Author name: Paul Darr

Paul Darr has lived in California, Oregon, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, and currently lives in San Antonio, Texas. Paul is also an Army Veteran, who has deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. On the political spectrum Paul is a Classical Liberal and member of the Libertarian Party. Paul is currently employed as an IT Manager and is a father of a handsome boy and beautiful daughter. In his free time Paul enjoys reading, using and modifying open source software, gaming, and several other geeky pursuits.

September Lawn Care

It’s been a super dry summer here in San Antonio. Many lawns have gone dormant. Luckily Bermuda lawns can recover from that. We have gotten rain showers that will help. On weeks that we don’t get rain, continue to water with irrigation or hose end sprinklers. Use a hose as needed to hand water hot spots. I had an issue with my irrigation so I’ve been working on recovery on that side. The recommendation has been a 4-1-2 ratio for fertilizer. I’ve been using a liquid 16-4-8 fertilizer on that area. That only helps if we get rain or you water it in to help the lawn. As far as my normally loved pre-emergent hold back on that for a month so the lawns have a chance to recover more.

Also if your lawn has gone dormant, it’s okay that happens during dry times like this without irrigation. What’s not okay is not mowing foxtails and other weeds that find a way to grow. Make sure to mow those down even if it’s just spot mowing. I’ve seen way too many people just letting that grow because the grass isn’t. It will help you later keeping it trimmed down to normal height.

September Lawn Care Read Post »

July Lawn Care

The big thing is to keep up with watering and to mow as needed. Also it’s too hot to treat for weeds broadly like some of my posts talked about in the past. If you treat for weeds use a hand held sprayer and go directly at the couple weeds you are targeting. It’s also too hot too push your lawn by using fertilizer. This is a risky time of year to place down chemicals and you risk burning your lawn, so be aware of that. This time of year I just put down a natural fertilizer called milorganite. It just feeds microorganisms that produce the fertilizer by feeding on the milorganite and has no issues of burning the lawn. I also treat for bugs as needed, at least every other month and I have had good results with that. I also still place down a pre-emergent fertilizer every other month and that helps keep the weeds down to begin with.

Back to the watering. Make sure your lawn gets an inch of water a week to keep it green and healthy. So weeks we get rain is awesome and ones we don’t, make sure to water. If using an irrigation system make sure to watch for hot spots along sidewalks or places where the soil is poor in the lawn. Just hand water a little extra there to counter act that.

July Lawn Care Read Post »

May Yard Info

The weather is starting to get warm and that nice weed killer I talked about before has a maximum recommended temperature of 85-90 degrees. So I would recommend not using it at this point or you will risk harming your lawn.

To keep weeds in check at this time of year mow every week if your lawn is growing as fast as mine or every other week if it growing slower. You can also apply a pre-emergent herbicide and I would recommend doing so if it’s been over a couple months since your last pre-emergent application.

It’s also time to apply an insecticide again. Previously I recommended Spectracide Triazicide as a cheap insecticide for surface insects. If that’s all you need to control then that will still work. If you would also like to prevent grubs in the lawn I find granules work best. Spectracide also provides the cheapest granule solution that works. If you want to pay a few more dollars BAYER ADVANCED has a liquid spray that also provides both surface insect and grub control. BAYER ADVANCED also has a granule that is rated well.

Why would you want to prevent grubs? Well I have two reasons. 1. They often will eat up portions of the lawn killing it and causing brown spots. 2. Those feral hogs that sometimes dig up yards are after grubs. So if you have killed all the grubs then they are less likely to dig up your yard.

Feral Hogs

As always I hope that was helpful and informative. If you have any questions please post them in the comments. I will also share this to the neighborhood Facebook as I normally do.

May Yard Info Read Post »

Soil, seeds, and other stuff

So far you have likely read my overview of what you need to do to fix your lawn and I have been given you a deep dive on each part along the way. After my last post I said we would talk about other things you might add to top dress or improve the soil in your lawn and if you should place grass seed or not.

There are many great products you might add to your lawn but I will leave the advanced stuff for later and keep to the simple stuff people are asking the most about. The first is that people are asking what they should add to fix the bare spots in their lawn after killing off the weeds. It seems many first responses are to add grass seed and hope that fills in the bare spots. This is normally an unnecessary step if you have at least some Bermuda left. The Bermuda as things called stolons. I always called these runners before but they are great for filling your lawn back in. You see they will creep out and start new grass.

So instead of adding grass seed the best thing to do is spread some garden soil at about a half inch in depth and water the area regularly the next few weeks. I have attached a few pictures. In one you see my neighbors bare lawn after being treated for weeds. The second picture is the lawn with soil placed on it. This will help promote growth and his Bermuda will start filling it in. You might also notice the grass blades are a bit thicker. That’s because he has common Bermuda after a previous owner seeded his lawn. Most of our lawns had a hybrid Bermuda sod placed on our lawns. The hybrid has a thinner blade and doesn’t normally produce seeds. Most Bermuda grass seeds are going to be for common Bermuda. If you use grass seed this will cause the lawn to looked mismatched as both are growing. So that is one reason I encourage promoting growth through stolons as opposed to reseeding.

If your whole lawn is bare and no Bermuda is left, then that is when you would use seed, because having a common Bermuda lawn is better than just bare dirt. In that case make sure to NOT use the pre-emergent I recommend at other times. It stops both new weeds and new grass seeds from growing.

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