Update from today, including photos.

Slowly starting to see this thing turn around. The temps have dropped to what I would consider “normal” and the lawn seems to be crawling back to life.

I mowed it Saturday morning because some areas were about 6 inches tall Meanwhile, other areas were not even pushing 2 inches. I don’t understand it but what can I say.

Today, I fertilized using a mostly slow release synthetic from Jonathan Green (Jonathan Green “Green Up). It’s been a month without fertilizer and I’ve got plants in various states of growth. Hopefully this nitrogen shot will give it what it needs.

Sadly, when I mowed on Saturday, most of the new plants in the cursed area near the driveway bent over and haven’t stood back up. I tried using a learn blower but didn’t have great results. Maybe the nitrogen will help the plants get the energy to start doing some pushups.

Im at an awkward spot right now, with at least 2 different seedings. The problem is the Poa Annua. I have tenacity ready to spray but I don’t want to injure the babies lol.

Heres a better view of the cursed spot. It looks god awful.

The spot on the right is where the new seedlings got mashed down from the mower. The neon spots on the left near the sidewalk is the annual bluegrass infestation...that’s making a nice happy train to the center.

My dilema; I will have my entire wife’s family (40-50 some people) over to my place in about a month. 9/10 of them have never been here. My wife has always told them that I am a lawn care nut...and now they are going to see a lawn care nightmare.

I need to turn this baby around. I’m debating on just using Roundup and nuking the annual bluegrass ... or doing the tenacity treatments (risking a bleached lawn). :-p

And just for fun:

A photo of fescue seed growing on a very THIN layer of soil that is on driveway. You see my frustration?

1. It's better than it was and I agree about the greenup...

2. While I understand your concern regarding family coming over and your reputation....things happen. You're not stupid and not lazy so when mother nature decides to screw things up, what can anyone do?

3. Make a slide show of this thread and show it to the family during appetizers.

If all that bright green is poa annua, that is a disaster. It looks really mature.

If Tttf seems to get hit hard with disease repeatedly year after year, ever try hybrid bluegrass or even Midnight kbg?

In any case, as a fellow lawn enthusiast, i feel for you...

I'm live in the Virginia also and I'm doing a similar renovation. I had extreme grub worm problems but the Dylox took care of them. I started a lot later than you after the heat was gone (October). I threw more grass seed down today so I don't think it's too late for you but what do I know?

Owinsr,

STEP AWAY FROM THE CHEMICALS! Do you think you are the only perfectionist on this forum? Flawlessness is unattainable in Turfville.

You have a wonderful sense of humor. Presumably, you do not want to get divorced. Relax and charm your wife's family. They only see your beautiful house. Your beautiful wife. Your beautiful life. And your very respectable lawn.

This is your chance to show your wife's family how much you care about HER. I assure you, no other relative has a better lawn than yours. Make the reunion about your wife. Not about your lawn. You will be amazed how far this simple, sweet gesture will get you......If you need back-up, look up this song:

Talking Heads - Once In A Lifetime (Full Length Version ... - YouTube

I'm with mishmosh on this one. I'm finding KBG to be significantly less disease prone than fescue. The small corner I seeded with fescue got wiped out, no sign of disease in my Midnight renovation 20 feet away. I reseeded that corner with Midnight as well and it's now coming in nice and healthy. Not that I'm recommending you seed KBG right now, it's too late - but maybe you could roundup the Poa A and seed some Perennial Rye to hold the fort until next year.

TarHeel, thanks for keeping my head on straight. Of course it’s not all about my lawn — I’ve got a million other projects I’m working on, too. (Including the baby room/nursery... what a lot of work!) But the lawn is my hobby. I’m sure you understand.

Boy oh boy what a difference tbe fertilizer has made.

These photos were taken around 11am. Less than 18 hours have passed and I can’t believe the turnaround. Compare the photos above to the photo set from yesterday.

Sorry for the high contrast... I’ll try to take another set of photos this evening or tomorrow when the sun goes behind the treeline.

I understand both hobby and diversion. Been there, done that. Been there again.... Fertilizer looks like it is kicking in. Hopefully, lighting an irritating fire under your chinch bugs. I am entering year two of turf responsibility. So far, I am scoring a C, despite an incredible amount of effort. Good news for my little NC buddy, J4c11, I have now embraced the Chapin backpack sprayer (including chemicals!). I'm still wary of them but Tenacity and Podiamine are in my arsenal. If only I could just stop reseeding.....so I could actually embrace the pre-emergent. BTW. I hope you watched the Talking Heads - Once In A Lifetime (Full Length Version ... - YouTube It will give you some great dance moves to entertain your relatives. Look forward to hearing about the birth of your little one. Side note: J4c11, why do you suppose Super Sod doesn't sell and NC State does not recommend KBG?

