Grass in Colorado (or just Kentucky Bluegrass in general)

I’d bet your soil is identical to mine. Throw some humic down on it and that will add some acidity to your soil. My soil is high in alkaline content.

Im also watering my grass for 20min per day. The high desert heat takes a huge toll. My yard is looking much better recently. I’ll take a pic soon.

 

Good advice, thanks. I can only think me fertilizing it twice did this. The neighbors’ grass all seemed slow to turn green, but they all look good now. Mine is the only brown one on the street. I may just stick to water and less mowing next year and see how it goes (most of my neighbors seem to barely mow).

 

Over fertilization will burn the grass. I recently found out that my soil is more or less dead soil. So at the middle of fall I’m gonna top seed and top dress heavily to give it some nutrients it needs. Next year it will be better.

 

I doubled the sprinkler time and days, so it will run 3.5 hours a day, every weekday (in the mornings). I hope it turns green in a few weeks, I’ll post a pic if it does.

 

Yup, fear not @Boyk1182, you didn't kill your yard. The lawn takes time, it is a living breathing organism which will thrive when taken care of properly. We spoke about this earlier in this thread, you need to bump up your watering game. Kentucky Blue needs at least 2 inches of water per week, when the summer temps increase, look at possibly pushing up to 2.5 to 3 inches per week. Water early in the mornings to ensure the water has enough time to get down to the roots and not dry off during the hotter parts of the day. Yes it stinks with the watering and if I remember correctly, you mentioned having 7 zones but 6 were strictly yard zones. You could look at running zones 1&2 on Mon&Thurs, zones 3&4 on Tue&Fri and zones 5&6 on Wed&Sat, from what I remember, it was 30min per zone to get 1" of water when you used the cup method. I know watering may get expensive but if you're looking for a green lawn, you're going to have to make sure the water is reaching down at a minimum of 1" into the soil. Organic fert will not burn the lawn, even if you get a little heavy on the application (if you're caking the lawn, that's another story). Organic ferts are typically slow release as compared to the synth or blended (combination of organic/synth) fert. I would put money on your lawn being the best in the neighborhood come fall when the temps start dipping. Second app of fert mid to late September just prior to the temp drops and your lawn will blow up, literally, in a green explosion.

Measure your lawn if you can. Lay a tape measure out on the ground and step out 10 feet. You can guesstimate your lawn Square footage based on just walking your lawn this way. You mentioned that you have an "L" shape to your lawn and based on the pictures it looks to be an L. You don't have to take into account all of the curves and bends, just walk straight and get it 'close enough'. Once you know the SqFt, you can tailor your liquid and/or granular application rates based on that I always round up to the nearest 100, so if you added it up and your lawn was 1428 sq ft, I'd bump to 1500. I hope that makes sense. Remember, go off of bag rates and not on recommended rate. So for example, you have a 32 lb bag of Milorganite that is rated to cover 2.5k Sq footage. If you have a 1k sq foot lawn, you'll want to get down 12.8 lbs per 1k sq foot (this is where the pounds per thousand comes from). Measure out that much on a scale and put into your drop spreader (organic is more forgiving so you can eyeball this if you want). I halve the recommended rate from the spreader settings because I make 2 passes; one north/south run and one east/west run. Do your trim pass first, you should only need to do one trim pass. Throw your fert out to the wheel marks of your last pass for even coverage. Typical walk behind spreaders will throw out fert in a 6 ft swath in front of the spreader. Adjust your pattern to make sure you hit the wheel marks. You'll have to practice different walking paces as that will affect how much fert gets put down. I practiced a lot with the organic ferts as they are more forgiving and less prone to burning. You'll know you're doing good if you have about half the hopper left just starting your east/west run. Practice makes perfect.

Lastly, I would highly recommend running a soil test on at least 2 different points in your yard. One on your side yard and one in the back. Youll find out if you need to run any soil amendments from this test like what @svdude mentioned with humic acid for example. Not all soil is the same and each yard would need to be tailored to get into the specific "growth zone" for that grass variety.

-J

 

@Boyk1182 Well, it's been a bit over a month. Have you seen a turnaround yet?

-J

 

Yup, it’s very green now! I have a maple tree in front of the house, not mine but right in front, that I was going to ask about. It had a lot of leaves at the bottom, by the ground, but it’s dead on top. I am trying to revive it, watering it now. I have no idea if there’s any hope for it.

 

Unfortunately, I'm not very familiar in the ways of the arborist. Your best bet would be to source outside assistance. I had a tall oak in my backyard that got ravaged from the inside out by woodboring insects and I had to put it down. My neighbor also had a small tree in their front yard that was killed by termites. Both of those trees were displaying similarly to what you described. Treat for termites at the base of the tree but I cant say for certain whether or not the tree is salvageable.

-J

 

Here’s a quick update, see pic below. I am very happy with the grass. It’s really hot, and the grass looks great. I have stopped fertilizing, and upped the water (about a $70 per month increase over not running the sprinklers). I think a lot of water is what the grass wanted!

 

Looks great! I wouldn't completely quit fertilizing though just stick to what I outlined above. 2 full rate applications during the growing season and a 3rd 1/3 to 1/2 rate application a few weeks before the grass beds down for the winter, among the other stuff I recommended above. The color looks good and even so keep it up.

-J

 

It’s a little late to do anything about this now, but I figured I’d ask. We are having our first freeze, maybe a night or two, then warming up. I turned off the sprinkler system, and also turned off the water. I didn’t blow it out. I think I’ll be fine, my neighbor did the same. Will this be ok until the regular freezes begin next month?

 

I may be wrong but if it’s just one night of a freeze you don’t have to worry, just turn off the sprinklers. If it gets cold enough for the ground to freeze then clear the sprinklers.

