Long time lurker first time poster. Looking to get some feedback here as I am incredibly frustrated. Live on Long Island, NY, Zone 7b. Had my lawn fully sodded 3 yrs ago with 100% KBG (no idea on cultivar, I didn't know there were different types back then).
I am definitely new to the game - this past summer was just my 4th doing lawn care. Each of the 3 seasons since the sod was put down have been nearly the same experience: early-June, I've had the lawn rocking, super dark green (looked black from a drone!), very dense, blades green all the way to the ground. Mid-late-June, I notice down low underneath, blades browning/yellowing with lesions near the soil. Then the (what I think is) fungus hits, hard, in July and ruins the lawn for the rest of the year.
This season, I didn't think I had been watering that much, but I pulled back on watering anyway and fought hard with rotations of DiseaseEx and BioAdvanced. No dice, and I am left with a very thin lawn with a ton of dead material.
Now, throughout August/September, I had noticed that the top growth was nice green grass and gave the illusion of things looking good, but when I cut it, it looked a lot worse as you could see all the yellow/brown blades mixed in. So I had the bright idea that if I lowered the HOC (down to 2.25" over a few weeks), I would cut a lot of that brown/dead stuff down, and once I let it grow taller again the good grass would be all that was left at my regular HOC (3.5"). I think this was probably a bad idea, it's only had a couple weeks since I cut it short, but the good stuff is pretty thin/sparse and the dead stuff is even more noticeable.
Been spoon feeding 0.5lbN every 2 weeks for the past few weeks to try to get some thickening going. Not really sure what to do from here, and we're pretty late in fall. Lot of questions bouncing around my mind:
- Will the dead material just go away and KBG spread in? Do I need to power rake/dethatch (are those the same thing?) to get rid of the dead material? I tried raking up the dead material in a couple of areas and they look even worse now.
- Is 100% KBG just beyond my skill level? I'm looking great in early summer and getting killed mid summer thru fall every year. I thought fall is supposed to be when you can really get things looking nice, and I have not yet had a year where that's been the case.
- Is it just KBG not being great for my area? The other couple KBG lawns I know of in the neighborhood (also sodded recently) look similarly bad.
- First frost looks like about a month away, too soon to give up on 100% KBG and overseed w/ fast germinating PRG?