New Homeowner needing serious help with nightmare lawn!

[kbreese]

I realize this is mainly a site for people in the business but i couldnt find a decent site for homeowner lawncare, so hopefully you guys don't mind. We just bought the house a few months back and the lawn is a mess. It's like 50% weeds of all different types. What happened was all the grass got burnt one week in the summer and it all died and what grew back was a mess. Plus as you can see there are tons of bare spots too.

What should I do at this point??

Here are some pictures:

[mariner]

I would check for blades being chewed and or grubs. Probably not though. I say patch disease or leaf spot or dollar spot(or all of these grown together. Definitely patch disease with the frogeye pattern)" without actually seeing some of the blades of grass up close. This stuff is common this year with the extreme heat and drought we suffered. Soil temps just got to warm this year. Quick fix would be to spray weeds, aerate heavily and overseed with a high phos fertilizer. Or better yet, pay someone here on the site in your area to do i and you'll get a guarantee... if they offer which they should.

[Mike J]

Yep!

pay someone here on the site in your area to do it.

Thats the best advice I could have given.......or you could ask your neighbors who they use.


I believe Rich is from your neck of the woods.

[kbreese]

Thanks guys. I wouldbe willing to pay someone depending on how much it costs. This is my first home, so I don't really have any idea what kind of an expense I am looking at. Can you guys give me an idea?

I'd be happy to hear from Rich and maybe get a quote from him if he's around.

[Starman]

Thanks guys. I wouldbe willing to pay someone depending on how much it costs. This is my first home, so I don't really have any idea what kind of an expense I am looking at. Can you guys give me an idea?

I just completed working on area somewhere around the size of the lot shown in your pics. I'm a homeowner who has experimented with over seeding and re-establishing new lawns on my own residential properties For what it’s worth, here's my take. You definitely have a troubled looking lawn. It does nothing to complement that nice walkway or new car.

First and foremost you should obtain a soil test. I send my samples to the University of Massachusetts. http://www.umass.edu/plsoils/soiltes...ochdec2003.pdf I get detailed results back in about two weeks. Cost for the test: $13.

I’ve over seeded sections that looked like your lawn but have never been totally pleased with the results. Over seeding has its place but for the energy (assuming you take on this task yourself) spent trying to bring back a lawn like this, I’ve always been happiest when I take the route of creating a lawn. Here are the steps I do to re-establishing my lawns:
1. Kill the existing grass and weeds with a product like Round-up. Round-up will probably run $30 but this depends upon the size of your lot. You’ll also need to rent or purchase an applicator for applying a product like Round-up.
2. Deep roto-till lawn 6-8” mixing in whatever nutrients are needed in the qty recommended in your soil test results. My fertilizer and lime cost me around $75. I own my own rototiller ($2,300) but have rented them in the past at $45 per day. After the initial tilling, I roll, rake and contour the lawn. I own a roller ($100) but they can be rented for $10 per day.
3. I then do a shallow till at 3” depth adding in whatever nutrients may again be needed according to the results of my soil test and re-roll.
4. I’ll scruff up the top ¼ to ½ ” soil and then lay down seed. I have both rotary and drop spreaders but prefer the drop spreader as I have better control over the consistency of my seed application. I’ve purchased Scott’s off the shelf seed from my local hardware store and have had great results. However, I now buy my seed and fertilizer from the same place as my area’s local nurseries, farms and LCOs. I do this for several reasons. One, it’s all this plant specializes in and their customers are farmers, nurseries and contractors etc. They know their stuff. Second, I love Kentucky Bluegrass and there are numerous types and blends that you just can’t get off the self at our local hardware store. My particular 50lb bag of KB blend costs me around $100.
5. Once the seed is down, I’ll slightly rake it into the top ¼ “ and roll a final time using only 1/3 of my roller’s initial weight. Some people cover their seed with straw, I prefer to use peat moss. My peat moss cost approx $70.

Not including my sweat equity, I have approx $300 into a (small) area the size of what you’ve shown.

