Taking excellent care of a lawn is pretty easy. In fact it is so easy that I'm surprised the lawn fertilizer companies stay in business. You have to do all the heavy lifting anyway. You have to water it and mow it once a week. All they do is fertilize. Oh and they apply herbicide to everyone regardless of whether they need it. I suspect your old lawn was not fun to walk on because it was a hodge podge of different grasses, some of which made it uncomfortable. The solution to that is to just use the modern improved varieties of grasses. Do you have shade in the new yard? Any mature trees? Any immature trees that will eventually shade the yard? The shade will affect which grass type you select. The fescue varieties will do well in shade, but the Kentucky bluegrass varieties must have full sun. For your lawn, now is the time to plan to renovate it. Late next month is the time to act. Basically you'll need to kill what's there, kill it again, remove what's there, level things if you have high and low spots (NO ROTOTILLING), apply seed, roll seed, water lightly 3x per day for 3 weeks. After you have 80% germination, you can start to back off on the watering frequency until you are watering once every 2-3 weeks. That might not happen until Halloween, but you have to make it happen. By deep watering on an infrequent basis the grass develops deep, drought resistant roots. If your grass develops a dense canopy this fall, then you should not have a weed problem next spring. Scott's scares everyone into thinking they need a preemergent herbicide, but I never use one. If I get a couple weeds it's a lot easier to spot treat them when I can see them rather than blanketing the yard with chemicals. Here are the basics of lawn care. This may or may not be the way you did it at your old house, but this works and can get you most of the way to a 'lawn of the month' yard. Basics of Lawn Care After reading numerous books and magazines on lawn care, caring for lawns at eight houses over the years, and reading numerous forums where real people write in to discuss their successes and failures, I have decided to side with the real people and dispense with the book and magazine authors. I don't know what star their planet rotates around but it's not mine. With that in mind, here is the collected wisdom of the Internet savvy homeowners and lawn care professionals summarized in a few words. If you follow the advice here you will have conquered at least 50% of all lawn problems. Once you have these three elements mastered, then you can worry about weeds (if you have any), dog spots, and striping your lawn. But if you are not doing these three things, they will be the first three things suggested for you to correct. Watering Water deeply and infrequently. Deeply means at least an inch in every zone, all at once. Infrequently means monthly during the cool months and no more than weekly during the hottest part of summer. Do not spread this out and water for 10 minutes every day. If your grass looks dry before the month/week is up, water longer next time. If that does not work, then you might have to water more than once per week during the summer's hottest period. Deep watering grows deep, drought resistant roots. Infrequent watering allows the top layer of soil to dry completely which kills off many shallow rooted weeds. You will have to learn to judge when to water your own lawn. If you live in El Paso your watering will be different than if you live in Vermont. Adjust your watering to your type of grass, temperature, humidity, wind, and soil type. It is worth noting that this technique is used successfully by professionals in Phoenix, so...just sayin.' The other factors make a difference. If you normally water 1 inch per week and you get 1/2 inch of rain, then adjust and water only 1/2 inch that week. Mowing Every week mulch mow at the highest setting on your mower. Most grasses are the most dense when mowed tall. However, bermuda, centipede, and bent grasses will become the most dense when they are mowed at the lowest setting on your mower. In fact there are special mowers that can mow these grasses down to 1/16 inch. Dense grass shades out weeds, keeps the soil cooler, and uses less water than thin grass. Tall grass can feed the deep roots you developed in #1 above. Tall grass does not grow faster than short grass nor does it look shaggy sooner. Once all your grass is at the same height, tall grass just looks plush. Fertilizing Fertilize regularly. I fertilize 5 times per year using organic fertilizer. Which fertilizer you use is much less important than numbers 1 and 2 above. Follow the directions on the bag and do not overdo it. For chemical fertilizers, too little is better than too much. For organic fertilizers, too much is better than too little*. At this point you do not have to worry about weed and feed products - remember at this point you are just trying to grow grass, not perfect it. Besides once you are doing these three things correctly, your weed problems should go away without herbicide. * This used to read, "Too little is better than too much." Recent test results show that you cannot get too much organic fertilizer unless you bury the grass in it.

That is a nice Project Man. Here is how I do it. A 14'' buffer ya know a floor machine with a scrub pad. The pads come in different levals for what your doing the green should do it. An olalic acid wash. I buy the pure form in 50lb bags but the woodrich guys sell a much milder product that I can remomend. Mix it up in a 5 gal bucket put it on with a big nap roller on a pole. Run the floor machine over your deck keep it wet. Garden hose wash be sure and remove all the brightner. Let it dry,put on the finish. Ghesss I cant belive I am doing this again.... But you have a really nice deck going on most excelent attention to detail. Outdoor finish. With woodrich and twp its a build coat product. The first coat is not going to last all that long, the wood will have to get used to its new home. I have noticed woodrich stuff is a little shine building coats but it sets up about the same as twp. Spending time and doing work is what it takes to get a long lasting finish using either one. The more coats the longer it takes to set up. Use the sprit of a sound mind,work with the finish on test material. Really its not all that hard it just takes some thought while your doing it. I do not recomend any other outdoor finish far a building coats go. The pinofin/supperdeck,cabots ect are a total different base and dont even think about the one coat forever guys that stuff is a complete scam. I have a masenramduba deck out back of Butler Manor put in right after 9 11. I have used the above way twice it looks really goood right now, in fact I am very pleased with the red/brown color. With a deck that size the cost of the floor machine imo is well worth it. Any biger size buffer is hard to cotrol on a uneven surface like deck boards but the 14'' works like a dream. I am not going to respond to any posters claiming what I do cant be done,or something else works soooooo much better,or I Never have to redo my finish,or the one time forever stuff is just that. This is what I have done,it works for me and has for 15 years. John Mon

Karen, You will not harm ipe by not staining it. You may get a bit more checking of the wood, but it won't be significant. The Atlantic City boardwalk and many park benches in NYC are unstained ipe and they have been holding up in some cases for decades. If you want to get rid of the grey color then a percarbonate cleaner sold by Woodrich, EFC-38 would work well as it has some additional ingredients in it that act as a mild stripper. It is the exact same product as RAD, which is no longer for sale as far as I know. You would have to apply it, let it dwell 20 minutes, and brush it with a deck brush, and then rinse. Depending on how it looks you may not need to use the brightener, whose primary purpose is to neutralize the high ph of the percarbonate cleaner prior to staining. If you want to maintain the grey color of unstained ipe they you mostly want to get rid of any mold, mildew, and dirt. For this you could either use a straight percarbonate cleaner, which you can buy directly for very little from the Chemistry Store (chemistrystore.com) or use a mild bleach and water solution ( 1 part bleach 8 parts water) with a bit of dish detergent mixed in. Same method as percarbonate cleaner, let it dwell, brush it lightly, and rinse. By the way, the first time a stain is used on Ipe it typically only lasts a few months. After that you can usually get close to a year before you need re-staining. I use Cabot's ATO and now after re-staining yearly for 3 years have enough residual stain left on the deck that I don't need to re-stain it this year. The color has faded only a little and looks quite uniform in tone. The stain is duller in appearance though from when it was stained last May but looks presentable. All I did this season was to mop on the mild bleach/soap treatment. Hope this helps, Marty

Your picture isn't really picking it up but I'm almost guaranteed you got water spots. You applied this stuff when your boards were still with a high moisture. That's what causes white spots. The oxygenation of this trapped moisture from below, in, or above..(dew or rain). This may dry out in a few days of decent weather or you may have to put on new stain to blend out this area. I know it's stupid.. but make sure it's not just coming from a tree or anything.. or bird sht...lol