HomeGuy" > Scatter the gypsum and water the area. The gypsum helps break down
You may (or may not) be the world's greatest authority on lawns but there is no reason to be so rude regardless of your expertise. Try and learn from those who know more and teach those who know less without struting your ego so much.
David
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - A better world requires a daily struggle against those who would mislead us.
You -- David Ross -> you'll read my posts when and if I want you to.
Bob F wrote:
Yes, that's what I'm thinking.
Stupid move, Tony. You're deluding yourself.
In areas that get sub-freezing in winter (like most of Canada) the many cycles of frost heaving (freeze-thaw) in winter does a great job of breaking up residential soil.
Think about it.
Just look what it does to our roads, and imagine what is going on in the soil.
What a buffoon. You especially have to love how he cites as a reference a guy that gives advice close to what many others here, including I said. Which is that aerating followed by gypsum will help. Yet the ignoramus somehow turns that completely around and bleets out "Your lawn will look like swiss cheese! You might as well rototill it all up"
Just some of the highly credible experts who also say HomeLessGuy once again doesn't know what he's talking about:
HomeLEssGuy, I hear HD has Ready-to-USe Roundup, which you told us you like to buy at $20 a gallon, because it's a good deal, waiting for you. Yes indeed, lawn advice from a guy who buys RTU roundup. That speaks volumes about knowledge, experience and good judgement.
trader_4 full-quoted:
Is english your second language?
Do you have a read> ==============
He says "I think". He thinks gypsum can help. His entire slant is that it's a crap shoot to use gypsum that way to improve an existing lawn.
He also said this:
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Which is what I also said and for which NOBODY ELSE has said.
I dare you to explain how your lawn wouldn't look like swiss cheese after this:
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Yes - it was a good deal, because I've already told you that retail availability of concentrated Roundup is not available to me - but you've got a short attention span and probably dementia as well.
Also - the 5-liter hand-pump sprayer the Roundup came in now functions very well as the applicator for the concentrated mix of Ortho Weed B Gon that I now use.
How many times are you going to keep beating that horse to death?
Do you know how stupid you look harping on that silly point, a point you
*think* you hold the logical high-ground on?
Plugs are NOT removed, they are extracted and returned to the lawn. Plug aeration is a mild form of tilling that doesn't disturb the turf, an excellent practice for ALL established lawns. I do not recommend aeration for non-lawns, then rototilling with added amendments is highly recommended. Aerating poor soil will not improve it, may even make poor soil worse by accelerating erosion.
Poor analogy.
Frost heaving may break up pavement but does nothing to improve compacted soil, in fact when it finally dries it will be more compacted. In spring as soon as soil is friable is the best time to till/aerate before soil dries. Garden soil is not pavement.
Usenet Rule No. 106: Those who publicly announce killfiling do not. Best to simply ignore the douchebags without comment.
No but clearly you do, because the guy didn't say that aeration followed by gypsum would not help. Idiot.
Obviously you've never done core aeration, so how would you even know? And it's supposed to look a bit like swiss cheese, that's precisely the point, idiot. Is your web browser broken:
I'd suggest it's you who's the idiot, otherwise you'd have figured out you can also buy Roundup online from many sources and it would cost you 20 or 50 times less. But hey, continue to buy it at prices equal to paint, because you *are* the village idiot.
Yeah, I'm sure it's a real gem. OF course for the same or less, you could have bought a 2 gallon tank sprayer that's a hell of a lot better and filled it up for 50 cents.
As many times as I feel like seeing the monkey dance.
Completely absurd.
A simple search of the effects of freeze-thaw cycles on soil quickly gave me this:
================== Secondary Frost Heave in Freezing Soils by Christopher Noon A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Oxford
1996Frost heave is responsible for numerous environmental problems including damage to roads, pavements and the foundations of buildings. Other less obvious problems are caused by the weakening of ground when a frozen soil, especially one which has heaved, thaws. This occurs because frost heave and freezing of soil in general, induces a moisture flow up towards the freezing front thereby increasing its frozen water content and dramatically decreasing the frozen soil?s permeability due to a decrease in water fraction and the presence of ice lenses. Thawing occurs naturally from the soil surface downwards and hence the thawed soil can become saturated causing it to suffer a complete loss of strength.
Anyone who lives in (at least) the northern 1/3 of the US and all of Canada knows that when walking on your lawn in April (or in May in Canada) when the last of the snow has melted from your front or back lawns knows how spongy the ground feels.
It is a complete crock of shit to think that aerating your lawn does anything to "break up" or "loosen" your soil under those conditions.
And take a look at this:
====================== Myth #2: You Need to Aerate Your Lawn Every Year
Aerating is hard work that requires expensive machinery. Fortunately, you may not have to do it. Aeration is helpful when your lawn has a lot of foot traffic that compacts the soil. Also, if you have a lot of thatch, or if you need to amend the soil, you may want to aerate. If not, save yourself some time and money, not to mention an aching back.
Myth #3: Gypsum Aerates Your Lawn
Somebody made a lot of money with this one. If you spread gypsum on your lawn, you'll end up with some very nice pebbles, but not an aerated lawn. =======================
Thatch removal or management is frequently mentioned as a byproduct of core aeration. What is never mentioned is that if you always bag and remove your grass clippings, you'll never have a thatch problem (and all associated problems that come from harboring various turf insects and diseases).
And to some degree the raking of the plugs that happens by people who take more of an interest in lawn care and succumb to the placebo effect of thinking their lawns looks better after coring are really just seeing the effect of thatch removal which can make an early spring lawn look much better.
