Located in Northern Missouri. Definitely not a perfect lawn, but I’m pretty happy with the progress considering where it started. I wish I had better before pictures because this yard was rough. I started getting into lawn care a bit last spring, I found this page and your lawns made me jealous. Since then I have slowly been going deeper down the rabbit hole. I’ve mostly just been trying to do all the smaller things, aerating, fertilizing, overseeding, fixing thin spots, and just learning through trial and error. Made plenty of mistakes, but it’s finally getting to the point where I can step back and actually enjoy looking at it. Backyard finally looked good enough for some pictures, so figured I’d share. Always open to advice too because I’m still figuring a lot of this stuff out.
by Mizzourah11
7 Comments
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Hey u/Mizzourah11 Congratulations! This is a living example of the old saying “Having a lawn is a marathon, not a sprint.”
Time and experience (both good and bad, as you’ve told us) have rewarded you. I’m from St. Louis btw, and the drought we had here several years ago made for plenty of brown lawns down here.
**Well done, Gardener, well done.**
Nice work!!
Great progress man. If I could ask a question I bought last year and now tending to my lawn. Would you say full progress takes more than spring-fall? It takes a year or so?
Looks like you don’t have much help from your neighbor either. I used to fight that battle every year. It’s even harder to keep the crap from growing in your yard when they won’t do anything about it growing in theirs.
I wish I’d thought to do something similar with before and after picture. Great work
I took over lawn care at my mother’s place a few years ago (I live in the city so no yard of my own).
She had been cutting it on the lowest possible setting for probably 15 years (so it didn’t grow to fast…) it was in bad shape, exposed roots, giant mud/dirt patches most of the greenery was crabgrass or other weeds. You get the idea.
I told her I’d take care of it all she just had to promise me that she wouldn’t decide on a random weekday to buzzcut it before I could get over there on Saturday or Sunday.
First two years I just switched to cutting at the highest setting the give the grass a fighting chance, and over-seeding.
I’ve become an evangelist for cutting the grass at the highest setting your lawnmower has (for northern grasses, I know nothing about Bermuda and other warm weather grasses). It solves so many things, it will choke out weeds by not giving them a chance to grow, it also gives the grass reserves to survive minor droughts and the hottest summer days. The roots also grow stronger and it helps to stop soil erosion that lead to exposed roots all over your lawn.
Last year I added in regular fertilizing and weedkiller since I felt I now had a good base. Now, she may not have the best yard in the neighborhood, but it’s better than all her nearby neighbors.