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joebenet

First spring in new house, and yard is not doing well. Advice?

7 years ago

Hi all,


I purchased a home in Denver last November, so this is my first time having to maintain this yard. I also have never had to maintain a yard in general, so still learning proper care. I believe the yard is Kentucky Bluegrass (supposedly what the majority of yards in Denver are), and it has a sprinkler system installed.


Unfortunately, the lawn has not really come back from the winter (see pictures below), especially in the front yard. The rest of the neighborhood has deep green, lush lawns by now, and ours is patchy and looks unhealthy. The backyard looks fairly good, but still has patchy areas. I attached a picture of the house from last September, and you can see the lawn looks pretty good, so I'm not sure what happened between then. I do know when we had our inspection in mid-October, the sprinkler system had already been drained. I'm not sure when they drained it, but it's possible it was drained when the previous owners moved out in early September. It stays pretty hot in Denver through November, so the lawn may have been winterized too early.


I've been manually watering the yard, and we've had a few big rainstorms in the last week. I'm planning to pick up a manual coring aerator this weekend (the yard is small, so it should do fine), and will do the whole yard. I am also planning to overseed and fertilize (Milorganite).


A few questions:


1. Should I wait to mow? The backyard is long, but the front is pretty dead still.


2. Is it too early to fertilize? From what I've read, the first fertilization in Denver area should be around Memorial Day, but that's a long ways a way.


3. Is my lawn already too damaged?


Any other advice??? Thanks!


Front yard as of last night:


Backyard as of last night:

Lawn as of last September:

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