NC State doesn't recommend KBG? Then why bother testing KBG for ntep and periodically putting out a list of top performing KBG for NC?

Wise mishmosh,

Obviously I have been hallucinating. As of today, I stand corrected (don't tell my husband). I am perplexed. Because (of Jc411) I have looked this topic up a few times. Perhaps I was living in alternative universe...but I feel quasi-confident that NC State previously said, "We do not recommend KBG". I have found several contradictions in some university sites.

Is this a new recommendation?

Super-sod (Charlotte) does not list it on their site. (at least as of 5 minutes ago). So, kindly tell me if I am headed for the dog food cue. Thanks for correcting the misinformation.

I haven't personally seen NCSU shun KBG, so I'm not sure what that's about. I've only been growing bluegrass for a year, but my observations so far are:

• Bluegrass requires about the same level of care as fescue through summer.
• Bluegrass appears to be significantly more disease tolerant than fescue, both during establishment and during summer.
• Bluegrass appears to have great dormancy recovery. I have a low maintenance area on the side of the house which did not receive a drop of irrigation water all summer. It went almost completely brown. While it's a little thin, the bluegrass has made an impressive recovery there.
• Bluegrass appears to be more cold tolerant, it kept growing through winter for me. With low 60s during the day and mid 40s at night, I pretty much had to mow through winter every 2 weeks. There is potential for a continuous 8 month growing season (September-May) here in NC and a year-round green with proper care.
• Bluegrass spreads to fill in damaged areas.

The ultimate goal for me would be to be able to let it go in June and have it recover 70-80% in September with potential for 100% by end of November. That would mean no irrigation, no fungicide, no overseeding, no mowing in 100 degree weather. I was not comfortable letting a first year front lawn go dormant this year, but the low maintenance area showed great promise.

Thank you Mishmosh and j4c11,

I remember reading that KBG wants full sun. And j4c11 doesn't have irrigation, so he was hoping to let KGB go dormant during the summer. I think I will stop commenting for a bit because I clearly am not up to snuff in this forum. Thanks for all of your lessons.

Round 2 -fight!

Finally couldn’t take it anymore. Cleared out about 1200 sqft of the “cursed side” and seeded.

The rest of the yard is doing “ok” and I’m confident that by the end of fall it will be looking great.

After getting the seedbed prepped and planted yesterday, I decided that today I would aim to start treating the patch of Poa Annua that I did NOT dig up or prep. Im going to hit it with Tenacity today. I’ve got a few spots of poa on the other side of the yard as well, so I’ll hit them, too.

If this strip of poa annua here doesn’t clear out, I’m going to just put in a mulch bed with some box woods or some similar shrub and call it quits.

Weather forecast:

"Tenacity" is definitely something you have.

I would have put in a tennis court by now.

If this strip of poa annua here doesn’t clear out, I’m going to just put in a mulch bed with some box woods or some similar shrub and call it quits.

I say fight the good fight with Tenacity, but ultimately you will need to get yourself in a position to apply pre-emergent August 15th for a couple of years to deplete the Poa seed bank. That means:

- spring seeding(April) and aggressive fungicide every 2 weeks through summer to keep it alive. You will get some spring weeds, but I bet it won't be too bad since you've been applying pre-emergent yearly in the spring for some time now

or

- sod.

I think I will stop commenting for a bit because I clearly am not up to snuff in this forum. Thanks for all of your lessons.

No worries, we've all been beginners at some point. You should start a thread on your lawn, tell us what you've been doing and what your plans and goals are. We've got a long winter ahead of us to sort it all out :-)

With temperatures getting down to 40 it was probably too late to plant grass seed. I planted mine a week ago and I don't think it germinated. Let us know how it goes.

I think I’ll be OK with the temps. The temps always end up being 5-10 degrees warmer than what the weather forecasts call for. For example, this morning the forecast was for today to have a high of 76. Well, it reached 81 today.

Tall fescue germination is best when the soil temps are between 50-65 degrees. Right now, the soil temps are about 60 degrees at 1 inch depth and 65 degrees at 1 ft depth. I think I will be OK with germination, but I probably won’t get to mow it until December. That should make getting the leaves up interesting. At the end of the day, I think I’m in better shape now than I was a couple days ago. About 2/3 of the yard looks great (better in person than in the photo). It’s just this one cursed side that’s driving me crazy. If I can’t get this last ditch seeding to work out right now, it’s not the end of the world. There’s always spring!

