This is a topic near and dear to my heart. Ask my wife and she will tell you I was obsessive over my lawn for the last two years... I can't disagree.
It all started with a new house. Typically a good thing right? Our first new house on a new cul-de-sac with 5 other new houses. We got the pick the colors and flooring and had some input in other things.
CONSTRUCTION TRAUMA
I came out to my front porch every morning and coached the little grasslings to grow up through the straw the contractors laid down. I looked through my bedroom window one morning and Woo Hoo, I could see green. Well the rest of that summer taught me that construction is hell on lawns and trees.
As I cleared away the straw, it revealed there were more bald spots than grass spots. And most of the bald spots had weeds already! The ground was terribly un-even and there were rocks everywhere! Big rocks, small rocks, medium rocks... lots of rocks!
Further investigation revealed that the construction crews took the fertile top layer of dirt for fill in other parts of the cul-de-sac. As we will discuss later, that top layer of dirt is very hard to replace and took decades to form. Now mine was probably under the black top of my neighbors' driveway.
We would learn later how much trees don't like the entire construction ruckus. They toughed it out for the first year and half like the tough five stories high pillars of rock you would expect. But then one by one, they made less leaves until it was obvious they were dead. We lost about ten trees. Of course every one of them directly around the house including the big majestic ones on the front lawn that defined the curb appeal of the house.
So here we are with a barren waste land of dead trees and a mange lawn filled with rocks and weeds.
THE MISTAKES
The first mistake I made was the classic, "try to do as little as possible until you realize its taking more time and money than if you just started from scratch in the first place".
Little by little
I brought in dump truck loads of dirt to try and level small sections. I bought little bags of lawn patch pellets for the bald spots. I bought tree spike nutrient things for the trees. I should have just hired a bulldozer to level the whole thing and then spread seed and straw.
So as I tried to patch and pick up rocks I started to do some research. My wife told me we had "clay soil". So I looked it up and found that Clay is like concrete. Its very dense, doesn't hold water, doesn't allow roots to breath or move.
Gypsum
The site said to add Gypsum. Little tiny pebbles that look like those volcanic rocks in your gas grill. The site said to put truck loads on your lawn with a spreader each year for about 3 years. The idea was they would work their way into the soil and create little pockets in the dense clay thus allowing the clay to breathe and hold moisture more like a sponge. Sounded great but most people I told what I was doing said it's a lie and the only thing you need is top soil (that stuff the contractors took away).
Earth Worms, Geese, and Sand
The opposite of clay soil is sand soil so I figured if I just added sand to my clay everything would be perfect. Nope... adding sand actually takes clay that may have some chance of being good soil some day and make it absolutely useless concrete.
I awoke one night with the perfect plan! Ill buy a couple wheel barrels full of earthworms! Their great right? They aerate the soil with little tunnels and they poop all over the place. That would surely make my soil good again and quick! Nope... further research told me that worms don't make the dirt good, good dirt makes the worms. Basically dropping worms on my lawn would be like putting them in the middle of a large empty parking lot.
That disappointment led me to think of geese. If I put a bunch of bread or whatever they eat on my lawn they would come and poop all over it. Nothing is better for grass than poop! My wife informed me that when geese do pick a spot to poop they come back to spot for ever. I wanted a little fertilizer, not a mine field for the rest of my life.
THE SAVIOR
My wife appreciates my obsessions because she knows they give me something to do. Hence keeping me out of trouble and out of her hair. But she doesn't like to see me in pain and losing is painful for me, especially when my opponent is dirt. So she bought me a book on lawns. Scotts Lawns Your Guide To A Beautiful Yard by Nick Christians.
Let me start by saying this is a great book and if you are obsessive like me, you should go buy it right away. With that said though... I was wary when I first opened the book as its very first piece of advice was to fertilize. Fertilize in the summer, fertilize in the fall, fertilize in the winter, fertilize in the spring, fertilize, fertilize, fertilize. Hmmm I thought, a book by Scotts lawn products telling me to fertilize. Great! Nobody actually cares about my lawn they just want me to buy gypsum and fertilizer and worms.
I was jumping to conclusions as you will see.
SOIL
The quality of your soil is the key if you haven't figured that out already. It's not the grass, or weeds, or watering. Good soil is the answer to 90% of your problems.
There are three main types of soil:
Clay soil - Clay is like concrete. Its very dense, doesn't hold water, doesn't allow roots to breath or move. Rain runs right over it eroding what ever blade of grass hasn't fought to grab hold yet. When it's hot and dry in the summer the clay soil dries out just like... well clay.
Sand soil - Sand is like mesh. It's very loose and airy. So loose and airy that it too does NOT hold water or nutrients. The water just runs right through it. It allows roots to breathe and move so much they can fall over. Rain can actually wash the soil away along with any grass that may have grown in it.
