"Big Purple Nose" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hello gardening types, I just bought my first house last year - in
winter. The health of the lawn wasn't even something I considered. Last
year I was too busy with the renovations to worry but now I'm
interested in outside. I've had hedges planted, cleared the weeds out
of the garden and planted some nice flowers - and then looked around
and - my lawn sucks. It's got grubs, ants, and is almost all weeds.

If it were my problem lawn -

I read what you wrote, and I would first drop the lawn company. See why
below, after the general comments.

my lawn sucks. It's got grubs, ants, and is almost all weeds

That is relative. Everybody, even the best lawns, have weeds, grubs, and
ants. Some just have enough to be noticeable.

1) let mother nature tell you whether you have an insect problem or if you
just have some insects
- If you have enough insects, then moles, voles, birds, wasps, and lot of
other types of critters will arrive to harvest them.
Thus if you have a lot of grubs, you should have _a lot_ of birds and
other creatures digging in the lawn.
- no moles or birds digging up your lawn? That says there are not even
enough there for a mole to drop by for lunch - just enough for a lawn
company to glean a check.

2) if the lawn company had said whiteflies or the like, you would have
said - ok, whatever. But grubs? OMG, not grubs! EVERYBODY knows about grubs
!!! Knows just enough, that is.

3) aeration - NOW? are they nuts?

As to a plan for your lawn-

First principle - take advantage of mother nature and use what she uses,
to get what you want. (The details are in the specifics below.) Any
other approach creates a waste of effort and money

Second principle -keep it in perspective
- Most of Mother nature's little plants and trees make toxins that make
DDT look tame. (check out heavy insect infestations like armyworms and the
number of dead insects and birds below trees after a week or two)
Mother nature's little plants work at strangling to a slow death any
other plants near them (spruce, crabgrass, and especially bluegrass if left
long).
Mother nature's cute little animals strip a plant of its roots, leaves,
buds, and unopened flowers, the plant's very ability to live and to
reproduce. It's a war in your lawn.
So do not feel bad about using herbicides or insecticides, especially
if you use any other additives or amendments - like fertilizer or mechnical
shortening (mowing) which pollute and create an environment conducive to
your one chosen species over another. Dandelions or ants are not going to
die out because you kill the ones in your lawn.

Use chemicals to restore restore the balance, do not use them to create
a plastic world. NOTHING you can use will be as bad as the natural alkoids
plants produce. Besides, too much fussing over bluegrass makes for a needy
lawn.

The plan -
1) size- you have 3000 sq ft. Piece of cake, if you are patient.
(Measure it, if you haven't already, so you know the size reasonable
accurately.)

2) time - Grass doesn't grow overnight. six months should be about right for
a nice lawn. 18 for a great lawn.

3) action - in steps: you will kill non-grasses, water, seed, feed, treat,
and mow high.

Grass needs air, water, sun, removal of competition evolved to kill it,
and nutrients -- so you give grass what it needs, it will do the rest

Walk out and look at the top of the soil - if you see a half-inch to an
inch of dead matter laying on top of the soil in the grass, you will have to
eventually remove it. No layer is not good, less is good, a lot is bad.
Two ways to remove it, sort of - mechanically, and organically.
Mechanically means you use a dethatching tool to break it up and thenh rake
it off. Organically means you stop putting it down (bag the grass for a
year so the layer decays without being replenished ).
For now, bag.

the checklist - post it on the refrigerator -

buy some lawn seed now, enough bluegrass and fescue mix to reseed 3000
sq ft, and put it in a cool dry place. (You will need it this fall, and
most places you can't get seed in the fall.)
buy some pre-mixed broadleaf killer and post-emergent crabgrass killer,
enough of each to treat 5000 sq ft - hose-end or with a hand-wand.
buy a bottle of hand-spray squirt-type broadleaf killer for later spot
treatment.
buy a cheap rain gauge to set in the lawn, or wash out a can and make a
mark one inch up from the bottom of the can.
buy enough 10-10-10 fertilizer to treat 2500 sq ft twice.
buy a whirlybird hand spreader, if you don't have a fertilizer spreader.
buy a sprinkler, if you don't have one. Price and kind not as important
as having it cover the areas of the lawn.
sharpen the mower blade.
remove any branches under 8 feet above the lawn where you want grass
(judiciously, or course)

a) set the mower to 3.5 inches. Give the the grass the advantage over the
broadleaf weeds. from now on, mow every week, or oftener if it takes off or
looks straggly.

b) Water the lawn today. Wake it up. Get the soil working. Water an inch
of water (use a can or cup and water and measure,or buy one - you will be
checking moisture the rest of the year.)

c) a week after watering, put down a feeding of garden fertilizer like
10-10-10 - and if rain is not predicted for two days, then water again,
again an inch. Any hair roots will be up and moving in the weed and grasses
after a week.

d) the next day after the second watering, treat the lawn in the morning
with herbicide, to knock down noxious weeds. Get out there around 8 or nine
o'clock and spray.