I have the feeling you'll be out there shoveling snow off your lawn in January so you can put more seed down.

The soil temperatures at 1 inch are not the same as the soil temperature at 0-1/8". So if you have seed next to the surface like you should they will be facing similar temperatures to the air temps. It's going to get down to 34 degrees this weekend. Post up some pics of the germination. As an experiment I'm going to throw down some more grass seed today as well. It's supposed to storm tonight.

Well I guess it doesn’t matter either way because the seeds got washed out last night. I give up lol.

Yeah I think I'm giving up as well but we can start fresh in the Spring. Did you rake the seeds into the soil?

Yes. But my front lawn is on a slight incline and I discovered about 1-2 inches of runoff material - including seeds - at the bottom. I tried to scatter it around but I’m giving up; whatever comes up will come up. I’ll keep you guys posted on whatever germination happens.

I’ll try again in the spring.

Since you keep having issues with runoff have you considered hydro seeding?

I always try to seed when it's not going to rain for a white to avoid runoff and I can control the watering. I have a very steep backyard. You can use something like Scotts patchmaster to prevent runoff.

It's alive!

Got about an inch of rain yesterday. Looks like things more or less survived.

With the weather forecast, I’m hopeful that this last ditch effort will be successful.

If not... maybe I’ll buy some outdoor space heaters and place them around the yard hah

Germination seems high. There’s some “clusters” where heavy rain moved some seed around. Overall, though, things are looking pretty good. Haven’t even watered with irrigation.

Keeping my eye on the weather, which finally seems to be going my way.

So, 3ish weeks later here we are:

Not too bad, germination wise. Growth is slow, as expected. Had the wife’s entire family over ... 40 some people... over on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. They couldn’t really remember to not walk on the lawn despite being asked nicely I just gave up asking them. It rained heavily the entire week. A lot of the seedlings were smushed to death. But overall, its not as bad as I was fearing.

Since I didn’t drop any fertilizer at seed down, on Sunday (yesterday) afternoon.

I spread Scott’s Winterguard across the entire lawn, including this seedbed. I also spot treated some winter weeds with Weed B Gon chickweed, clover and oxalis that was starting to get out of control (as seen in the last 2 pics).

Today, I busted out the tenacity and went to town on that strip near the sidewalk that is almost 100% poa annua.

Rate:

Mixed 1 tsp of non-ionic surfactant with 1 tsp of Tenacity inside of a 2 gallon tank sprayer.

Method:

Used a lead blower to clear out the strip and also dry out the foliage. Then did a broadcast spray of tenacity across the strip near the side walk

I also did some spot foliar treatments in some areas where poa annua was starting to grow in other areas of the yard.

I did NOT spray inside the seedbed.

Pics from today.

Tenacity doesn’t seem to have lit up the Poa Annua. It’s still lime green. I’ll give it another week and then maybe I’ll try again.

The good news:

- The Weed B Gon chickweed, clover and oxalis killer seems to have suppressed the winter weeds They havent died yet, but I can tell they are struggling bad.

- The area with the seedbed is starting to establish pretty nicely. As the first photo shows, it’s starting to reach the same height as the rest of the lawn (which is now being mowed at 3 inches).

The seedbed is on the right side of this photo. Stating to become difficult to distinguish!

This is the side that I didn’t reseed. I applied the CCW on this side and the weeds are starting to die back. I also did some spot spraying of tenacity on some Poa Annua but so far no results.

The area I reseeded. The Poa Annua near the sidewalk is pretty entrenched. I hit they strip with tenacity but no results, yet.

Photo above is a closeup of the sidewalk, aka Poa Annua City (there’s also some TTTF in the strip but it’s mostly Poa). Behind the immediately Poa closeup you can see the TTTF seedbed doing just dandy.

Certainly as it gets colder, it will take longer for Tenacity to show an effect. The other thing is, you sure it's poa annua? Is it seeding? Poa trivialis is also lime green and would be a worse foe to combat IMHO.

It’s poa annua. My backyard is infested with the stuff. The Poa here doesn’t produce seed heads until March/April. The tell tale is the like green color, the bunch type habit, and the “crinkles” on the blades.

The tenacity is starting to slow down the poa in some areas but that strip near the sidewalk doesn’t seem to have been affected get.

As such, I did a spot treatment again today.

Here are overall progress photo updates:

—-

Sadly, the Poa here isn’t in “main Poa crop” near the sidewalk. But I’ll take every little victory I can get this year.

