Spring Lawn care

It always amazes me how much lawn debris accumulates over the winter. We left on our winter trip to warmer places on January 2 and the lawn was in good shape. Returned home March 20 to find a grown up yard full of twigs and small branches. In total, it all filled up one of those huge cans on wheels. Any way, I got it done. Then, I fertilized with a 20-3-4 fertilizer

on 04-14-09 using two 5k sq ft bags. Here we are a couple of weeks later and the lawn is almost lush. I need to work a bit on weed killing and prevention but all in all things look pretty good.

The Dogwoods are beautiful this year.

This the D part of SOD

The final lawn clean up of the year was completed today and and the final maintenance of the fall was also completed. The fertilizer wasn't what I would like to have used but it's all that was available. There's something to be learned here. In the future, buy supplies earlier in the fall.


I used two 5000 sq ft bags with the spreader set on 4.

Mid December

Here we are, it's the middle of December, most of the leaves have fallen and I've cleaned up the yard. The problem is that we have neighbors who don't maintain their property. The result is that when the wind blows, the leaves move from the neighbors yards to my yard. So, since when is life fair?

My solution: automation. With the new mower and the Cyclone rake I manage to turn an almost impossible job into one that's doable.


The cyclone rake is a marvel. Not only does it vacuum the lawn it grinds the leaves reducing the volume by about 80%. My amortized cost is now down to aboout $150 per year. I can accompolish in one hour what would otherwise take at least 8 hours. In a nutshell, if you have leaves but don't have a Cyclone Rake, you need one.

We're comming down to the finish line for this year. There may be one more cleanup to get rid of the neighbors leaves and of course there's still one more fertilization doe the D part of sod.

S O D....... This is the O entry

Remember what the new area of the lawn looked like in early September? If not look at the photo's below. The new grass is filling in pretty well following two seedings and of course water and fertilizer. I applied lime a couple of days ago to the area that was previously "au natural" among the trees and this morning I applied the October fall feeding which also includes weed control.
My hope is that the weed control part of the equation will do it's job and the fertilizer will help the grass to establish a good root system for the hot weather that's sure to come next summer.

I've also been working on the lawn at the end of our driveway. Relocated a sprinkler head, repaired the hose connection to the irrigation meter, planted some landscaping bushes and mulched. I think the end result is a good improvement.

There are still some bare spots in yard so if a little seed is good, some more must be better. I planted most of this bag today using the trusty Scotts speedee green spreader. Some of it I planted by hand in the bare spots.



The sum of this planting and the last is probably the most seed I've ever planted in a single season. I'll add some photo's after it germinates.

Fall Grass Seed and Fertilizer

Today was a busy day of hard work. Mowed the lawn real short, lightly tilled bare spots and a few areas that had weeds, sewed grass seed and put down fertilizer. Here are photo's of packaging:

Speedy Green setting were 6.5 for the seed and 3.5 for the fertilizer. Using these settings, this size bag just barely covers the lawn.

Yard expansion

I decided that the yard would be simpler to care for if I expanded the grass area behind the house so that I can mow all the way around the back yard. Presently, the back yard is divided by a deck which effectively divide the lawn into two sections. I also decided that gardening is a lost cause in this area because of the deer so I removed the landscape timbers that surrounded my small vegetable gardens, removed some of the dirt, leveled out the remainder, and then seeded. It'll be interesting to see how the grass seed germinates. I hoe it does so I won't have another battle to fight trying to get the lawn in shape. I've inserted a couple of B4 pictures.

I'll add some afters in a few weeks. Wonder if all this dirt will be green by then? Note that concrete in the corner of the first picture. It's the beginning of a foundation for the garden shed that I haven't built yet. More on that later when some progress is made.