Use the pre-mixed. Use BOTH crabgrass killer and broadleaf killer. Most
pre-mixes yoiu get here cover 5000 sq ft, so if you have 3000 sq ft to
cover, use a little over half a bottle now.
Mark the calendar at ten days from the spray date, so you know to check
for yellowing of crabgrass and ivys then.
(Note that lawn weed-killer ingredients that kill in 24 hours don't get
down the roots of stuff like creeping charlie, so it's not how it looks the
next day as much as how it looks in ten days.)

e) A week from treatment, if you haven't had an inch of rain that week,
water an inch again.

f) Ten days from treatment, check for yellowing of flat, straggly grasses
like crabgrass. Remove those yellowed straggly grassy plants -they can
poison the soil. Re-treat the lawn with the rest of your herbicide. The
desireable grass now has the advantage

g) mow regularly, and make sure there is an inch of rain a week until fall.
This will allow the grass to fill in. (If the weather is dry and hot,
bluegrass wants to go dormant to ptortect itslef during dry weather. Not
yours this year. An inch a week will keep it growing.)
If you see larger dead spots around anthills, you will have to kill the
ants.
Spot-treat for broadleaf weeds every second mowing.

h) in the fall, mid-september roughly, put down the other 10-10-10
fertilizer. It will feed the grass through the spring (bluegrass grows best
in cool weather, and it grows under the snow).

i) When the first 1-2 inch snow is predicted and the ground is still bare,
get out the whirlybird and the grass seed and set it for "seed". When the
first flakes start to fall, spread the grass seed.
Bluegrass takes maybe ten days of cool weather to sprout, and the blanket
of snow makes great cover. (That is the way it sprouts in nature, that and
the 10-14 days of cold-rainy spring weather.)

j) If the ground has seemed hard all through the 1" of-rain-a-week
operation, or if the grass seemed weak and thin in the fall after the
watering and mowing:
then in the spring, plugging may be needed.
As soon as practicable in the spring, have the lawn plugged, to aerate
the soil and to provide more growing surface.

k) In spring, spot-treat any weeds.

l) Around May 15 for your area, put down pre-emergent. (I'd suggest using
Scott's 4-step next year.) The new grass should have sprouted over the
winter and in the spring, taken hold, and been mowed a couple times, and the
pre-emergent will not harm it.

Scott's 4-step is fairly forgiving, and you pay for that forgiveness.
(I don't use it because it doesn't have the flexibility I use on my lawn,
IMHO it has too much nitrogen, and I have one lawn of 10,000 and one of 1
1/2 acres which makes it a little pricey.)

m) Make sure the lawn has an inch of water a week - supplement as required -
until June 15.

If the lawn ever gets dry before June 15, WATER IT. After June 15, it can
turn blue-grey for a week or two, and it won't be in trouble.

Treat any grubs next year.

fwiw...
Mind you, cut every week, the weeds don't look bad from a distance.
They look better than dirt anyway.

I had a lawn care company over today. They confirmed that there isn't a
lot of lawn left. Here is the note they left in my mailbox:

"Your lawn is dry, needs a lot of water, and is really compacted.

They will take care of this - for a price? Whose lawn insn't?

Your
lawn is also thin, which gives way to weeds, and you have ants.

And they will take care of this - for a price? WHo doesnt have ants?

We
can't really save your lawn, we could get rid of the weeds with round
up but it will kill everything. You will ahve to sod or take Ecology
Program

theirs, I assume - for a price?

to take care of weeds and gree the little bit of grass there
is, with an aeration to help water go in and OVSD (that is a double
core with seeds)

theirs, I assuem, for a price?

but you would have to put down a lot more seeds and
merit for grubs.

which they will do, for a price, I assume?

but the results are hard to guarantee."

So what is the difference in cost between doing what she said,
basically killing all the weeds and then slathering seed about, and
going out to get fresh sod. I presume the latter is more expensive. If
you lay sod don't you have to lift up a few inches of dirt that is
already there and cart it off first? I mean, if you don't doesn't that
make your lawn several inches higher than the sidewalks and paths?

How long would it take if I just let the lawn company kill everything,
then reseeded? I don't mind waiting a bit, if that is likely, with
their help, to be successful. Don't advise me to lay the sod myself to
save money. I have a bad back and I'd wind up being laid up for days.
So I'll have to hire a landscaping company to do it. The lawn in back
is about 2,000 sf and the one in front about 1/4 of that. Should this
sort of thing be done now or in the fall or in the spring?

I'd be grateful for even a very rough idea of pricing, if possible. I'm
in southeastern Ontario

Dave