Bare lawn with weeds
1bazzer
7 years ago
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1bazzer
7 years agoRelated Discussions
My lawn is awful! Weeds...bare spots...
Comments (2)I'm not a warm season grass expert, but I've learned a little about Bermuda from reading forums. The first thing I'd do is try to find Texas Weed's Bermuda Bible. Texas Weed is a regular poster here, but his Bermuda Bible can be found using Google: http://www.google.com/search?q=Bermuda+Bible&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a I can tell you a couple of mistakes you're making. Bermuda thrives when it's cut short (like maybe an inch at the most). You're also watering far too often. And you're not fertilizing nearly enough. Bermuda needs about a pound of N per 1000 sq ft per month while it's actively growing. Bermuda is a warm season grass, so depending on weather, it may be that the lawn has just not had a chance to get started this year. Once it wakes up, it should take off and spread aggressively, even if conditions aren't optimal, but if you fertilize enough to keep it healthy and mow it short, you'll prod it to spread in a hurry....See Moreweeding and bare spots
Comments (2)I am in the same place as you. In fact, I just returned from a half hour pulling weeds in my lawn. A woman walked by and told me that it can be an OC type thing, and I was quick to agree! The battle against weeds will never be won until the lawn is 100% filled in with tall 3"+ turf that crowds out weeds. As long as there is room (bare spots), the weeds will grow. dropping seeds down during the summer is an iffy thing, as odds are they won't grow. But if you do drop them, do the following: 1) take some topsoil or dirt from your yard 2) mix seeds in 3) drop a handful in each bare spot *I have also had luck with just dropping seed and roughing it up a bit, but the "mix" above has worked best. ** Do you know what type of grass you have? Don't repair bare spots with any old grass seed. If you do, the difference in color will be noticeable. If you are in doubt, consider asking a professional or buying a rye/fescue/kbg mix so that it won't look TOO out-of-place. Here is my plan.... 1) Like you, I am new to this, so I am doing the OC thing and pulling weeds this summer. I hate it, but the lawn looks really good when it is weed-free. I tend to do a section of the lawn each week so it isn't overwhelming. 2) The grass is at least 3" high, which obscures most of my little bare spots. My larger bare spots by the curb are getting attacked by weeds, and I can't really do anything about it. 3) Knowing the importance of filling the bare spots and strengthening the turf, I am planning on seeding over and over again until I get the lawn I want this fall. August 1, September 1, October 1 if I have to. I am adding some extra KBG to the mix so that remaining holes fill themselves over the course of the next year. 4) Other than that, I am continuing my normal organic program (soy bean meal, compost, etc.). From the street (the OTHER side of the street, lol), my lawn looks great. It might be the greenest on the block. Close up, there are some trouble spots, but nothing that I can't fix over the next year. Considering it was nearly wiped out from grubs when I moved in last fall, I am very happy with the progress....See MoreNewer pictures of weeds bare lawn(try again)
Comments (7)loganlabs.com. The website tells you all about it. We recommend LL after fairly extensive testing of labs all over the country done year after year by lawn gurus on various forums. Logan Labs is the most reliable and repeatable. For the home owner they are affordable. UMASS came in a close second, and was #1 for several years. Those two labs stand out way above all the universities and private labs. A little history of organic fertilizer. Back in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, a guy named Rodale wrote about natural or organic gardening. His approach was to use compost made from "well rotted manure" and garden clippings. Compost is the decomposition product of animal dung as well as any lawn clippings, table scraps, or other garden cuttings. What people don't realize about a compost pile is that a hot pile will easily decompose an animal. One of our local compost giants takes in about 2 dozen road kill deer and livestock every year. After about 4 days, all that's left is the hooves. The trick with that is to have a hot pile. That's harder to do than you think. But anyway, when the microbes in the pile have finished devouring all the plant material, all the microbial byproducts, and each other, the only thing that's left is byproducts of the last few species of microbes. In other words, it's depleted itself. It's practically peat moss. It's mulch with a little bit of plant nutritional value. It takes 700 pounds of compost to equal the nutritional value of 15 pounds of modern organic fertilizer and to equal just a few pounds of chemical fertilizer. Back when Rodale was doing his work nobody knew why compost worked. The lab scientists knew there were about 50 microbe species living in the soil because they could either grow them in the lab or see the byproducts. Fast forward to the 1990s when DNA testing became cheap enough that they could run it on dirt. Much to their surprise they found DNA for 30,000 different species of microbes. Later in the 2000s they found an additional 70,000 species in the soil. Finally they could explain why the soil seems to have such magical powers for plant health. About that time I started reading about the soil food web. I don't remember why I visited a feed store, but I did and started reading the ingredient labels on bags of organic fertilizer. I found it was full of animal feeds like soybean meal, corn meal, corn gluten meal, cottonseed meal, alfalfa, and some animal byproducts (poultry manure). Well, there I was in a feed store. Suddenly a lot of what I had been reading came together. I had been introduced to corn meal to cure fungal disease all around the garden. I bought some more corn meal and spread it around the yard. It worked! Now I'm not saying I invented modern organic fertilizer - after all I was reading the labels, so the manufacturers obviously knew about it; but what I did was bring it to the lawn care community. So what I recommend is any of the following animal feeds: soybean meal, alfalfa pellets (rabbit chow) or meal, corn meal, corn gluten meal, or any other ground up nut, bean, or seed you can find cheap at your local feed store. The application rate is 15 pounds per 1,000. If you happen to overdose and apply 50 pounds per 1,000, that should not hurt anything. It will stink, but it won't hurt anything. So 15 is good and so is 20. For your very first application, you might want to use 10 pounds because it can be a little whiffy the first time. Then in 3 weeks your microbe population will be up to normal and you can apply at full strength. Milorganite is a different kind of organic product, but it works well. The way these work is the protein in the grain gets decomposed by the soil microbes. Those microbes get decomposed by other microbes and eventually real plant food is created. That process takes 3 weeks from the time you apply the feed/food. Here's a picture from mrmumbles a few years ago. He applied alfalfa pellets in mid May and took the picture in mid June.You can see the improved color, density, and growth....See MoreNewer pictures of weeds bare lawn(try again)
Comments (0)Sorry didn't seem the last post had any pictures not sure what happened. So far just ortho weed b gone CCO and Bayer weed killer. Again KBG near Detroit, full sun. Not much water as yet just rain. No fertilizer yet since I was waiting for which steps to take. Was going to topdressed and overseed but realized was too late already and topdressing seems not be necessary according to some of you. Hope pics come through. The first three or four are the front yard. The rest are the back(worse). The darker green patches you see from the distance shots are clover(or CC not sure the difference but they are spread out)....See More1bazzer
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