Help! I do not know where to start

11 years ago

Hello,

My wife and I bought our first house about 5 years ago. Our front lawn was mostly moss, due to the shade supplied by the big beautiful Japanese Maple in the front yard. We had discussed cutting it down but decided against it. As luck would have it the freak October snow storm 2011 destroyed the tree and we had to cut it down anyway. Now instead of moss we have crap grass and lots and lots of weeds. I have never owned a lawn before, so I do not really know where to start. How can I get rid of the weeds and crab grass and start growing a real lawn with out having to rip up and turn over my whole lawn. I really can not afford any major extra expense at this time.

Thank you in advance for you help

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tiemco
11 years ago
Well there are a lot of ways to fix the situation, some better than others. I am going to tell you what I would do, but it's not the only way. My first step is a soil test (www.loganlabs.com, basic soil test). While waiting for the results, I would apply Moss Out to the lawn to kill off the moss. This may need to be repeated a few times. Weather permitting, I would do an application of Weed B Gone max and Weed B Gone CCO. This should be done at least 4 weeks before seeding, so the end of July would be the last time I would apply those herbicides. Once you get your soil test back, then start amending the soil. Since you are in Connecticut (so am I), it's highly likely you will need to lime your soil due to our geography and location, plus moss is often an indicator of acidic soil. Most people in CT need calcitic lime, but your soil test will tell you which one you need, if any. The best time for seeding in CT is around Sept. 1st. So you have to decide if you are going to kill off the existing grass and starting fresh (renovate), or overseed what you have. If you do renovate, you will apply Round-up to your yard in August. Renovating sounds like a daunting task, but the results are almost always better than an overseed, plus you get rid of older grass cultivars in your lawn that are not as good as the newest ones. There are four major cool season grasses to pick from, and they depend on a few factors, but the biggest one is sunlight. How much sun does the area receive on a typical cloudless summer day? Once you have that info, you can then decide which grass to use, and if you want a specific cultivar or blend of culivars, then you should source and order that as soon as possible since seed sellers often run out of inventory due to high demand around this time of year. Once seeding time rolls around you basically spread the seed, roll it, topdress if you want to, and keep it moist with frequent daily short duration waterings. If you killed everything then you don't have to worry about the existing grass. If you didn't, then you should cut if as low as possible without scalping the yard. Now this is a very basic overview of the seeding process, so once you decide on what you want to do, then we can get more specific. All questions are valid, there are no stupid ones (well maybe a few).
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Help! I do not know where to start

Comment (1)

tiemco

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