For me the easy part and what I believe any homeowner can do is what I described above. The difficult part for us homeowners is in providing proper lawn irrigation and maintainence. And that’s where the LCO’s (who have the licenses) are worth their weight in gold. Without proper TLC a lawn can quickly sucumb to weeds and/or disease.
I invest a lot of time and energy into establishing my lawns but that’s about as far as I take it. I leave the feeding, disease and pest control to the professionals. The mowing I prefer to do myself. Just my two cents.

[kbreese]

Wow, thanks for the extensive write-up! That sounds like quite a bit of work, and for the cost, I might be better off just getting an appraisal from a pro. honestly I don't need a perfect lawn, i just want it to look somewhat respectable. a few of the neighbors actually brought in and laid down the sheets of sod with the grass already on it. Also might price out having that done as well.

As far as irrigation, yes very true! the lawn didnt used to look this bad, but after we moved in we neglected to program the inground sprinklers and after a week of heat the grass was all burnt! Thats why its in the state it is now. I also have to fix like 5 of the heads on the sprinkler b/c they either arent working properly or were run over by the lawn mower. thats another thing that would make tilling more of a pain is having to till around all the sprinklers.

I think at this point, my best bet is to have a proffesional come in and treat the existing lawn as opposed to eradicating everything and tilling etc etc and starting from scratch. I'm sure your way is the best way to get the best results, but again, i am not looking for a perfect weedless wonder of a lawn, I just want it to look relatively nice if you know what I mean. Thanks for the compliment on the walkway and driveway. We love the house, its only 2 yrs old. Its just the lawn thats a mess! The lot size by the way is 130X200.

Thanks Again!

[kbreese]

Quick fix would be to spray weeds, aerate heavily and overseed with a high phos fertilizer. Or better yet, pay someone here on the site in your area to do i and you'll get a guarantee... if they offer which they should.

i decided since winter is almost here to just do a quick fix for now. I went to Home Depot today and bought ortho Lawn weed killer, which is supposed to kill the weeds but not the grass. and sprayed it over 90% of the loan, b/c upon closer inspection it was about 90% weeds. Also, in all the bare spots were tons of tiny cloves coming up (it rained a week straight this past week).

So now the next step is to "aerate heavily" My question is what does this mean? need to know what to do next...

Thanks!
Kevin

[lorenzo piedra]

i decided since winter is almost here to just do a quick fix for now. I went to Home Depot today and bought ortho Lawn weed killer, which is supposed to kill the weeds but not the grass. and sprayed it over 90% of the loan, b/c upon closer inspection it was about 90% weeds. Also, in all the bare spots were tons of tiny cloves coming up (it rained a week straight this past week).


Thanks!
Kevin

Now that you have applied 2-4-d you can forget about getting any seed to germinate this year.

If you want professional results you need to contact a licensed professional.

[Scott]

2, 4d otherwise known to vietnam vets as 1/2 the chemical makeup of agent orange. Spray too much of that w/o proper ppe and you'll never taste anything again.

Diseases related to agent orange; Adult-onset (Type 2) diabetes, Hodgkin's disease, multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, acute and subacute peripheral neuropathy, porphyria cutanea tarda, chloracne, prostate cancer, respiratory cancers (cancer of the lung, bronchus, larynx, or trachea), and soft-tissue sarcoma (other than osteosarcoma, chondrosarcoma, Kaposi's sarcoma, or mesothelioma).

KBrease,, did ya read the label?



















HAAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Hope I didn't scare ya.

[SPENCER HUNTER]

What Type Of Grass Do You Have? I'd Check For Grub's If You Have Them,,,, The Best Product I've Used For Grubs Is Milky -spore It Last About 10 Year's Or More It Is A Little High But It Is A Investment To Keep Them From Coming Back,,, The Web Site Is Called Milkyspore.com ,,,40 Lb Will Treat Over 5,ooo Square Feet,,, It Is All Natural ,,, I Heard About From The Tv Show Hgtv