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3rd year in our house. Installed irrigation last year plus a heavy over-seeding in the fall. I use soy bean meal, and other organic fertilizers.

looks really good, do you aerate often? have you power raked? what is the cost of organic fertilizer? im new to owning a home and trying to get all the tips and tricks down

I’ve never aerated. I used a power dethacher last fall before seeding.

The organic stuff is pretty cheap. 200 lbs. of soy bean meal form a feed store costs about $35. I also use Milorganite that you can buy at HD or Lowes, about $9 a bag.
was dethatching a pain in the ass? the machine looks very cumbersome and we live on about 2/3 of a hilly acre. could it be done? id like to do that and then overseed, then lay some winterizer weed and feed before the snow comes

Well, the year before last I used a de-thatching rake and did the entire lawn by hand, that was a HUGE pain in the ass, and back.

The power de-thatcher is big and heavy, like a mower on steroids, but after a couple of minutes you get the hang of it. Just don’t try to fight it, let it do it’s thing and go along for the ride.

Where are you located? It’s kind of late in the season to seed in a lot of places.

Is your existing lawn ok, or is it a mess.(lots of weeds and crappy grass)

If it’s a mess you may want to nuke with Round-up first and start fresh.

If the existing lawn is decent but thin I would:
-cut it as low as your mower goes, basically you scalp it down to dirt
-hit it with the de-thatcher a couple of times at 90 deg. angles
-clean up the enormous amount of thatch that is pulled up
-use a broadcast spreader to lay down a HEAVY amount of seed(I personally would double whatever the bag says cause trust me, your not getting their perfect germination rate in the real world)
-put down a starter fertilizer
-water twice a day lightly to keep the seeds moist

You lawn will be baller next spring and all the neighborhood MILFs will look at you longingly as you cut that green carpet!
the reason i want to dethatch and over seed now isnt for this year. which i have read in numerous publications is a good thing. the best thing i have read and been told is to lay the seed out real late in the year. then winterize, then fertilize in the spring allowing the seeds to germinate in the spring rains. and it will pretty much withstand the heat and dryness of summer.

what ive read in numerous lifestyle magazines and newspapers
I really think the secret to a good lawn is obviously maintenance.

I installed irrigation, fertilize and the whole deal.

The biggest tip I can give is to not water too much (about two times a week, heavy soak) and to keep it long. If you water too much the roots will remain close to the surface looking for water and your grass will dry out.

Also, put your mower on the highest setting and leave it there. If it’s long when and if the weeds seed they won’t have the necessary sunlight to germinate.

Anyone else have other easy tips?
beautiful home beautiful daughter and beautiful grass
man, that is some really nice grass. I have a lot of crabgrass in my yard, and its such a pain in the ass to get rid of it. once these weeds are pulled out, is it a good idea to put fertilizer and grass seed in place?
That is some sick grass. Mine is a disaster. Started with too thin a layer of topsoil FTL.

That technique is called dormant seeding, where the seeds lay dormant til spring because the soil temps are too low for germination. It works, but late summer/fall is really the hands down best time to overseed.

You’re really taking a chance that the spring is going to be wet enough for good germination and growth before you get a potential hot/dry spell in the summer that will kill off those young blades of grass pretty quick unless you really keep up with the watering.

You’re also prevented from using most kinds of pre-emergents to keep the weeds down in the spring. The weed seeds thrive in the spring, but if you have grass seed down most pre-emergents will prevent them from germinating as well, so you will be looking at lots of weeds coming in with the new grass.

If you had seeded in the fall you’d not only have a decent stand of grass ready to go in the spring, which would help crowd out the weeds naturally, but you’d also be able to put down the pre-emergent to really crush the weeds.

yeah, if you pull a big ass crabgrass plant out, drop some seed in the bare spot or another weed will definitely pop up there. Weeds love bare soil where they don’t have to comptete with other plants to get established.

great tips!

I almost always mulch mow also, so the grass clippings are recycled back into the lawn. This provides some additional fertilizer back to the lawn for free.

Joisey.

thanks!

Just keep adding organic matter to it, it’ll turn around. Add compost, use animal feeds as fertilizers(yeah it sounds weird) stuff like soy bean meal, corn meal, etc. And mulch mow, that’ll add some good stuff back in.

It does take a while though.

exactly what I had figured, even though I dont read up on this stuff. thanks

also got these grass looking things that sprout out wheat looking things. they’re green, but definitely arent grass. I have been pulling these things out as well.

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