Calling all Lawn Gurus!

[UnaBonger]

Last summer I purchased my 1st house! In doing so, I realized I know nothing about grass care other than mowing it... Right now I have a relatively crappy looking lawn and I'd like to fix that this summer. It's patchy, has crabgrass and mossy spots in some areas. It's a small yard with one large tree that provides more shade than sun... Can someone help me understand where to start, what to put down and when to get a nice looking lawn?

Thanks!

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

First. Take a handful of your grass leaves to a Nursery to determine what kind of grass you have.

Then, Just google how to care for it.

Knowing the grass type greatly mitigates frustration of wrong cut height. Otherwise, Scott's brand fertilizers are generally pretty good if not pricey. It's the really cheap ferts that you have to be wary of. Not that all are bad but many don't stack up.

Beyond that tere is all manner of rabbit holes to fall into to improve the soil to make grass happy. Ironite, Gypsum, Lime, aerating, proper water covereage, frequency of mowing, maximum cut of grass blade per mowing, dethatching, thatching, overseeding, insect treatments, fungus treatments, blah, blah, blah.

Regardless you have to know what tytpe grass you are starting with to proceed. As well as "helps" to know the soil composition, pH, and mineral content.

And it's like brewing. You start thinking it'll be cheap and then realize it "can" cost a fortune every year.

 

[XXguy]

Scott's usually puts out lawncare booklets (thinly disguised sales manuals) that lay out the basics of lawncare & the need for different applications for different areas & climates. Look for one online or at your local homecare/hardware store.

Also, my own personal experience would be that you should mow early in the morning, and let your blades sit up at LEAST 4" from the ground. Scalping your lawn kills the grass more than anything. Keep the blades sharp.

I'm sure there's more information out on the interwebs than I could ever give, but the advice above is what got me going when I bought my first house & starting looking at a lawn as something I wanted to be proud of, vs. something that needed to be killed, maimed, or tamed.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

Scott's usually puts out lawncare booklets (thinly disguised sales manuals) that lay out the basics of lawncare & the need for different applications for different areas & climates. Look for one online or at your local homecare/hardware store.

Also, my own personal experience would be that you should mow early in the morning, and let your blades sit up at LEAST 4" from the ground. Scalping your lawn kills the grass more than anything. Keep the blades sharp.

I'm sure there's more information out on the interwebs than I could ever give, but the advice above is what got me going when I bought my first house & starting looking at a lawn as something I wanted to be proud of, vs. something that needed to be killed, maimed, or tamed.

I am inclined to agree with yuou so long as the grass species is NOT Bermuda. Most, if not all Bermuda species are better kept no taller than 1" to 1.5" in that cut higher it tends to slow down it's spread and weave which therefore provides places for weeds to grow through.

Watering to a depth of 1" per week forces the root system to go deep into the soil therefore promoting better health of the lawn with less frequent watering.

Furthermore, one should not cut any grass more than 1/3rd of the blade short at any mowing for optimal health.

And keep your mower blade sharp to prevent fraying the end of the cut grass blade for better appearance.

 

[kryolla]

You probably have Kentucky Blue grass or some type of fescue since you live up north only certain grass suited for cold weather will grow. Get a sample of your soil and it will tell you much Nitrogen to put down and when and what you need to do about the PH like adding lime. Also know when to start weed control i.e crabgrass dies in the winter but another type of weed grass grows in the winter. When you mow dont bag as the clippings will decompose and add N back. There are forums out there just like HBT but more for grass or landscapers. Good Luck

 

[captianoats]

You don't have bermuda grass, way too far up north for that.

You said you have patchy spots. If you're thinking about reseeding let me say I recommend NOT doing that unless it's really bad. 2 reasons for this. 1. A lot of times, (depending on your type of grass) these spots will recover themselves naturally if the grass is taken care of. 2. A better time to reseed would be this fall.

Other than that, I think the guys already said all you need to know unless you want to get Hank Hill crazy on your lawn.

 

[Catt22]

Pretty much all good advice above, but to get you off quickly to a good start I would do the following:

1. Get the Scotts lawn care booklet and start the 4 step program. Apply the Step 1 stuff now which is fertilizer and a crab grass preventer.

2. Sharpen your mower blade and keep it sharp. Depending on the size of your lawn, this may be required several times or more per season. A lot of people only do it once a year if that and this is a big mistake. Perform any other mower maintenance such as tune up and oil change.

3. Hold off on seeding until you have a chance to evaluate the lawn after you have given it some basic care and feeding. Sometimes that's all it will need. Fall seeding is a good idea, but you can seed most anytime or seed only the areas that appear thin.

4. Should the lawn appear to not be thriving within a few weeks after fertilizing and proper moving it, you might consider aerating it. You can hire someone to do this for you or you can rent a machine and DIY. Whether aerating would be worth the trouble and expense depends a lot on the type of soil you have. Clay type soils benefit the most from aeration.

5. Someone mentioned a product called Ironite above. This is basically an iron supplement and it can work wonders on a lawn that is deficient in iron. Iron helps the plant utilize the nitrogen in the soil. Most good fertilizers contain some iron, but depending on your soil, your lawn may benefit with more.

6. Having a soil analysis is not a bad idea, but I wouldn't worry about the nitrogen levels. Nitrogen is quite volatile and it gets used up, washed away and even evaporates from the soil over time. It never stays around long for one reason or another. That's why fertilizer is mainly a regular dose of nitrogen. The other two key components are phosphorous and potassium, which are also very important, but the big guy is nitrogen.

Maintaining a healthy lawn or even restoring a neglected one is not all that difficult. Just give it some love and care and it will undoubtedly flourish. Good luck with it!

