2025 Lawns & Gardens Thread. Making Lawns Great Again

[backedgeapproaching]

On 4/25/2025 at 12:47 PM, dendrite said:

I did last year. It was great! @Damage In Tolland

Kind of shocked your mower didn't bog down cutting that stuff.  

[dendrite]

53 minutes ago, backedgeapproaching said:

Kind of shocked your mower didn't bog down cutting that stuff.  

I don’t recall having a problem whatsoever. Hot knife through butter.

[DavisStraight]

1 hour ago, dendrite said:

I don’t recall having a problem whatsoever. Hot knife through butter.

20hp?

[tunafish]

On 4/26/2025 at 12:02 AM, dendrite said:

Heh I didn’t do it on purpose…our old mower broke. That was the first run on the new one. Usually I will let it get a little long so that the clover flowers and reseeds itself, but not like the pic above. I wonder if any of that grass that went to seed will germinate this spring.

That's my threshold - once the clover flowers, I mow - probably 2nd/3rd week here.

This year I am pulling Dandelions, taproot and all, as I see them flower.  Pollinators get a day or two.  Not the ones getting choked out by grass or clover (I juat get the flower before it seeds), just the ones that are dominant flora in their space.  They've claimed too much territory for my liking.

Tried corn gluten for the crabgrass this year.  It's been time in the past, but I want clover and grass taking over the dandelion space, not crabgrass.

[Chrisrotary12]

I might not mow till June.

[Brewbeer]

3 hours ago, Chrisrotary12 said:

I might not mow till June.

there are some parts of my yard I can get away with doing this and I'm going to try it

[dendrite]

4 hours ago, Chrisrotary12 said:

I might not mow till June.

No mow no mo’

[mreaves]

3 hours ago, dendrite said:

No mow no mo’

 

[jbenedet]

Looking for some tips—-my backyard lawn is last spot I got around to fixing up and it started yesterday. It’s uneven and overrun with weeds. I tilled up all the weeds and now I’m left with soil and chopped weeds and wondering which direction I take from here.

Should i a) immediately start burying the chopped up weeds with soil, level out and plant grass seed or b)keep tilling for next few weeks until I don’t see anymore weeds come up? 

I understand weeds will keep coming up in option A but I do feel that if I at least can get a grass base, I can manage and pull and eventually get the grass to out compete.

Thoughts?
 

 

[dendrite]

On 4/26/2025 at 7:26 PM, DavisStraight said:

20hp?

22hp

[DavisStraight]

1 hour ago, jbenedet said:

Looking for some tips—-my backyard lawn is last spot I got around to fixing up and it started yesterday. It’s uneven and overrun with weeds. I tilled up all the weeds and now I’m left with soil and chopped weeds and wondering which direction I take from here.

Should i a) immediately start burying the chopped up weeds with soil, level out and plant grass seed or b)keep tilling for next few weeks until I don’t see anymore weeds come up? 

I understand weeds will keep coming up in option A but I do feel that if I at least can get a grass base, I can manage and pull and eventually get the grass to out compete.

Thoughts?
 

 

Next time you do it spray weed killer and once they're dead, scrape them up and put new loam down, since that options gone I think I would go with A.

[dendrite]

Get a few packs, spread on a windy day, and enjoy

[jbenedet]

1 hour ago, dendrite said:

Get a few packs, spread on a windy day, and enjoy

That’s actually really funny.

Need to find a way to get this into one of Kevin’s reseeding bags. 

[jbenedet]

2 hours ago, DavisStraight said:

Next time you do it spray weed killer and once they're dead, scrape them up and put new loam down, since that options gone I think I would go with A.

Thanks for the tip. That’s the way I was leaning. I’m really not a fan of using weed killers. I’m pretty much a get it out by the root only on weeds. But I couldn’t go this route because the whole area was basically infested. 

[jbenedet]

Any good recommendations on full sun, hardy/drought resistant grass seed? 
 

 

[DavisStraight]

1 hour ago, jbenedet said:

Any good recommendations on full sun, hardy/drought resistant grass seed? 
 

 

Jonathan grass seed, many different types, get the one you think you need.

[jbenedet]

51 minutes ago, DavisStraight said:

Jonathan grass seed, many different types, get the one you think you need.

Nice yea I used his stuff for patches in my front. Heard a lot of good things about it.

 

You put anything else down with it?

[DavisStraight]

3 hours ago, jbenedet said:

Nice yea I used his stuff for patches in my front. Heard a lot of good things about it.

