Yard Updates, Winter 2017

In the fall we just didn't have the time or money to do much to our yard, so we got around to it in late February/early March.  We had an unusually warm winter here in Missouri, and I think a lot of the country experienced it.  Because of that, our yard never really went dormant all winter.  It was actually kind of a bummer for us because we wanted some weeds to die.  You guys know our yard was in rough shape last winter when we moved in.  In the last year we've learned that rehabbing your lawn is a multi-year process.  There aren't instant results, and you just have to stick with it.  Last winter/spring we took care of raking years' worth of lives, de-thatching, removing a stump, removing gravel and replacing it with mulch, and getting rid of the gravel around our river birch tree in the back yard.  We were pleased with all of the results except for the gravel removal around the tree.

So here's what our yard looked like a year ago:

And here's what our yard looked like at the same time this year.  It's nowhere near perfect, but it really does look better than last year.

So in late February we rented an aerator and a tiller.  This was our first aerator experience, and it was kind of comical.  I had anticipated helping Robert, but after that machine nearly took him down it became obvious that I wouldn't be helping.  It was very powerful!  Robert when through the yard horizontally and vertically.  We hope to aerate again in the fall.

Since grass still wasn't growing around the river birch tree where we dug out gravel we decided that there must still be more gravel there.  Last year Robert dug out as much as he could, but this year he rented a tiller that went down 10", and it got out so much more gravel.  It was still reaching gravel down at 10" so who knows how deep it actually goes.  We're just hoping that going down 10" is enough to grow some grass.  The tiller loosened up the soil and gravel, and then it was time to sift out the gravel from the good soil.  This was another difficult task.  Robert and I agree that we won't be volunteering to sift dirt for anyone any time soon.  Robert built his own soil sifter based on Home Depot's tutorial, and it held up for our project and could be used again.  Basically, we put the sifter over the wheel barrow, shoveled dirt into it, shook it back and forth to sift out the dirt from the gravel, dumped the gravel in a pile, and dumped the wheel barrow when it got full.  When we were finally finished we raked out the soil to level it some.  Robert planted shade-friendly grass and has been watering it every day.  We know the grass won't be perfect since it's under a tree, but if we don't get at least some grass Robert says he will cry, and I say we should just plant ivy or turn it into a concrete slab with a patio or a shed.

After tilling and aerating we wanted to put down a fertilizer and a pre-emergent.  It's kind of frustrating because since we didn't have a cold winter we already had weeds, so I don't know how much the pre-emergent will do.  We've gained most of our knowledge through The Lawn Care Nut and his YouTube videos.  He's entertaining, and he's full of good information, but I also just wanted a spreadsheet that told me what to do and when to do it, so I just made my own.

Like I said, this winter was super warm so we bumped up the tasks that would usually be done in early April to early March, and then we mowed for the first time two weeks later in mid March.  As The Lawn Care Nut suggests, we used Lesco Starter Fertilizer.  We really couldn't find it anywhere locally so we ordered it on Amazon with free shipping.  This fert is kind of expensive, but thankfully our 8,000 square foot yard only needed half a bag, and we will be able to use the other half of the bag in late August.  The LCN wants you to put down the fert with sharp angular sand.  We found a big bag at Home Depot for about $4 which is great, but it was sold outside at Home Depot, and it had rained recently so it was wet and couldn't flick out of the spreader, so I ended up putting it out by hand which was miserable, and I'm not sure how effective it was.  Oh well.  Then we put down a liquid pre-emergent called Prodiamine which is the generic form of Barricade.  Again, we bought this on Amazon because it wasn't sold locally.

Within two weeks our yard was much greener and thicker.  Now, it's still about 50% weeds, but I'm trusting the process and believe that this fall when we spot spray the weeds, aerate, and seed it'll give us great results next spring.  Robert mowed at 2.75" in mid March, and now the rest of the season we will mow at 3.75".  I think this is going to be really hard for me because our yard is going to look really weedy.  To the eye, the yard would look less full of weeds if we cut it shorter, but by cutting it longer the root system will get longer, deeper, and stronger.  The root length is directly proportionate to the grass length, so by cutting the grass longer our roots will get stronger and give us better grass next year.

We got one random day of some flurries over spring break.  Go figure.

Around Easter we will do our next treatment.  That time we will use Prodiamine again, but our fertilizer will be Ringer Lawn Restore.  We aren't going to spot spray for weeds because that would kill half of our yard.  We will spot spray in the fall when things are about to go dormant.