Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Lime and Death

I added 10 lbs per thousand square feet of lime--mostly for calcium and magnesium . There's no visible change and won't be, really, as I already know both are within reasonable range. I just want to make sure they don't drop out of that. Photos soon!

The "landscapers" (believe me, I use the term loosely. Hence the scare quotes) had "worked" on the back line and "seeded" in new grass. If you consider annual rye new grass, which I don't. I just hit that with Round-Up last week, preparatory to thinking about planting next week when I'm on vacation. The area is 100 feet long by about ten wide, so I can easily cover that with two strip sprays I have left over, plus a few small garden sprinklers.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Watering Reconfiguration

I'll post this separately as it's a very different topic. I spent some time reconfiguring my north face's watering and I'm thrilled with the results.

Prior to this, I was using Hunter PGJ sprinklers. Don't get me wrong, they worked and fairly well. However, the pressure on that face is a bit low, so I replaced them with MP Rotators (three 3000 and two 2000). Those function well at lower pressures and have improved the watering immeasurably. They're even close enough on the precipitation rates that I have no qualms about mixing them with the Hunter PGP.

They even used slightly less water, bringing the pressure up a bit!

I also added an EZ Flo hose-end system to the drip system in the back garden. That's working beautifully as well, and I no longer have to feed by hand. Next year I may add one to the front as well.

It's rare, but here are two products I can recommend: the EZ Flo fertilization system, and the MP Rotator 2000 and 3000. One mention is that it's best to use either a liquid fertilizer or a solid that dissolves well (Miracle Gro works fine) in the EZ Flo. My Maxicrop seaweed solid fertilizer clogged it a bit and I had to do a bit of cleaning. At least that's very easy to do.

More Milorganite

Today was July's second feeding with 2 bags of Milorganite (a grand total of around 0.5 pounds of nitrogen again, so 1 pound total for July). Note to most people reading this: don't feed that heavily. I'm bringing in a first year bluegrass lawn and it's very hungry. For most of you, half that would be fine on any northern lawn. Southerners with Bermuda need to ignore me and feed very heavily during summer.

After this, it's back to soybean meal until October when it's getting too cold for that.

Saturday, July 5, 2008

More Images

It hasn't been quite a month since the image update, but the grass has changed since then. The Nature's Magic is definitely influencing the color (and I only put it down a week ago), plus the rain we're getting is helping a lot. I dodged out during one of our rare sunny periods this morning and took the following photos.

For reference, here are the dead areas of Poa annua on May 7th:













And here's the same area today (I'm standing perhaps 2 feet in front of where I was...sorry!)














Here's the side yard, with a bit of sunburn:



And here's the back gardens (the color of the grass is not that dark--it oversaturated a bit):

Organic Interdependence Day

Yes, I did just make that up. Deal. :-)

As of yesterday, I dropped 72 pounds of Milorganite (about 10 lbs per thousand square feet) on the lawn. I'd already done the gardens at 18 per thousand the week before.

At the same time last week, I sprayed the lawn and gardens with Nature's Magic. It's composed of about half humic acid, half kelp extract. I think it improved the color a bit, and it does seem to be helping the soil to retain even more water.

It wouldn't be something I'd recommend to people with an established lawn, but mine is first year and still feeding very heavily. The color is still improving slowly, and I couldn't be happier with the density. I'll take photos once it stops pouring...which may be this week. Maybe.