Loam - This is what you want! It even sounds good. Say it out loud... looooaam. This is the stuff that formed my top layer before it was scrapped away. This is the stuff that's under the leaves in the forest. That black soft dirt that been formed by decades of decaying leaves and plants. This soil takes the water from a rain storm and holds it like a sponge to slowly seep out over the dry days. This soil has nutrients and is firm enough to hold plants upright yet airy enough to let them breathe.
THE SECRETS
Okay so we determined that our soil is terrible. What now?
There are two fundamental issues with sand and clay soil. They don't have any nutrients and they don't hold things well (nutrients, roots, or water). So we simply need to build that layer of fertile soil back as quickly as possible and provide the soil with extra nutrients until that layer is built.
How? You guessed one of them. Fertilizer is the key to the nutrients. Organic material is the key to the fertile layer of soil.
GO NOW AND DO
Here is the step by step of what I eventually did to turn my lawn from a brown balding mess to the lush green envy of my neighbors. I have to give credit to the book (and my wife) for just about everything I am about to tell you.
Mulching Mower
This is absolutely imperative. Spend the most time and money on this one thing. I spent hours researching Consumer Reports to find the mower that mulches the best. It was a Toro push mower but may have changed since. You basically need to replace decades of missing organic material and the easiest material you have is grass clippings. A good mulcher will cut them up fine enough to decay much quicker.
Mow High and Often
Obviously the more grass you cut and mulch the quicker you will build up that layer. Cutting high encourages deep roots and healthy grass. It does NOT cause you to have to mow more often. Cutting grass short can actually do that.
Mulch The Leaves
Just like the grass clippings, chopped up leaves help to build that layer of organic material. I actually rake and blow leaves from the woods onto my lawn to mow over and chop up. If I could think of a way to have truck loads of leaves delivered to my lawn, I would. Think of leaves as free loam and fertilizer put together!
Soil Sample
Before you fertilize, you need to know what your soil is missing. Giving it a nutrient it already has too much of just sends you backwards.
Just about every community has a "Cooperative Extension" that does cheap soil samples. You fill a couple freezer bags with dirt from two different places in your lawn and bring them in with an application that says how big your lawn is, etc. If you don't have an Extension you can look on the web for soil samples.
What you get back is a map of what to give your soil. Soil needs three key ingredients, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium. The report should tell you exactly how much of each your soil needs. In addition it will tell you if your soil is too acidic or too alkali.
Fertilizer
Fertilizer is what provides the three key nutrients above. And if you lawn is like mine... the book was right, fertilize, fertilize, fertilize! But be sure to use the right mix!
All fertilizer has a ratio on the package that tells you how much Nitrogen,
Phosphorus and Potassium it has. For instance a ratio of 50-25-25 indicates that half the bag is Nitrogen, a quarter is Phosphorus and the remaining quarter is Potassium. Bring your calculator to the store though as the numbers are never easy as I just used in my example.
My soil sample said that for my size lawn I needed:
45 pounds of Nitrogen but I should only put 15 pounds down at a time.
0 Phosphorus as it already had too much.
42 pounds of Potassium but I should only put 30 pounds down at a time.
Armed with this information I went to the store to buy fertilizer with a ratio of 15-0-30 or as close to that as I could get to a bag that had no phosphorus and twice as much potassium as nitrogen.
You will have to do some math (hence the calculator) to figure out the pounds you are actually putting down. For instance a 40lb bag with a ratio of 22-0-11 means that half the bag is Nitrogen so approximately 20lbs. I needed 15lbs so close enough. One bag was good for my nitrogen but I needed twice as much potassium so I really need a bag with a ratio of 11-0-22. Like I said, bring the calculator and get as close as you can.
Lime
The forth important ingredient to a good lawn is proper PH level. Remember my soil report said I needed 42lbs of potassium. Well it also said my soil is VERY acidic and needed 3,150 lbs of lime! Yes you read it right 3,150 lbs of lime, 750lbs at a time. At 40lbs a bag, that's about 19 bags of lime each year for the next 4 years. It is what it is.
A huge word of advice on lime. Spend the extra money and get the pellets. I went cheap and bought 19 bags of powder. The powder got clogged in the spreader immediately so I ended up tossing it in the air out of my wheel barrel. It got on everything including my house, my car, my kid, and I still have the taste in my mouth today. It literally ate my wife's favorite gardening shovel that we used to scoop it out of the bags. Lime is the opposite of acid but does the same darn thing to metal believe it or not.
The pellets will work in the spreader, stay on the ground and not in the wind, and are usually time released to go into the soil instead of wash away.
CONCLUSION
The first year was wasted on my experiments. The second year I did all of the above and my lawn improved ten fold! I fertilized again this fall and expect my lawn to really shine this spring.
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