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.

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.

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.

I Am Duly Admonished

Mr. Parafly noted that I haven't posted photos in forever. As you wish. They're always available on my Flickr page, but I'll post the ones I took today here...plus one from May.

May's shot shows the holes where I killed out the Poa annua, leaving ginormous holes...













Here's the shot from today, showing the closing holes:













The color looks a little odd because I took this photo in the morning. It always increases the yellow tone in the green.

This is the semi-standard front yard shot:














And here's the back gardens:

The Thuja Are In

All four Emerald Thuja have been planted (they're all of a foot tall!) The tulip tree is also here, and that went in at the same time. I'm still waiting for the lilac, but they're supposed to be off backorder shortly.

Of course, the temperature just reached 90° F. Fortunately, these are so small and have such large root masses that keeping them damp is easy.

The builder decided to regrade the swale behind the house late last week. Right now, 11' x 110' of the property is torn up. Since they also removed Myrtle's wire, they'll be replacing that. I trust it's in the correct place (I called them, so it should be). Otherwise I fully intend to complain to the township.

I'll reseed that in fall once the weather breaks. It's right at the back line of the house, so although it looks awful at least it isn't in the middle of anything important.

They decided to seed the front easement as well in the small holes where the lawn is filling in. I think they used contractor seed (I can see rye in it), so I'll make sure that fails. Fortunately, during the summer that's extremely easy.

I fed the lawn this weekend with 40 lbs of soybean meal (the bag is fifty, but I had the setting a bit low. It was so hot I didn't want to go over it a second time). That works out to about 0.4 lbs N, 0.06 P, 0.11 K, and around 5 lbs of organics per thousand square feet.

Myrtle's Home!

The Robomower 850 (named Myrtle) got here on Friday and it wasn't that expensive to repair. She's now done all three zones twice.

It's been a while since I blogged, but I've been busy. Six bags of Milorganite went down in May, plus setting up all the gardens (around 800 annuals), and keeping everything weeded.

I finally decided to close out the back line a little better, so I ordered 4 Emerald Thuja for there. That should compliment the 2 butterfly bushes and 3 lilacs very nicely, and they don't invade too badly.

The crepe myrtle (named Suzette...the name Myrtle already being taken by the mower) isn't doing well. That went into a pot, and I ordered a tulip cedar (actually, that's a magnolia) for that spot. Since they're native to Pennsylvania, that should do fine.

Robomower 850 Update

Well, at least Probotics in Glenside, PA is really interested in helping their customers. They offer a shipping box to keep the ship-size from going over into the oversized rates, and gave me a very reasonable quote on the broken item. It's beyond my ability to repair, so they'll be the ones to fix it.

If their service is this good, when I upgrade (probably to a Lawnbott Evolution eventually) it'll be their sale.

Robomower 850 Issues

I have a three year old Robomower 850 (one of those robotic lawnmowers) that has just stripped its gears. I did manage to replace that, but of course now the system won't power up.

Three years for something to break is not a good average. I'm now mowing the lawn with a reel mower.

An Unusual Frost

I've been spending plenty of time putting in my annuals for the last few days. Right now, I have most of 5 gardens done out of 9 total, with two of the heavy-hitters done already. There are still two larger gardens to go, but at least the other two are considerably smaller.

Naturally, we went under a frost warning last night and this. I picked up a neat trick some years ago, although I don't remember where. Something's telling me that it was from Watch Your Garden Grow on NBC in the morning, but I could be wrong.

Regardless. I set my watering system to water for 3 minutes at 2 AM, 4 AM, and 6 AM. The water is fifty degrees, which is more than enough to warm the leaves, and water takes a long time to lose heat. As it freezes, it releases even more heat, limiting the damage to the plants.

If you don't have a watering system, water heavily before the sun goes down. That will carry some of the heat up top down below, plus inject enough water to get you through until morning. Of course, if temperatures dip well below freezing, nothing will work. For very delicate plants, it may not work, and in windy conditions it dries off fast and may cause more issues than it solves.

If you're reading this on a frosty night and the sun's already down, water anyway. It'll still help.

Poa Annua and Feeding

When it rains, it pours. The triv died out, but I got a massive incursion of annua from last fall's reseeding. I had to wipe that out with Round Up, so I now have tons of little dead areas in the lawn. Fortunately, May is spreading month for Kentucky Bluegrass, so they should fill in fairly well.

The lawn, where it isn't in a dead spot, is a beautiful dark green. I'm hesitant to photograph it because the dead spots make it look terrible. Well, maybe this weekend I will.

I just applied 150 pounds of soybean meal, or just over 20 per thousand square feet. That's about 1.5 pounds of nitrogen per thousand, 0.2 of phosphorus, and 0.4 of potassium.

The gardens are coming back nicely and I put the cannas in last weekend. It's a little early, but the coldest weather we have on the docket for the next two weeks is 40 degrees.

Soybean Meal

Today was the first application of soybean meal, but just a little snack for the lawn. I put down 50 lbs, or about 7 lbs per thousand square feet. It's supposed to rain this weekend, so I jumped the gun a little bit.

The remainder won't go down for 2 weeks so it's available during May.

Poa Trivialis and Confessions of an Organicist

I have a moderate incursion of Poa trivialis (okay, it could be P. annua but I'm not inclined to do a precise ID...it's one or the other). And I just broke down and spot-sprayed all of it with Certainty herbicide.

So much for 100% organic this year. However, if I let that go it'll beat up on my new grass. That's not acceptable.

No, I'm not taking photos. The lime green incursion into the darkening lawn is awful.

Milorganite

The grass is starting to come back, but it hasn't grown through the dead layer yet in most places. At least the patches where it has are growing larger. Given the on again, off again weather, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

This month's fertilization is 140 pounds of Milorganite (the other 20 went into the gardens), so about 20 lbs per thousand square feet of grass. I'm calling it 1.2 lbs of organic nitrogen, 0.4 lbs phosphorous, and no potassium. There's an additional 0.8 lbs of iron in there as well.