with no hole) that can be installed in the PGP-ADJ rotors. We've made use of that previously, but changing the nozzle on a rotor is a big pain compared to just turning a switch at the rotor.

The only thing I don't like about the I-20 rotors is that the smallest standard (blue) nozzle for them has a 1.5gpm flow. That's significantly larger than the smallest of the PGP-ADJ (red) nozzles, which have three nozzle options smaller than that, going down all the way to 0.7gpm. I really like the 0.7gpm nozzle for getting matched precipitation rates at a corner (90° arc) in the same zone as heads on a linear edge (180° arc). As a result, in some places I've retained PGP-ADJ rotors where I would have liked to upgrade to an I-20 as the I-20 doesn't have an available nozzle with a precipitation rate as low as the smallest PGP-ADJ (red) nozzle.

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Seed-Down Day: 26 August 2020

Post by ken-n-nancy » August 29th, 2020, 11:10 am

After getting the "pile" spread out in the renovation area, we were too tired to take any photos! There were then a couple days of forecasted downpours (only one of which we received, but one would have been one too many) so we held off on "seed down" day until Wednesday, 26 August 2020.

Wednesday was the big day! With this being our sixth renovation in eight years, we have become familiar with our preferred sequence of "seed-down day" activities, which has evolved a little over time. Here is what we did:
  • spray final glyphosate in any areas that may have new germination of weeds
  • moderately rake any old soil surface to provide a little loose soil on top
  • apply starter fertilizer (a quick release fertilizer with phosphorus) to any soil that may be deficient in phosphorus
  • roll with a lawn roller
  • sow seed (we sowed a 50/50 blend of two varieties of KBG - Bewitched and Prosperity)
  • very lightly rake the seed in to the soil surface
  • roll with the lawn roller (again)
  • apply Tenacity (we used 5oz/acre for our KBG-only seeding)
  • spread peat moss as thin as it will cover the surface (we used 3 bales of 3 cubic feet each to cover 2250sqft)
  • start "germination watering" -- just enough to keep the soil surface continually moist, but without any runoff or puddling
It always seems that "seed-down day" shouldn't take very long -- the actual spreading of the seed on 2250sqft took all of 10 minutes -- but all the other steps always take longer than we expect. Particularly the spreading of the peat moss. However, we got through it all. We squeezed in various steps throughout the day amongst Ken's day job (currently working from home) and various other household chores. We didn't actually start the "germination watering" until right at sunset.

Accordingly, we didn't take a pictures until the next morning. However, now, it's done, and it's time to wait! Patiently...


2020-08-27: The entire "driveway side" renovation area, on the morning after seed-down. Note that we have significant areas where we just seeded into the old stubble without any new topsoil. We did most of our 2018 front lawn renovation that way, but had to add more soil on this side of the driveway to level out the lawn better. There's peat moss in the "stubble" areas, too -- it just isn't evident from this angle.
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A better "close-up" of the area between the lilacs and the street. This is the steepest slope where we could have washout issues if we get a downpour before germination.
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The "unknown property line" area. We performed all the same steps here, just on a smaller scale. We applied glyphosate about 6 to 8 inches into the "good KBG" to hopefully eliminate any seedlings of "bad grass" in that area from the paving contractor's seed mix. We did an initial glyphosate a few days before seed-down which is responsible for the yellowing grass at the edge of the new soil.
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ken-n-nancy
Posts: 2571
Joined: July 17th, 2014, 3:58 pm
Location: Bedford, NH
Grass Type: Front: KBG (Bewitched+Prosperity); Side: Bewitched KBG; Back: Fine Fescue Blend + Prosperity
Lawn Size: 10000-20000
Level: Experienced

Re: Ken-n-Nancy's 2020 "Driveway Side" Lawn Renovation

Post by ken-n-nancy » August 29th, 2020, 2:49 pm

OK, this posting finally catches us up to the present -- the photos below were taken a few minutes ago. There have been gentle, but steady showers through much of the wee hours of the morning, followed by on-and-off showers until about 2pm. Altogether, the rain gauge contains about 1.6 inches of rain since yesterday evening. Fortunately, there haven't (yet) been any downpours, though. With the exception of a couple small rivulets, we haven't experienced a washout. However, scattered thunderstorms are in the forecast for this evening, so the danger hasn't passed yet...

