A fine fescue saga (so far ending poorly-lots of pix)...

[jglongisland]

So, as I posted over on LS, I had a Fine Fescue lawn planted up at a vacation home in the woods/mountains of Maine (zone 4b, really cold winter). The mix is Longfellow Chewings, Jasper II Creeping, Intrigue Chewings, Spartan & Oxford Hard Fescue. Notwithstanding the very wet fall 2008, it came in OK.

April 2008, first panic sets in. Lots of snow mold (although there was still snow on the ground and ice on the lake). Ground is very soft (and it was in October, barely walkable without sinking in).

May - grass had yet to be cut. Relief at seeing green, panic at all the tall grassy weeds (probably due to using hay. had no choice, guy who did the work for me is very old school).

May - after seeding some bare areas and first cut. I should have left it alone after this and not tried to fix any of the low areas and/or bumps from footprints (You'll see why later). Also should have cut shorter (I was at about 3.75 inches).

Early July, about 2 weeks into the rainiest 30 days on record around here. Grass is matting down and killing itself, seed is washing away. I decide to regrade the problem area under tire swing (used about 4 yards of loam). Seeded, top dressed with PennMulch and peat. Had the Dupont seeding blankets over it but got overruled by my wife, big mistake. Finally planted the beds with lots of Endless Summer Hydrangea, which are supposed to be hardy to this zone. We get lots of snow (or have over the past 3 years) which provides a nice blanket).

20 days laters, another 5-6 inches of rain, very cool temps and virtually no sun. I've seeded everything again (spending a lot of money on seed), top dressed with peat. Everything was holding up until we got another 1/2 inch of rain overnight (why can't it be gentle rain and not a downpour). Areas that were fine got completely matted down and died. Most of the seed probably rotted out.

Only sign of hope, some of the seedings from early July did gerimate. Too bad its not KBG and then I could take comfort in spreading.

Some observations:

1) You can't let this stuff get too long. I'm going to cut at 2.75 inches. The literature on most of the cultivars say 1-3 inches. I'll take my chances on the shade; we get 3-5 hours in most of these areas. If it were KBG I'd be worried, but these are pretty shade tolerant grasses.

2) This stuff takes as long or longer to germinate, and then get going, then KBG. Part of it has to do with the shade, but this is almost worse than KBG.

3) I should have let it go and let the areas level themselves out. I think the ground/air temps may have been too cool as well to seed when I did.

4) I should have kept the seeding blanket on under that tire swing. I had more seed wash away last night. Does anyone have any other ideas as my wife is deadset against a seeding blanket? I'm here until Sunday and then away for 2.5 weeks, if the areas don't germinate by then I'll have to take one last stab. At that point since we are "done" for the summer I may go with a blanket on the last day or so.

If anyone has any words of wisdom other than "patience" I'd love to hear them. My gut says that had the lawn had a full season under it before the floods it might have been able to recover, but it was just too young. I was thinking of bumping up the Creeping Red from 20% of the mix to 40% if I reseed again, so at least I'd get some spreading. Any thoughts?

Lots and lots of photos here (I tried to link them into the message but there were too many).