Doogiegh
LawnSite Senior Member
- Location
- Central N.J.
Ok guys, I moved over the winter to a new house (my first one that I own rather than renting).
Since we moved over the winter, and the lady who lived here before us was 85 years old and went into a nursing home, the lawn is in A-1 Crap Shape, I can tell already.
The lawn hasn't even begun to grow yet here in NJ, but I want to do the right things in the right order. I can see that there is little grass in the lawn itself, looks to be like lots of junk weeds.
What I'm thinking of doing is:
1) Aerating - renting a machine from Home Depot or whatever and aerating the heck out of the soil. Say March 7th. I wonder if the ground will be too frozen for this? I don't think it will be. Might be tough on the machine though, I don't know.
2) put down a heavy quantity of good quality grass seed March 21st. Follow that with a top dressing and light light raking to move around the clumps from the aerating in step 1 and to make good soil-seed contact.
3) Wait and see what happens and hope that the grass seed overtakes a good part of the lawn before the weeds get a chance to take off. Cut high and often during the summer?
Am I on the right track?
Since we moved over the winter, and the lady who lived here before us was 85 years old and went into a nursing home, the lawn is in A-1 Crap Shape, I can tell already.
The lawn hasn't even begun to grow yet here in NJ, but I want to do the right things in the right order. I can see that there is little grass in the lawn itself, looks to be like lots of junk weeds.
What I'm thinking of doing is:
1) Aerating - renting a machine from Home Depot or whatever and aerating the heck out of the soil. Say March 7th. I wonder if the ground will be too frozen for this? I don't think it will be. Might be tough on the machine though, I don't know.
2) put down a heavy quantity of good quality grass seed March 21st. Follow that with a top dressing and light light raking to move around the clumps from the aerating in step 1 and to make good soil-seed contact.
3) Wait and see what happens and hope that the grass seed overtakes a good part of the lawn before the weeds get a chance to take off. Cut high and often during the summer?
Am I on the right track?