It hasn't been quite 72 hours since seed-down, so still too early for any germination.

2020-08-29: "Driveway side" renovation area:
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2020-08-29: "Far End" renovation area:
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2020-08-29: "Mailbox Border" area -- just relying upon the spreading of the KBG to fill this back in -- no seed sown here.
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stack316
Posts: 326
Joined: July 15th, 2010, 7:11 am
Location: MA
Grass Type: Side: 2014 Bewitched Reno Front: 2013 Faith, Cochise IV, Falcon IV, LS 1200 reno Back 1st half Mutt, Back 2nd Half 3rd Millenium & Rhambler reno
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Re: Ken-n-Nancy's 2020 "Driveway Side" Lawn Renovation

Post by stack316 » August 29th, 2020, 4:54 pm

Wow. You deserve the best results with the hard work you put into this....wishing you the Same or better results than the amazing front!

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ken-n-nancy
Posts: 2571
Joined: July 17th, 2014, 3:58 pm
Location: Bedford, NH
Grass Type: Front: KBG (Bewitched+Prosperity); Side: Bewitched KBG; Back: Fine Fescue Blend + Prosperity
Lawn Size: 10000-20000
Level: Experienced

Re: Ken-n-Nancy's 2020 "Driveway Side" Lawn Renovation

Post by ken-n-nancy » August 31st, 2020, 7:17 am

Pick-up trucks from the town's paving contractor are starting to appear on our street. Seems like today may be apron paving day!

Over the weekend, none of the forecasted downpours arrived. Seedbed still looking pretty good. The 1.6" of water I dumped out of the rain gauge on Sunday morning was all from gentle showers from the Friday night and Saturday morning. The forecast for the next three days looks dry and sunny - perfect germination weather for an irrigated lawn!

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MorpheusPA
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Re: Ken-n-Nancy's 2020 "Driveway Side" Lawn Renovation

Post by MorpheusPA » August 31st, 2020, 6:17 pm

"apron paving day!"

Is that like Weasel Stomping Day?

I gotta say, that topmost photo on the thread? I almost want to paint that--with some redesign, of course, to make it more painterly.

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ken-n-nancy
Posts: 2571
Joined: July 17th, 2014, 3:58 pm
Location: Bedford, NH
Grass Type: Front: KBG (Bewitched+Prosperity); Side: Bewitched KBG; Back: Fine Fescue Blend + Prosperity
Lawn Size: 10000-20000
Level: Experienced

Re: Ken-n-Nancy's 2020 "Driveway Side" Lawn Renovation

Post by ken-n-nancy » August 31st, 2020, 10:41 pm

MorpheusPA wrote:
August 31st, 2020, 6:17 pm
"apron paving day!"

Is that like Weasel Stomping Day?
OK, this is where I confess to never having heard of Weasel Stomping Day before... I guess I just don't listen to the right music!
MorpheusPA wrote:
August 31st, 2020, 6:17 pm
I gotta say, that topmost photo on the thread? I almost want to paint that--with some redesign, of course, to make it more painterly.
That would be nice!

Not long after I made my posting this morning, the contractors did indeed arrive and starting paving the apron. I ended up needing to reset three of the cobblestones that shifted when their equipment drove over just the edge of a few of them, but in all, I think it turned out pretty well. However, today has been such a crazy day with work and non-lawn activities, that I didn't actually take a picture after the paving was finished!

I did get one pic just as they were getting started before I headed down to watch more closely and make some special requests...

I'll try to take and post some pictures tomorrow!

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