April Update

I haven't posted in a bit but here's the most current photos of the lawn.

Front Lawn 04.23.2018

Back Lawn 04.23.2018

We've had quite a bit of rain over the past couple days, 1.63 inches, to be exact. It wasn't quite dry today but I just couldn't stand it anymore and had to give it a cut, though I didn't edge or use the weed eater. My back lawn is very thick and isn't getting a lot of weed competition, so I'm pretty happy with it. I do have some Poa Annua and dandelions, but nothing too severe. The Poa is really difficult to kill and will die out in a month anyhow, so I'm not really worried about it. The best way to keep it from appearing is to apply pre-emergent in the fall so that it will not germinate and grow over winter. Dandelions are easily killed with a broadleaf weed killer, such as 2-4D or a Weed-B-Gone spray you can get at any hardware store for very cheap. I've not really bothered with the back yard because of my dogs. You have to keep them off the grass until the spray has dried up and I really hate cooping them up in the house when it's so nice outside. If the weeds start to get bad, I may change my mind, but the lawn is so thick that it hasn't been that big of an issue.

On to the front lawn. It is very disappointing, to be frank. I had to kill and overseed about a third of the yard because Bermuda and grassy weeds had invaded from the neighbor's lawn. They have a concrete driveway and about a 5 foot section that is shared with my lawn on the south side of my front yard. It looked like a salad bar last year so I got their permission to kill it and reseed. This prevented me from doing the winter pre-emergent and now it has a ton of Poa growing in the middle of the tall fescue and bluegrass I seeded with. I'll go over that process in a future post but the lawn is quite a bit thinner than my back lawn and the Poa is a much lighter color, which makes it look worse. To add to the problems, there was some herbicide drift that affected my garden area and a couple of my hedges, which is causing them to look wilted. It's possible it was me applying the Tenacity herbicide a few weeks ago, but I doubt that is the case.  I do try to be careful about spraying in the wind and avoiding drift into my shrubs and flowers. I've never had this problem before.

I believe it may have been my neighbor's lawn care company. I've noticed that they are not doing a great job with their lawn. For one, they have been cutting the cool season grasses too short.  For Bermuda grasses, it is fine to cut short. It actually helps it to spread faster. It's actually the opposite with cool season grasses, such as tall fescue, rye, or bluegrass.  The general rule is to keep them between 3 and 4 inches and never to cut more than a third of the blade off at a time. The more leaf blade present will allow the grass to devote energy to the roots and help it grow them deeper and stronger.  Another thing they are doing incorrect is mowing the fescue with a dull blade. Cutting grass with a dull blade will tear it and make it look brown on the tips. Spread across an entire lawn will make it look like it's not getting enough water or even like there's a fungus present. Since they've got these basics wrong, I'm not surprised they cannot apply herbicide correctly. Unfortunately, I have no proof of it and I just hope they have finished applying for the season.