This area is coming along nicely. The Poa from the previous photo is located in the bottom left corner of this photo (where the lawn meets the driveway and mulch bed). There’s a nice little patch of it growing there, running along the mulch bed

On this side, the chickweed and other winter weeds have definitely started to die back. But their corpses are still there. Hopefully they will break down overtime. There’s also a few Poa patches in the middle of this area as well as scattered Poa plants near the foreground

Finally, the Poa patch near the sidewalk. Hopefully this will start to dieback soon...especially after today’s follow up treatment.

Yeah, looks like poa. Unfortunately unless it is bleached for a prolonged period of time, it's probably not going to die. Whats in the first pic is not going to do it.

Did another treatment on 11/26 and I can tell that the pop is starting to struggle. It isn’t turning white but it looks like it’s under a ton of stress. It has definitely turned lime green. I will probably do another treatment this weekend.

I am wondering if I should hold off on a winterizer fertililizer app this year to prevent the poa from getting stronger.

Another week has gone by and the Poa is definitely starting to show signs of struggling, death and decay.

I hit it again this morning.

Tenacity seems to have killed almost all of the poa annua. Today I spread some leftover seed just to see what happens as a dormant seeding experiment. Planning to seed in the spring over these areas anyway.

Update: it’s starting to look like spring around here. Bradford pear trees have their white buds, daffodils and lilies starting to pop up from the ground.... and, most importantly... lawns are starting to wake up.

When I left off last fall, things were grim. Overseeed failed and turned into a renovation on half my front lawn. Then when tings started to turn around, poa annua starting taking over.

I’m here to tell you to never give up. The repeated tenacity treatments did kill about 95% of the poa annua. That strip near the sidewalk aka Poa Annua City is no more! In late January, I threw down some seed and it has since germinated.

Gave the lawn a nice healthy feeding of Milorganite today. In about 3 weeks or so, I’ll follow up with a preemegent to get me through the weed season.

Here are some pics!

First two photos:

the left side of each pic shows the area I had to completley restart from scratch very late in the fall. It survived the winter and is starting to wake up!

This side the faired better with the overseeding, but started to struggle out by winter weeds and poa. The late fall tenacity cleared all that out and now there are some very thin spots that have some TTTF seedlings starting to establish.

Here is the former Poa Annua City. I still cringe when I remember what this looked like about November of last year. Now it’s more or less bare, with some poa still there but mostly TTTF seedlings from seed I threw out there in late January.

NEVER GIVE UP! NEVER SURRENDER!

Awesome news!

Looks like meat’s back on the menu, boys.

Shots of the “cursed spot” aka “Poa City” taken today in the bright sun after a few weeks of high temps and humidity. Looking good to me! The last of the Poa annua is dead! (Which is the discoloration you see here). Fescue is healthy as a horse so far, even if it is a little stressed due to the conditions of the summer starting to kick in .

Maintaining height of cut at 3.5 inches.

When's the last time you fertilized? What did you use?

Scott’s Weed and Feed, applied on 6/4,

My plan was to use Milorganite, but every store around here has been sold out. After two weekends of searching, I gave up. I was late with pre-em this year and had some broadleaf weeds cropping up. With the 6 month old baby, I don’t have much “lawn time” so I figured a W&F would maximize my time this year.

Honestly, I feel like the lawn does better with the Scotts. The photos I posted earlier today were taken in the bright afternoon sunlight (harsh contrast), and they don’t really do it justice. It’s thunder storming right now, otherwise I’d go grab a few more shots to take advantage of the optimal, late afternoon lighting.

Pics from this evening. Overcast so there isn’t much harsh contrast.

The infamous “cursed” side -take 1

The infamous “cursed” side - take 2

Infamous “cursed” side - take

(notice Poa City near sidewalk is gone!)

Plan from here:

Treat fungicide during the summer to keep disease pressure at bay

Assess condition around early August to determine if pre-emergent should be applied (Poa control) vs. overseeding.

owlnsr What do you use to kill poa? Also how high do you mow? I believe I mow to high and it maybe a cause of why fungus has hit me so hard this year.

Scroll up a bit and you will see the posts showing how I killed off the poa annua last fall using frequent apps of tenacity. It’s not an instant knockdown. Waste of money and time to do it now anyway... poa will die off in summer heat. The poa that I didn’t spray has already died off naturally. :-p

owlnsr Has dropping the mow height for you help with fungus issues?

Hard to say. I’m maintaining at 3.5 inches (versus 4) but I did put down a preventative app of Scotts Disease Ex on 5/20. I’m also haven’t been my sprinklers yet; relying on rain. Moreover, I have been bagging clippings up until last week (normally I mulch—-but I wanted to bag up seedheads). I restarted mulching routine last week. Probably shifting to 4 inch cut I’m at the end of the month.

Any summer updates?