Lawn help

Kentucky bluegrass, Fescue, Rye and Bent, etc
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Jendin
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Joined: July 29th, 2020, 7:29 am
Location: Eastern coast Massachusetts
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Lawn help

Post by Jendin » July 29th, 2020, 10:09 am

We live in Massachusetts about 5 miles from the coast. Our lawn was newly hydroseeded in mid April. It came up beautiful. We have an irrigation system and I am doing our own fertilization. I put down starter fertilizer in mid May and then again the end of June I had been told it needed more fertilizer so did 1 more application last week the end of July. Initially I was watering 20 minutes a day twice a day. Then I cut back to 30 minutes each morning. I was then told not to water every day but do a long watering 3 times a week. So I have been watering 45 minutes 3 times a week. The entire side lawn refuses to green up. It looks terrible. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. I have put down grub control and fungicide as well. Can anyone help???
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schreibdave
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Joined: April 14th, 2010, 7:01 pm
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Re: Lawn help

Post by schreibdave » July 29th, 2020, 10:01 pm

I'm not an expert but zooming in on your first picture I see lesions on the blades. I think that can only come from disease. What kind of fungicide did you use? I believe some are used as preventative while others will take out existing disease.

Disease thrives in humid conditions. And if you are watering a lot that will promote disease. Maybe back off on the irrigation until you see signs of drought stress. Those signs include the blades taking on a greyish tint and not bouncing back when you walk on them. When you see signs of drought stress put down A LOT of water at once. 1 inch once a week is the rue of thumb but sometimes that's not enough or the water will run off before it gets absorbed, or it will puddle. So you have to make that call based on what you see. But the idea is deep but infrequent watering.

Hopefully somebody with more experience will chime in.

Also it looks like your lawn mower blade is dull. The blade tips look torn rather than cut. You might want to get that blade sharpened.

Jendin
Posts: 3
Joined: July 29th, 2020, 7:29 am
Location: Eastern coast Massachusetts
Grass Type: I don’t know
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Re: Lawn help

Post by Jendin » July 30th, 2020, 7:01 am

Ok thanks. I put down Scott’s disease ex. I put it down at the curative rate because I thought I saw red thread on a different part of the lawn. I will cut back on the watering. Although we have been hitting 100 degrees for the past week. I’ll watch it. I just put on a new blade about 3 weeks ago. Could it be dull already?

Paul
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Re: Lawn help

Post by Paul » July 30th, 2020, 8:53 am

Planting a lawn in the spring and expecting it to be green all summer when we have temps in the 90's with very little rain is asking allot.

Do you know how much water you were applying at 20 minutes? My guess, less than 1/10 of an inch. It's not about how much time you water, it's about the amount of water per hour. Once you know this, then you can set up a watering schedule to get down at least 0.5 inches per watering cycle. You will need to do an irrigation audit over your entire yard (place tuna cans throughout your yard, and measure the amount of water in them after running each zone for 1 hour). This will give you inches/hour.

At this point, I would recommend you do nothing more until late August, early September. Once the cooler nights arrive and cooler temps in general, I would apply 0.25 Lbs/1Ksqft of nitrogen weekly for all of September and the first two weeks in October. Just go buy Scotts Turf builder fertilizer and figure out how many sqft of lawn you have and then figure out how many pounds of fertilizer you need to apply to get the 0.25 lbs down. Make sure your getting down at least 0.5 inches of water during your irrigation and irrigate twice a week. Get yourself a rain gauge to see how much you need to irrigate based on the amount of natural rainfall. Once October comes, you can probably stop irrigating providing you are getting rain on a weekly basis.

I would also get a soil test at U-Mass to see what your working with for soil and what it needs.

Jendin
Posts: 3
Joined: July 29th, 2020, 7:29 am
Location: Eastern coast Massachusetts
Grass Type: I don’t know
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Re: Lawn help

Post by Jendin » July 30th, 2020, 3:03 pm

Maybe my expectations are a little unreasonable . I will do an audit on the sprinkler system. I’m confused because parts of the lawn looks beautiful. Maybe the sprinkler system is not even. I will do an audit of the irrigation system. Thanks for the advice!!


schreibdave
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Joined: April 14th, 2010, 7:01 pm
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Re: Lawn help

Post by schreibdave » July 30th, 2020, 3:47 pm

The mower blade could be dull already or it could be that the torn grass blades got like that weeks ago and the lawn hasn't grown much since then.

You will be SHOCKED at how long you have to water to get even .5 inches down all at once. It will be several hours.

And considering that your lawn was seeded in the spring and is still alive after the summer we have had is a victory in and of itself. So yea, it could be worse.

Paul
Posts: 366
Joined: August 24th, 2014, 4:25 pm
Location: Southeastern Mass
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Re: Lawn help

Post by Paul » July 31st, 2020, 7:51 am

schreibdave wrote:
July 30th, 2020, 3:47 pm
You will be SHOCKED at how long you have to water to get even .5 inches down all at once. It will be several hours.
Just as a reference, my irrigation systems puts out 0.33 inches/hour on average. I had to make some nozzle adjustments to even out the output. You will find that stationary heads put out more water than rotary heads because they are concentrating the water in one specific area instead of rotating. I have stationary heads in my sidewalk strip, and it only takes 30 minutes to get 1 inch of water down.

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