He also said (and which you, like the intellectual coward that you are, did not quote):
Do you not understand that when someone says "I think" that they're just parroting the so-called typical practice and they themselves have not seen it work first-hand?
I've seen how the scammers do it, and it's nothing even close to what the so-called expert described.
It's not how most people *think* they need to do it to have the desired effect.
Shipping alone would cost me $20 for a 1 or 2 lb package, and I'm not even sure that there are online retailers who will ship Roundup within (or to) Canada.
What kind of jack ass are you exactly that keeps thinking I need a barrel full of Roundup?
20 times less than $20 is what - $1 ?So with all costs factored in, you keep foolishly asserting that I could have bought all the roundup that *I need* for a grand total of One Dollar? (and no - my neighbors have no need for the stuff).
The only jack ass around here is you - and you prove it with every post.
Obviously like many of your countrymen you're so dirt poor that you take every opportunity to froth at the mouth at how you can save a buck.
Some of us can afford the conveinence of pre-mixed chemicals like Roundup. So get over it.
Do you not understand that if you believe some "expert" is just parroting something and don't have first-hand experience, that you shouldn't be using them as a reference? Good grief.
Obviously what scammers do has nothing to do with doing the job correctly. Following your logic, because you see scammers doing a crap job painting a house, that;s an indictment against painting your house. Go figure.
I have no way of knowing what "most" people think about aeration. Neither do you, nor does it matter.
How can that be in that utopia of a country, Canada? And even if it's true, if you do the math, you'd still be getting it at 20 to 40 times less cost than buying ready-to-use Roundup.
Correct, I can see you can do math.
No, I just said you have to be an idiot to buy ready-to-use. It's orders of magnitude worse than buying ready-to-use antifreeze.
So, you do buy ready-to-use antifreeze too! It's not that you can afford it, it's that you're the village idiot! Great idea. Take tips on core aeration from a guy that buys ready-to-use Roundup. Good grief.
So you admit to being a morphing peice of shit troll. Got it, glad that you finally can admit for all to see POS
Are you sure? You're the one that keeps responding to an admitted peice of shit troll expecting a differnt result. There is a word for that
You conveniently deleted where I said when it DRIES... you are a douchebag, an imbecile, and very dishonest.
Grass roots don't really grow much below 2" anyways. Just look at rolls of sod. They certainly don't come 2" thick (with soil).
Lawns need almost daily watering when the daily high temp reaches 80 unless except on overcast days - then maybe you can go 4 days without water.
Forget aerating. Have a yard of black earth / top-soil delivered and rake it evenly all over, and throw in some grass seed while you're at it. THAT is by far the most accepted way to deal with poor sub-soil conditions without completely replacing the top 4" of soil.
And then you need to water.
But you haven't said anything about your ability to irrigate this patch of grass. What municipal water restrictions are you under currently - now and for the next few months?
I can't connect to that link for some reason - probably super slow Verizon....
Anyway, I'm thinking about putting something together that will take 1/2 x 4-inch plugs up. I don't know if this is what you mean -- the one plug pushes out the previous plug. I'm only looking for the kind that removes plugs - not spikes.
On 7/20/2014 4:41 PM, Guv Bob wrote [in part]:
While it used to be quite common to plant ice plant on a slope, the recommendation today is very much against that. During a rain, ice plant takes up much water and becomes quite heavy. The roots tend to be shallow and not very extensive. The result is that the ice plant will often pull loose, slide down the hill, and take part of the hill with it.
I am very sensitive about proper planting of slopes since the hill in my back yard has slipped twice. The second time, the repair cost almost four times what I paid for my house; my grandchildren will make the last payment on the federal disaster loan. No, there is no such thing as insurance against a slope failing; and the repairs are never guaranteed.
Grape vines are very good on a hill; they have very tough, deep roots and generally do not care how poor is the soil. Alone, African daisies or ivy (English or Algerian) are not good because their roots tend to form a mat that can become a weak layer; African daisies and ivy mixed together, however, are excellent on a hill because those mats are at different depths and tend to be less concentrated.
According to the grading experts in my county's public works agency, trees on a hill can be bad. In a wind, they rock back and forth, breaking up the soil around the bases of the trunks. With a major rain storm, that becomes a path for a large amount of water to funnel down to the subsoil. Depending on their alignment, this can lubricate the boundary between soil and subsoil and trigger a slide. On the other hand, shrubs are okay.
Below 1-2 inches, it's hard-packed clay in this particular spot. This was just an idea. Water won't penetrate it. Trying to avoid roto-tilling. It's level and rolling a 200 pound barrel on a rock-hard surface like this is pretty easy. I have rolled a 55 gal drum of liquid on the same place -- that's where I got the idea.
This is a small area - about 10 x 30 ft. Would be nice to have grass there, but being dirt is OK, and not worth renting anything. A few years ago I had to put ground cover on a bare compacted clay hill. I ended up getting a 5/8-inch masonry bit and drilling 4-inch holes about
6-8 inches apart, dropping red apple ice plant pieces in and filling with good soil. Nearly all survived and within a year the hill was covered.
Thanks, HG. Only restrictions so far are what I do anyway - no watering between 9am-5pm or hose down sideways, etc. Unfortunately, the talk is that the cut back will be 20% less than we used 12 months previous. So folks like us who are very conservative with water will likely end up paying penalties. Meanwhile the swimming pool crowd down the street will only have to stop pumping so much overflow into the gutter.
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