lawn out of control!!

5 years ago

Stopped having my lawn serviced last fall. Have a fairly tree‘d lot in Connecticut that has since gotten totally out of hand! Looks like a clover/cabbage patch! Any suggestions on where I would start to take control back of the lawn? I know it’s too late for this summer season but hoping I could do some prep work in the fall to help for next year.

Any suggestions Greatly Appreciated!

Featured Answer

Tom

5 years ago

last modified: 5 years ago

There's still time for fall planting this coming fall. Spray 'Round up' this weekend- wait a week and mow short- remove clippings - keep the area moist to help germinate weed seed still in the soil. Spray Round up again the first week of Sept. and seed with a mix of perennial rye and kentucky blue on Sept. 15

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Comments (10)

Joe BigBlue
5 years ago
Do you have any pictures?
Rose M
5 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
nuke it all with glyphosate, till, and spray prodiamine, irrigate regularly and wait. Then reseed next year
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Can you post a couple pictures? The best time to photograph a lawn is when a cloud goes overhead. It would be good to see from far enough away to see the trees and then a close up of the dry spot in the middle. Did you have Marathon in Calabasas before? If not where? And what was your watering regimen (how often and for how long)? Can we assume you are watering this lawn the same way? When were the last two times you fertilized, or have you fertilized yet? Hopefully your close up picture will help someone here to identify your current grass type. Different grasses can be eradicated by different means. Sometimes it's as simple as stopping watering. I'm not sure you will ever be able to apply enough water for those trees. That is a lot of timber to keep moist. The tool which professional landscapers use to prep a garden is a box blade pulled behind a tractor. This is what it looks like in action. The ripper bars you see on the box blade (like a rake sitting above the soil in the blade) can be used to remove most small roots, but there is a limit. When you get ready to get rid of the trees, you might want to consider major stump removal, not grinding, and root removal throughout the rest of the yard. For those two jobs they might bring in a small bulldozer or other heavy equipment.
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Hi dchall, Thanks for the info, and especially the pointer to the FAQ Â I couldn't find it when I looked for it yesterday. However, maybe I didn't make myself clear. I'm actually already familiar with the points you've made, but... Right now, at least in some areas, there's barely any grass in my grass. Some areas are doing great, and are mostly grass Â not only that, but exactly the sort of grass that looks like someone planned it that way. There are some weeds, but if my whole lawn looked like that, I wouldn't be writing this message. Some other areas are OK, and have plenty of things that are definitely "grass," but a lot of different varieties, many of which don't look like they were intended. Yet other areas barely have any grass at all, and are pretty much entirely weeds. In these areas (a significant percentage of the lawn, I'm sad to say), there is no hope of the grass "shading out" the weeds, because there really isn't any grass to speak of. Unless I'm really seriously mistaken, watering deeply, fertilizing regularly, and mowing well isn't going to turn a patch of weeds into a patch of beautiful grass. What I need to know is how to make it so that we have mostly grass, not mostly weeds. I need to turn the percentages around before I can jump into what you might call "lawn care." We already mow just as you say (or actually, we do now that I've corrected my husband, who had, unbeknownst to me, set the mower level much lower than he should have). Truthfully, we don't water at all, and I sort of doubt that we will. The last couple of years, at least, have provided plenty of rain, and the lawn has never once been dry in the time I've lived in the house. We haven't fertilized, because right now, there are so many weeds that this seems like a poor choice. So, my question is: How do I get the grass-to-weeds ratio back in the right orientation? Should I rip it out and start fresh, or is there another way? Thanks!
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dchall_san_antonio
5 years ago
I would not nuke it with glyphosate, till or spray with prodiamine.

Where do you live? This is important. Most of the northern hemisphere the time to redo your lawn is yet to come. But if you live in the southern US, then it is getting late for certain approaches.

What kind of grass do you want? Will there be pets or children playing on it?

Is there a lot of shade on the lawn area? Pictures would help. To show how the shade affects the area, then take the pix on a sunny day. If you want to show us detail of weeds in the lawn, then take those pictures on a cloudy day.

I would not automatically jump into RoundUp/glyphosate. If there is grass there, depending on what the grass is, you might be able to spray a different herbicide and have a huge jump-start on the new lawn.

Lawn care is not that hard to do correctly, but it is easy to do it wrong and get a weedy lawn. Here are some tips.
- Always seed a northern lawn in the early fall, not the spring and definitely not the summer.
- Water deeply and infrequently. Deeply means 1 inch all at one time - not spread out over the week. Infrequently means once per week in the hottest heat of summer and once per month in the cool months. In between go to every 2 or 3 weeks depending on the temperature.
- Mulch mow at the mower's highest setting. Exceptions to this are for bermuda, centipede, and creeping bentgrass which can be mowed at the mower's lowest setting.
- Fertilize three times a year: Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving(ish).
- Apply a preemergent herbicide when the forsythia plants begin to bloom. Repeat at the next rainstorm.
- Spot spray broadleaf weeds in mid April. The weeds are thriving and the temperatures are always perfect.
User
5 years ago
Mow What Grows. Instead of having a SuperFund site. Artificial monocultures are an abomination.
danielj_2009
5 years ago
@dchall: The OP said he/she lives in CT.
Saypoint zone 6 CT
5 years ago
You can renovate a lawn without nuking it and starting from scratch. Maybe you just need to get rid of broadleaf weeds, aerate and overseed. Crabgrass will die over the winter and you can use a pre-emergent in the spring to prevent it coming back. How bad is it?
Ted (Zone 4) IA
5 years ago
"Artificial monocultures are an abomination."

LOL!! I bet you're really fun at parties.
dchall_san_antonio
5 years ago
Ted, did you look at her profile picture? Quite colorful.

Daniel, thanks. I have just gotten in the habit of asking.

So what I said was about care of northern, cool season, grasses.
Saypoint zone 6 CT
5 years ago
Scared the OP off? The rumor is that Sophie is of the “he” persuasion. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

lawn out of control!!

Tom

Comments (10)

Joe BigBlue

Rose M

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