 

I talked to my neighbor with the nice dark green grass. She told me the product they use, so I decided to try it (see pic below). My grass looks fine, similar to the common area grass behind my house. I just applied it today so I’ll see in a week or two how it worked. Anyone have experience with this product?

 

Well I wrote a nice post but the website crashed and I lost it so lets see what I can remember. I haven't used the Revive product but I did look into it. The active ingredients mention Iron and Alkyl Phenol Ethoxylate. Iron does what I mentioned in a previous post but to recap; it provides a fast kick of luscious green but it burns out very quickly. I have observed that it will typically stick around for about 15 days to 3 weeks on average so I typically will put down Iron about 3 days prior to gatherings at the house where I want to show off the lawn as bragging rights. Iron will stain concrete and masonry so try to avoid overspray where possible. The other product Alkyl Phenol Ethoxylate, from what I found, it seems to have surfactant-like qualities. So from 30k feet, revive looks to be a mild Iron product encapsulated in a surfactant which will hold the iron to the plant to push that artificial green I like so much. That said, I believe the lawn will return to its normal color relatively quickly after application. Do not get me wrong, I am a firm believer in trying new products so if it's working for your neighbor, I don't see why it wouldn't work for you as well. Bear in mind that you might get more mileage out of mixing your own product as a cost benefit. A comparable surfactant that I can think of with a different active ingredient would be Hydretain RTS (33.32$ for 3500 sq ft coverage) and a liquid iron supplement (Ferti-Lome Chelated liquid iron: 28.89$ for 4000 sq ft coverage). So you're looking at about 60$ to your door for you to mix up a similar product. I used to like Ironite but they don't make big bags anymore so I've been trying different Iron products. Revive looks to be 64 oz for 2000 sq ft coverage.

The revive product as a surfactant could allow you to go a bit longer between waterings because I vaguely remember that you were paying about 70$ more per month to water your lawn. So if you can stretch out those waterings, that could be an added benefit to this Revive product. You'll want to do some cost analysis on those products to see if you'll save anything by using a product like that. Sorry that this post came off scattered, I wanted to make sure I covered everything that was in the original post before I lost it, so this one bounced around a bit.

-J

 

Thanks for another awesome post. I cut back the watering (in half) as the weather cooled, so I’m really hoping this product does what it claims. I’ll probably find out in a week or so.

 

Yeah that Iron will make it green up relatively quickly. It doesn't have a lot of iron in it at roughly 1% but you should see a good bit of a green boost from it. The thing I like about that Ferti-lome product with the chelated iron is that it comes packed with a punch of those Micro Nutrients I mentioned way back around my first postings. Think of those micro's as a little bit of multi-vitamins for the lawn and soil so you should see a bit of improvement across the broad spectrum. If you ever decide to run one of those mail in soil tests, you can really target those correct micro nutrients. I'm really happy with how your lawn's turning out, I'd be real proud of the work you're doing.

-J

 

I have to revive this thread. My grass is brown, but it’s supposed to be, so nothing to report there. I miss the green grass but I’m ok with not mowing for a while.

I got a new Red Sunset Maple tree. The one that came with this house new last year died, so I got a new one under warranty. It was just planted yesterday. The guys that planted it said to water it with a hose for a half hour, every other day, until Spring. They said you can’t overwater it. I’m skeptical about that, I soaked it for a half hour today and it made a river running down the street. I really don’t want to kill this one.

Any ideas on this? It’s about 10 feet tall, very skinny, it’s a small tree.

As always, thanks in advance, you guys have been very helpful!

 

Setup a drip line with a spike to get the water deep to the roots instead of just running off the surface. Or built a moat around it to make the water pool up and soak in instead of running off. Sometimes it’s hard to build a moat that holds water with our sandy/rocky soil.

 

If you haven't had any snow fall yet, I would do one last mow at about 1/2 inch lower than you typically mow to prepare the lawn for the spring. Also, don't forget about putting down any pre-emergent weed control which will help keep the spring weed blooms under control. For the tree, you could also look at a product like a tree watering ring or bag. As long as you're not getting freezing temps at night, the water in the bag shouldn't ice up. Lastly, I would start your prep for next spring now and put in your purchase requests for your lawn products now while they are in stock.

-J

 

Thought I’d bring this thread back, I’ve kinda let go of the yard for a bit since life got busy. This season I’m taking a shot at bringing it back to life.

Here’s pics from about a month ago:



As you can see, there’s a lot of thin spots in the yard, some areas where water isn’t even getting to (sprinkler right under the slide in the last photo), and some areas that are just dead grass.

The spots with dead grass is my dumb fault. I was having frequent issues with dog vomit mildew. I saw online that putting water/vinegar mixture on it will kill the mildew. Well… it did. But it also just destroyed the grass and the soil. So now I need to dig up the soil and replace it with healthy soil. I’ll get to that point next weekend.

Since beginning of last month, I’ve relocated the sprinkler head away from the slide to better cover the yard, laid down fertilizer and top seeded the yard with Bermuda grass. Here’s how it looks now.


It’s far from perfect but it’s getting there. I think that once I replace the soil in the dead areas, the yard will look much better.

Next season when the grass is healthy I’ll order a yard of sand and level the yard.

I’m still having dog vomit mildew issues, so I need a remedy for that. For now I just take it out on a shovel and throw it away. I don’t believe I’m over watering the grass since I’ve measured the water to be about 1.5”-2” per week. I will say that the drainage probably isn’t the best since the landscapers just used dirt and somewhat compacted it before laying down the sod. Plus, Arizona ground doesn’t absorb water well.