I bought this house in Minneapolis late last summer and the lawn was in pretty bad shape. I did not have enough time to do any of this last fall, so I attempted some fixes in the spring. The back yard was at least 50% creeping charlie. I killed that using a couple different products, rented a power rake from Home Depot, and tore up the dead material. I seeded Scott's Sun & Shade before I knew much about lawncare. Overall, the backyard came in pretty well and I was mostly happy with it.

The front yard had some creeping charlie and some wild violet that I also killed with the same products and used the same power rake and seed. It filled in those patches pretty well, but through the summer, I quickly noticed that a lot of my front lawn was some type of grassy weed I could never quite identify. I am pretty confident it can't be killed by a selective herbicide, and I hated how it looked. It was lighter in color than my turf grass and grew a lot faster.

After spending a lot of time this summer learning, I planned a full renovation for the front yard and a partial renovation for the back yard for the fall.

Front Yard

  1. Killed the entire thing with glyphosate.
  2. Raked up as much of the dead material as I could using a garden rake and a Groundskeeper II.
  3. Core aerated by hand using a Landzie manual fork aerator.
  4. Spread about 2.5 cubic yards of top soil using a garden rake and Landzie lawn leveler to level the yard. It had a ton of uneven spots that are so much better now.
  5. Spread Twin City Seed Blue Resilience that I had pre-germinated / primed for 4 days prior to get a bit of a head start then mixed with Sustane 4-6-4 starter fertilizer.
  6. Covered with about 1/8"-1/4" of screened compost using a Landzie compost spreader.

Back Yard

  1. Treated with Tenacity about a month ago.
  2. Dethatched with my Groundskeeper II. I was actually really surprised by how much dead material I raked up with this!
  3. Core aerated by hand.
  4. Scalped the lawn to just over 1" tall.
  5. Spread about 0.5 cubic yards of top soil. It had a trench going from my house to my garage where they had buried the power line to my garage and a ton of divots and low spots.
  6. Spread the same TCS seed.
  7. Covered with the same 1/8"-1/4" of screened compost.

I have a sprinkler set up for each yard and a wifi timer running 6 times a day to keep it moist until I see full germination. I put so much work into this, so I really hope it grows nicely. The yards will look so much better after this finally fills out, and I'm very excited to see the end product!

A couple questions for people:

  1. Should I put some Sustane 18-1-8 +Fe fertilizer down in a month or so when the new grass is growing well, or wait until the spring to fertilize again?
  2. Any guesses as to when I should start seeing germination? TCS says it germinates in 7-10 days under optimum conditions. So does that mean 3-6 days since I pre-germinated for 4? Also from my understanding, 10 days is pretty fast for a kentucky bluegrass. Is this just a quick to germinate cultivar or is that timeline just for the tall fescue?
  3. Do you think I should look to overseed patchy areas in the spring, or should I focus on fertilizing and pre-emergents to keep weeds down and give the bluegrass the summer to fill in?
  4. Any other tips to give me the best chance at success?

Note: I swear this isn't a Landzie ad, but when I did my research on each of those products, their version kept coming up as some of the best quality and they had some solid sales during Prime Days this summer.

by jimbo831

2 Comments

  1. Trojan20-0-0

    Looks like it will grow in fantastic. Good work! Don’t sweat the “patches.” The will come in. Mine did.

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