 

You put anything else down with it?

Starter fertilizer

[BrianW]

I don't even bother with seed. It's expensive but I just buy a strip of sod at my local garden center from Kingston Turf in RI. Just keep it watered and you get beautiful KBG with zero weeds as they are chocked out. 

https://www.kingstonturf.com/

[BrianW]

For you tree guys. @kdxken @tamarack 

Been keeping this monster green Ash alive with a soil drench of Imodclprod since EAB first hit in 2012. Had to take it down as we are getting a new driveway/drainage and the roots were so shallow.

My wife and I counted the rings and got around 130 years old. Was almost 4 feet across the base.

 

 

[BrianW]

It's interesting that you can see from the rings even with treatment the tree pretty much stopped growing around the same time EAB hit. 

 

[dendrite]

Maybe it has something to do with the soil drench stunting the growth.

[BrianW]

12 minutes ago, dendrite said:

Maybe it has something to do with the soil drench stunting the growth.

Yeah. I think we talked about it before  but my wife and I also thought the insecticide long term wasn't a good plan as Imodclprod is terrible for pollentors. I could see all the dead green EAB adults all over my driveway and it was killing a ton of other probably beneficial insects.  

I could actually gauge how bad the infestation was over the years based on how many dead adults I saw. Early on my driveway was littered with them but only saw a few dead ones the last few years. Every Ash has been dead for around 10 years here. 

[kdxken]

40 minutes ago, BrianW said:

For you tree guys. @kdxken @tamarack 

Been keeping this monster green Ash alive with a soil drench of Imodclprod since EAB first hit in 2012. Had to take it down as we are getting a new driveway/drainage and the roots were so shallow.

My wife and I counted the rings and got around 130 years old. Was almost 4 feet across the base.

 

 

You did well keeping it going that long. Not many of the big ones left. The last of mine succumbed this year. Judging from the trunk that was healthier than most.

[tamarack]

1 hour ago, BrianW said:

It's interesting that you can see from the rings even with treatment the tree pretty much stopped growing around the same time EAB hit. 

 

Growth rings usually get thinner as the tree gets bigger, in part because adding diameter on big trees adds more basal area than the same diameter growth on smaller trees.

Forest researchers I respect have stated that some white ash can tolerate EAB and the western blue ash has even more tolerance, but green and black ("brown" in Maine) apparently have almost no tolerance.

[Damage In Tolland]

14 hours ago, dendrite said:

Get a few packs, spread on a windy day, and enjoy

Any random ones that sprout here I quickly pop out by the roots with a shovel 

[jbenedet]

It ain’t pretty out but this is perfect weather for whipping garden into shape and establishing a solid base.

[Brewbeer]

with the super long wet stretch coming up, get that seed down now

[backedgeapproaching]

18 hours ago, jbenedet said:

Looking for some tips—-my backyard lawn is last spot I got around to fixing up and it started yesterday. It’s uneven and overrun with weeds. I tilled up all the weeds and now I’m left with soil and chopped weeds and wondering which direction I take from here.

Should i a) immediately start burying the chopped up weeds with soil, level out and plant grass seed or b)keep tilling for next few weeks until I don’t see anymore weeds come up? 

I understand weeds will keep coming up in option A but I do feel that if I at least can get a grass base, I can manage and pull and eventually get the grass to out compete.

Thoughts?
 

 

I would stop the tilling. You are bringing up more and more weed seeds every time you till.  At this point just try to level the lawn as best you can, it might be hard without machinery to get it mostly level without bumps.  I would seed, but just FYI you are going on have to water alot to get it to survive through summer. You will definitely have alot of weeds coming up with the grass seed too that you will have to tackle along the way or after the grass is established.  There are certain fertilizers you can use at seeding that also help prevent weeds from germinating(it won't stop them all).

[DavisStraight]

12 hours ago, backedgeapproaching said:

I would stop the tilling. You are bringing up more and more weed seeds every time you till.  At this point just try to level the lawn as best you can, it might be hard without machinery to get it mostly level without bumps.  I would seed, but just FYI you are going on have to water alot to get it to survive through summer. You will definitely have alot of weeds coming up with the grass seed too that you will have to tackle along the way or after the grass is established.  There are certain fertilizers you can use at seeding that also help prevent weeds from germinating(it won't stop them all).

I think they have starter fertilizer with weed prevention, not sure how well it works since it's not the same as regular fertilizer. Depending on the size of the area the sod idea wasn't a bad idea.