What’s your spring lawn routine

The Coffee Shop
1

Bonus points if you post a picture of your lawn (best way to tell how effective you’re strategy is!)

We’re all stuck at home, it’s been boring as sin during the week but early spring weekends are the best and this year there aren’t any plans keeping us from spending time on the lawn.

I’m still fairly new to the lawn maintenance game. Just bought a mantis tiller and plan on turning over a weed-filled section this spring. For general maintenance I got the aerator adapter for the tiller. my plan is to mow, dethatch, mow again, aerate, overseed, and fertilize. I bought a generic organic fertilizer, not sure if I also need compost?

What’s your strategy/tips/tricks?

2

Don’t worry about overseeding, you do that in the fall.

You will quickly learn that you either like the work or don’t like the work. I don’t really care for the work. For me, early spring I want to get a pre-emergent herbicide on the yard. These typically come with a fertilizer of 28-0-0, or 20-0-1, 16-0-1. I don’t care what the fertilizer is, as I said I don’t like the work I just need the grass to grow a little and kill the weeds. What I want to see in this product is 2-4D in the close to 1% range and MCPP (mecoprop maybe on the label)to help with later growth crabgrass. Do not worry about the name brand stuff that is twice as expensive as other brands. Just check the label for active ingredients.

I may then spray later in the summer to kill off an invasive weeds.

3

Typically we are so busy that we don’t deal with lawn\spring clean up until may at some point. This year is different, we’ve tackled the backyard and the front already.

As for my lawn, on the front lawn I have a massive spruce tree. It does not allow us to have nice grass there; something about acidic soil. I don’t know.

As for my back lawn, it’s a disaster. Mostly weeds. Before we bought this house it had been rented out for 5 years. The renters did not care about lawns. We’re saving up to blow it up and start over.

Assuming that life goes back to normal and we don’t lose our jobs we might do that next summer.

No, you can’t see my horrible lawns.

4

Normally I call the lawn care company in May and tell them I want them for another year. We cannot legally use many of the effective weed killers here. This year I will fertilize spring and fall and likely spot weed. I’d like to get rid of the crab grass right now as the forsithyia (sic) is blooming but not sure I can get the right chemicals. I like to minimize chemical use and the lawn care company has stuff that is easier on the environment. Since they took away the 24D and our town stopped spraying parks etc we are having a nice bounce back in amphibians dragon flies all that cool stuff.

5

I cut the grass when it gets high enough, hopefully the back yard sufficiently dries that the grass doesn’t get too high and thick before I can cut it because then it’s a real pain in the ass.

I’ve got enough to do in the garden, so i don’t worry about growing grass.

6

I’ll give you my whole season routine

  1. First hour of thatching I try really hard but give up soon after as its a pain in the ass with a manual rake.

  2. Manually pick out thistles and dandelions as needed

  3. Throw some fertilizer on in mid-may whatever HD sells

  4. Generally give up and just try and keep my lawn a bit better than the worst yards in the neighborhood. Water so it doesn’t get too crispy.

I generally don’t care that much. I just don’t want thistles so no one walks on one barefoot. Overall I don’t think the people who put the most hours and money into their lawn look that much better than mine.

7

In the spring, I start raking the leaves that I didn’t bother doing in the fall, and immediately start swearing and wishing I had bought a property with a smaller lawn.

I finish raking, contemplate trying to add in-ground sprinklers, remember how shitty my well is, and decide that other than mowing I will leave the lawn to nature.

I do water the parts close to the house to keep it green, only for wildfire prevention purposes.

8

If you haven’t even been to The Lawn Forum, it’s worth checking out. Wealth of knowledge… Maybe too much. https://thelawnforum.com/

I’d say what you need to do depends on your type of grass and state of your lawn/soil.

You really only need to core aerate if your soil is compacted. If you do aerate, yes you’ll need to top dress, but overseed is again dependent on the type of grass. Grass that spreads well via rhizomes/stolons won’t need to be over seeded, unless it’s to seed for a different season.

I start in March by dethatching and scarifying then use a pre-emergent. In April I scalp and fertilize. I use a selective herbicide monthly. This year I’ll be leveling my yard with sand to get out the rough spots.

I can drop a pic of my lawn later…if it stops raining. Still have some scalped spots but it’ll green up in a few weeks once it’s warmer.

Hope that link to TLF helps, it’s the Slowtwitch of lawn care!

Yard.jpg

9

I live in the southeast Lowcounty. Typically about March the St. Augustine/Centipede begins to come out of dormancy and will go from brown to green. I apply a high nitrogen 15-0-15 but beforehand wait until all the spring weeds show up and hit them with Hi-Yield weed out which is a broadband contact. On my Covid list to do this week. Mid April-May I apply grub killer. May-June apply broad spectrum bug killer due to Spiddlebugs and chinch bugs are bad in the south. When the grass starts to turn lime green I apply another 15-0-15 June/July depending on the rain. I do over seed with winter rye in the backyard where the kids play and garden/chickens in the winter but always feel like an idiot mowing in a jacket.

