I recently bought a house in Central Missouri. My lawn was horrible. There were humps, holes, bare spots, etc. I've been using Ortho Weed B Gone, to get rid of all the leafy stuff. I've pretty much got the weeds under control, now I'm working on the moles.
My question is this: I have what seems to me as several kinds of grass in my yard. What I DON'T know about grass could fill a thick book. How many kinds of grass are there? What do I have to do to get an even looking yard? I want it all the same shade of green and nice a thick. I wanna walk barefoot and feel like it's carpet. I can't imagine I need to till everything up and replant grass. Or do I? Do I need to fertilize or what?
How many types of trees are there? Same answer basically
If you want a golf course lawn you need to start with the soil underneith. Its a sandy soil under most greens I believe with a specific type of grass seed mowed with a power REEL mower worth more than most small cars. Want a decent lawn that looks great and feels good without spending a load of money? My suggestion is this: Top dress the lawn, over seed the lawn, roll the lawn multiple times, fertilize the lawn (use a local company who is recomended by somone NOT a national chain, and not a guy outta the paper). This will create a great looking yard. Also buy good grass seed, weed free.
How big is the yard? If it is small, you might consider sodding with Bermuda, which will give you the lawn you desire (assuming you have enough direct sunlight).
If it is large, there are several attractive bermudas that can be seeded, but they are not a fine leafed as the sodded varieties.
In either case, you'll need to kill off all of the existing grass to ever bring the yard to golf course-like perfection with only one species of grass.
A friend of mine, in Mid-Tenn, used to work for a Golf Course, and bought the mower he used on the course, a Dixon zero turn, but what he did to get a really good looking "barefoot type" lawn, was to wait about August or Sept, sprayed the whole lawn with Round-Up and killed every grass, weed and bug I guess, about mid Sept, the neighborhood assoc. president drove by his house and saw the only brown yard in the whole subdivision and about run off into the ditch, but early, the next Spring, he re-seeded and sprayed pre-emergent and watered and fertilized some now, not a lot, and by May, he has the lawn to lay on, it's thick and soft and green as John Deere paint.
He did send a soil sample to Tenn. tech and they sent him the grass(es) that he could grow without any problems, I think he had a mix of about
5 different grasses, some for shade and some for path, but it really looks good.
I gotta say, it may sound like the hard work is too much, but we did do the whole lawn thing. It's 70 x 60 now. Gave the dogs 20 ft.
It is so well worth the extra trouble, and we don't have any weeds in there, now. I don't need a weed spray as the grass is so thick hardly any get in there, and I can go hand pick the 9-10 weeds that may start up in one week period. As long as I get them young, and get the roots, I have a weed free yard with VERY minimum of work *now*.
When we bought the house, the yard was a mess from all the trucks in and out, plus it had nothing but a few weeds coming up here and there. It was September and the inside was our priority. So we waited til spring, then hit
*everything* with Round-Up, this was after devoting a quarter of the yard to a long, chain link dog run, (70 X 20 ft. !!), filled with sand. (Came in handy as we had the guy leave us a load of sand.)
Had someone come over this spring, tilling the whole yard, and spreading that extra sand, and the many dead leaves, into our clay soil, here in SE Kansas. Then we seeded and rolled it.)
I went out and got a fescue mix, (can't remember the other ones in it) but it was for shade and sun, as it gets pretty shady out there this year. We're going to be trimming the trees in the fall or spring. But right now, (and even though we had a dump truck come in and almost trample huge areas of grass, re-sanding the dog run, thanks to trader4! ) we now have a golf course lawn. I absolutely LOVE taking my shoes off and walking around in it. I put down a LOT of seed, more then they recommended, so I had to water more for the first few months, but it is gorgeous now. (Slight track marks are just now fading away.)
This lawn is thicker than any carpet I've ever had! And to lie down on it? Feels wonderful, as long as I remember to treat it to anti-chigger pesticide.
That's the great part of having the dog run. They ruined our other backyard lawns, and even though I picked up after them and watered after them, they still wore it down. AND even though I hate to use chemicals, I refuse to live here, with *this* lawn, and not get rid of the chiggers! We can do that now, and not harm the dogs.
What kind of idiot kills a lawn in August and waits till Spring to reseed? Sept would have been the perfect time to seed, plus you dead lawn wouldn't have looked like hell for 6 months.
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