 

[UnaBonger]

All great suggestions! Thanks for helping me understand where to start! I'll go check out the Scotts booklet this weekend.

 

[Skins_Brew]

Can anyone ID this white flower thing? Its pretty much all over my yard. I am hoping that its grass that is blooming? Please dont tell me its a weed!

 

[JOHN51277]

Looks like a weed to me. The small bunches of leaves at the base are a dead giveaway. tell the kids you will give then .5 cents per bunch they get.

 

[david_42]

Nope, definitely not grass blooming. Not even a grass for that matter. Most grasses will have a single cylindrical stalk that's 1-3 feet tall and a long cluster of tiny flowers at the tip. There's 160 acres of seed grass growing next to my property and it won't flower for months.

 

[Skins_Brew]

Crap. I just put down weed and feed, i am praying it lives up to its name!

 

[eriktlupus]

looking back over the op your moss area tells me that either the shade from the tree is to great or you have a compacted soil condition in that spot. shade is only solved by trimming or thinning out the over shading tree, compaction is solved by aerating the lawn with either a plug machine or using a pitchfork , sticking it deep and rocking back and forth every 3-4 inches

 

[Catt22]

Crap. I just put down weed and feed, i am praying it lives up to its name!

The granular weed and feed products need to be applied properly to be effective. The grass must be wet so that the granules stick to the leaves of the weeds. The effect should be fast and you should see the weeds bgin to shrivel within a few days. You want the grass to be wet with dew when you apply the stuff, but also do not want it to rain for at least 24 hours and also no watering for a day or two. Rain or watering will wash the product from the leaves before it has a chance to do its job. If you continue to have a weed problem for some reason, you might try a liquid weed killer such as Ortho's Weed-Be-Gone. You can apply this with directly to the wees with a pump up type garden sprayer and use as needed throughout the season. Weeds are fairly easy to control. The weed killers are not really poison in the normal sense of the word. They are hormonal based and typically act to interfere with the growth regulators in the plants. IOW, the weeds sort of grow super fast and out of control which causes them to burn up. At least this was the way it was explained to me by the turf expert at the gold course I was working on at one time.

Oh yeah, that is definitely a broad leaf weed in the pic. Spray 'em out with Weed-Be-Gone.

 

[android]

Can anyone ID this white flower thing? Its pretty much all over my yard. I am hoping that its grass that is blooming? Please dont tell me its a weed!

View attachment 15125View attachment 15126

it's definitely a weed. kinda hard to ID with those photos though. it looks like it could be stitchwort, brambles, or bedstraw. those two pictures you provided look completely different from each other, with the exception of the white flower. it could also be something else. regardless, it looks like it's in patches where the intended species is not present. so, you could just kill the entire patch with roundup and reseed right into it. don't bother waiting for 2 weeks or whatever the label says, you can seed perennial ryegrass, tall fescue, or kentucky bluegrass the same day you spray the roundup or a few days after. but if you're going to seed, you need to keep it wet, don't just plant it and expect it to grow. and don't just sprinkle it on the ground. make some grooves with a hard rake or something similar and work the seed into the ground. seed to soil contact is essential to germinate grass seed.

to the OP:

get your yard aerated. i would bet it hasn't been done in years, if ever. if the overall appearance of your lawn is unhealthy, fertilize it at the rate of 0.5 lbs of N (that's the first number N-P-K) about every two months (i know, people say twice a year, but trust me, it's fine to do it more), it should tell you how to approximately achieve that on the back of whatever fertilizer you buy. i know people are happy with scotts step program, but IMHO, you can easily achieve the same results without spending a fortune on that stuff. if you want to use a preventive crabgrass 'weed n' feed', fine, but if you give your grass a competitive advantage now, you shouldn't have to worry about it. just get a fertilizer that is high in Nitrogen (46-0-0 will have your neighbors scratching their heads trying to figure out how you got your lawn so green, but you'll have to find a fertilizer distributor/company around to sell this to you, it usually isn't available at ace/lowes/HD, but those places are easy to find). i personally would also go ahead and overseed your entire lawn. rent a seeder from somewhere or hire it out, but again you need to establish some contact between the seed and the soil. spring is generally not a favored establishment time, but the reality is you can seed anytime you want. cool season grasses actually germinate well in the spring, so you can get it up and going now and you'll have to baby it through the summer a bit, but by fall you could have a decent backup of new growth to help. since you have shade issues, don't plant kentucky bluegrass. plant perennial ryegrass, or some sort of fescue (usually you'll see red/tall fescue for lawns). and don't buy one of those 'fast establishment' mixes, they usually contain a ton of annual ryegrass that will die after a year and if any of the KBG in there hasn't come up yet will leave you right back where you started. again, seek out a seed company in the area and get some decent stuff. nothing wrong with a single species being planted. scott's is too happy with their lawn mixtures.

as far as mowing goes, there's really no reason to mow your yard at 1.5 or 2 inches. 3" is the lowest i usually recommend to home owners. it will mean you have to mow less often and the canopy will hide things better at 3" than it would at 1.5 or 2. try to mow once (or more) every week or at most 10 days. any less often and you will be stressing your grass too much (but it happens, not a huge deal). and as others have said, please keep your blade sharp, that's the #1 problem with home owner lawns.

good luck. and you can look at those scott's books, but they will just have a recommendation for each of their products in there for each problem or goal listed. Here are some university extension sites that I would go to before a scott's publication:

http://www.gardening.cornell.edu/lawn/almanac/index.html

http://urbanext.illinois.edu/lawntalk/

http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/html/ec/ec1521/

There are plenty of others via google. good luck and let us know how it's going.