"Tom Newton" wrote in message
...
Hi Folks -

I live on long island, Ny ... and the temps are just about ready to start
dropping below 80 consistently... I have nearly a 1/3 acre of lawn, and
have
a sprinkler system

As a first year homeowner I'm relatively new to this game. Here's my
problem: I have clover, lots of clover, and I'd like to know the best
strategy to rid the lawn of it and replace it with nice grass.

Currently, clover and various other weeds (perhaps chickweed) make up
about
50% of the lawn, although its dispersed pretty evenly with nice grass...
or
I'll say decent grass. The house is 90 years old, and the lawn landscaping
had been neglected for quite a few years. I get good sun.

Anyway, on a recent trip to Home Depot.. the gentleman there pointed me
towards using an Ortho product called "Chickweed / Clover / Oxalis Killer"
... which is used with a sprayer, which I also bought. I tried one bottle,
which took care of test area about 25X50 ft. That was two weeks ago. Wow.
This stuff is serious! The product wiped out 100% of the clover and killed
not one blade of grass. Cool.

Anyway, now that that proof of concept succeeded, and I only tested it on
perhaps 1/10 of the area that needs fixing, I have a few questions about
timing, and the steps I should take:

1) It's August 28, should I go out, buy nine more bottles, and nuke the
whole place right now? Or is it too early? Given the fact that fall
growing
season starts mid-late september here, isn't it a good idea to nuke the
place of the clover now?

That would be my plan and in fact, the the Pacific NW, I'm killing the
crabgrass and such before I overseed in September. I have the same problem
as you, a neglected lawn. Get the poison down so it has a couple of weeks
to degrade before the seed goes down

2) After its all brown and dead, with all that fluff... what should I do?
My
gut tells me that when everything's dead, I should a) rake up all the dead
and fluffy stuff with a stiff metal rake so the surface is fairly clean
and
the top layer of soil is looser, b) overseed the whole place on September
15th or so, c) and put down starter fertilizer with that seed, and d) run
the sprinkler system at half the run times, but nightly (instead of the
normal every other day) untill germination



If there is a thatch problem, you probably want to address that before you
overseed. If the lawn has been ignored for as long as you think then you
probably have a thatch problem. Dethatching will remove the dead weeds and
old grass clippings and open the soil up for the overseeding. Then aerate,
then overseed.

I'd check the watering to do just the minimum. If you're doing every other
day today, that's probably too often and too little. Water deep, once a
week (maybe twice), and you'll have a better, healthier lawn.

Once you've killed the weeds and got the lawn going, start using a weed and
feed fertilizer for the next year for overall control and then kill/remove
the spot weeds that show up. Probably most important is to cut the lawn
long (approximately 3") and fertilize spring and fall.

--
Jim Sullivan