10

This year the oaks are oppressing my lawn with leaves and pollen and they ignore my pleas.

Hopefully yesterday was the last leaf taking of the season.
Today I’m spreading peat moss which helps the St Augustine grass.

We back up to a greenbelt and have a picket fence. The downside is all the weeds we get (first world problems!).
We also have a 2000 gallon pond in need of cleaning. The oaks have dropped a bunch of leaves into it.

11

You people who find enjoyment in lawn/yard work are sick puppies. After taking care of 40 yards/week for a few years I’m very happy to cut that check every month never to have to do it again.

Bermuda down here is coming out of dormancy so a fertilizer and pre-emergent is applied. Some people like to “scalp” their lawns by cutting as low as mower will go and bagging the clippings. Aerating is also taking place. Azaleas are starting to bloom so those will likely be trimmed shortly after they finish. A bit late in the game for good pinestraw to cover beds, but better to do it now than wait another 30 days.

12

When I lived in town, I used to care about how my lawn looked. Now that I’ve moved out to the country with a much larger parcel of land, I couldn’t care less about its appearance. Fertilizers, weed killers, insecticides? No thank you. I’m just happy to keep up with the mowing so that we can see the dog poop before stepping in it. Plus, the extra flowers in the yard add color and invite bees, which are good for the environment. You like the environment, right?

13

I am not a fan of yard work but want my lawn to look at least reasonable.

Without much experience, last year I watched and followed the 2013 project lawn from the lawn care nut on youtube and had reasonable success.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYAXY0GXb7o

14

Yeah, I let the dandelions and lilacs and other pretty “flowers” grow through the lawn, for the bees and other pollinators. I don’t call them weeds; I call them ‘spontaneous indigenous horticulture’

When they’ve finished blooming, I’ll run them over with the lawnmower, then spray the anti-crabgrass shit

The backyard, I let go a little more ‘feral’ … I won’t cut that until mid-May, perhaps?

15

Don’t worry about overseeding, you do that in the fall.

You will quickly learn that you either like the work or don’t like the work. I don’t really care for the work. For me, early spring I want to get a pre-emergent herbicide on the yard. These typically come with a fertilizer of 28-0-0, or 20-0-1, 16-0-1. I don’t care what the fertilizer is, as I said I don’t like the work I just need the grass to grow a little and kill the weeds. What I want to see in this product is 2-4D in the close to 1% range and MCPP (mecoprop maybe on the label)to help with later growth crabgrass. Do not worry about the name brand stuff that is twice as expensive as other brands. Just check the label for active ingredients.

I may then spray later in the summer to kill off an invasive weeds.

Lot of what i do is in here.

It is possible to overseed in the Spring, but most don’t because they use a Weed & Feed or crabgrass prevention and that will pretty much make the overseeding pointless.

My go to for non-name brand stuff is Rural King. Fertilizer, weed & feed, glyphosate/Round Up concentrate. All are so much cheaper in store brands. Glyphosate is $40 - 45 for 2.5 gallons of concentrate. That makes 125 gallons of 2% mix.

I have pretty heavy soil so I run the aerator around the yard in the Spring and Fall when the sol is soft and just hook it up behind when I mow.

I’m not obsessive about weeds. It just takes too much herbicide to get it perfect. The best way to prevent weeds is strong healthy grass.

So my Spring goes like this. And yeah, I like having a park in my back yard.

Mid March to early April - trim trees, rake up any piles of stuff, take the deer protection off any trees and bushes, uncover the strawberries, clean up the rose garden, clean up the herb garden

Mid April - late April - replace any roses that didn’t make it through the winter, plant any trees or bushes I’m planning on, check the forecast and fertilize the yard when it looks like there won’t be any monsoons for a while to reduce runoff, plant any perennial flowers

Late April to early May - prepare and plant the vegetable garden if no frost in the forecast, prepare and plant annual flower beds

yard.jpg

16

Strategy? Let it get so high the owners of the townhouse next door have their maintenance crew mow it.

It’s a very tiny yard in the front and no yard in back, just a patio and parking pad.

17

I have ground cover that is very slow growing so I trim it back far enough so that it looks decent for a few months,
The leaves are raked or picked up and the weeds and pulled every other week. I have a sharpened screwdriver that can dig up ridiculously thick roots.

18

Very nice…looks like a pretty big yard, I think I’d enjoy things less if I had that much ground to cover. Oh and my wife largely handles the garden, we have five smallish areas with various flowers and bushes and whatnot…my role is to mulch and not step on too many plants :slight_smile:

19

If you haven’t even been to The Lawn Forum, it’s worth checking out. Wealth of knowledge… Maybe too much. https://thelawnforum.com/

Thanks Greg I’ll definitely check that site out. Glad to see not everyone hates lawn care :slight_smile: Sometimes mowing can become a chore but I generally love the overall lawn care process (though manual dethatching is AWFUL). Manual labor + sun/outdoors is all I care about, best job I ever had was installing sprinkler systems - backbreaking work and long days but there’s nothing better than a good sweat on a summer day imo.

Oh and nice looking yard!

20

Call my yard guy and tell him to get to work
.