Moved into this house about a month ago, and here's how the yard looked at first compared to how it looks now. With winter almost over, I want to start working on it and hope to have it looking green by summer (not sure if this is possible, this is my first time in a house). I reached out to a few landscapers, and they all suggested removing everything and installing new sod, which would cost around $2-3k. Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
- Pictures 1-3: Before
- Picture 4: Now
- Pictures 5-6: Can anyone identify the type of grass?
by rd2rito
1 Comment
You marked the post as northern US, so I’m going to take you at your word for that.
3 big hurdles:
– the grass in the close up pics appears to be poa annua. Very, very healthy poa annua. That’s easily the biggest and most mature poa annua I’ve ever seen. Poa annua spreads via aggressive seed production and in some cases, rhizomes as well. It is a cool season grass that’s closely related to desirable cool season grasses so it is difficult to selectively control.
– looks like there’s rocks and woodchips in the lawn. The rocks simply need to not be in the lawn. Woodchips will decompose with time, particularly with regular fertilization, but they should still be thinned out.
– planting large amounts of cool season grasses is rarely successful in the spring. A couple spots here and there works fine, but big areas… Especially in a lawn that has likely had major weed infestations in recent years, is almost guaranteed to be a disaster.
So, my recommendation is clean the lawn up this year.
– apply prodiamine to the lawn when soil temps are in the 45-50F range.
– Attack the poa annua with a propane weed torch. That’ll kill the poa annua and if you blast the soil hard enough, you’ll kill the seeds too.
– gently fertilize the lawn every 6-8 weeks, even though there’s significant bare spots. This will actually increase the number of weed seeds that germinate… But if you kill those weeds, that’ll mean less weeds in the future after you plant new grass.
– use selective herbicides to kill broadleafs and crabgrass. Keep the lawn weed free through the summer.
– do what you can to remove the rocks and woodchips.
– might as well get a soil test from your state University extension.
– follow my overseeding guide to seed in the late summer/early fall.