Last September I planted pennisetum "Cassian" and it has taken off nicely. It has produced purple(ish) fox tails similar to what you are admiring. The foliage is mostly green with very little red, but it's a great little grass. About a month ago I planted panicum "Shenandoah" (one plant split to create two). It has put on new (green) growth and kept the original pretty red leaves and airy flower heads. After terrific advise from Donn about it, and looking high and low, I finally found "Shenandoah" this summer. I'm very pleased! Deb

I think this information would be better on another forum, but since it is here, I'd just like to suggest that northern climate folks should keep their lawns mowed high. At first when you experiment with this, it may look a little straggly as it is growing in through multiple mowings, but eventually the grass blades will uniformly grow into a deep lush lawn that will greatly shade weed seeds. Other benefits are that your lawn will require less mowing (mowing stresses lawns), water, and fertilizer. Rain water runoff will be slowed and percolate into the soil better than a shorter turf. Never let your lawn be mowed shorter than 3.5 inches except when putting your lawn to bed for the winter. Winter dormancy height should be 2 inches to lessen turf disease and to prevent the grass from suffocating under compaction of snowfall.

crab grass, an annual weed grass. Your options are to 1) spot-spray it with Round-Up, although you will also kill surrounding grass with overspray, 2) hand-pull it 3) combo hand-pull/seedhead control this year and application of a pre-emergent NEXT year. If it were my yard I would hand-pull the crab grass and immediately treat bare spots with turf seed to fill back in.

Spotty higher pH can happen if you got the soil off of one particular section of the pile...that happened to contain the old B horizon with some limestone in it! In my case, I got the old subsoil on my lot, so it just kind of stank all around. * You said you targeted our phosphorus level higher than your own lawn. Is this due to the pH difference or something else? Is phosphorus bound in the soil at higher pH's, and is our pH (7.1 - 7.3) high enough to cause that? pH. If you look at the availability of P by pH, it drops as pH rises above seven. You're not that far over, the binding isn't extreme, so I just boosted the numbers a little bit. Your standard is around 220, most people with slightly acidic pH would be around 200. In your case, I wouldn't blink at anything between 200 and 300. I never use my own soil as a standard, per se, for anybody else's. Mine have given in to some experimental stuff, plus I've over-enhanced the gardens to match the (extreme) density and (extraordinarily high) performance I demand they support. My current P levels in the garden push 1,000. * What kind of quality issues can we expect from the low phosphorus level until it's corrected? Thin, weak, sparse growth that gets sick and dies easily, discolors easily, grows poorly, and generally doesn't look at all good. Installed sod would tend to thin out and die back over the course of a year or so if it isn't corrected, resulting in a lot of thin patches and blank areas. N, P, and K are the big three and absolutely have to be there in the correct proportions (N we take care of on an as-needed basis). * It sounds like the Milorganite is great stuff, but I'm very sensitive to odors, so I don't think it's a good fit for our lawn. If we used ferrous sulfate instead (being careful to sweep it off the concrete), what rate and frequency would you recommend? I assume we don't need to worry about lowering the soil pH too much with the ferrous sulfate since the starting pH is above 7.0. I'd be comfortable with ferrous sulfate (monohydrate or pentahydrate, it doesn't matter) at 3 pounds per thousand square feet in April, early October, and perhaps early November if the weather's holding. Keep an eye on the pH in this case, though, as iron sulfate is about an eighth as acidifying as pure elemental sulfur and does NOT require digging in to work! Never use iron during hotter months or when the soil's going to freeze solid for winter within two or three weeks of use.