So I do both lawn care and landscaping and I like to kind of use my own property as a place to test and experiment with different plants and techniques that I may not have much experience with before I begin selling those services to others.
With this in mind my back lawn has been a pretty big area where I have gotten to experiment and test things out for the last 8yrs or so. This was the very first lawn I did from seed, its a mixed sun and shade lawn with trees, ect ect.
That being said I decided this year I wanted to try and do some lawn leveling and overseeding to thicken up an ok but not great turf and I wanted to do it with sand. But I seem to be having bad results and am concerned because I do infact like to use my lawn, and curious as to what I may have done wrong and where I should go from here.
A little info on the lawn and what I did to it. I live in the Foothills of Ca at about 3,000ft elevation. The lawn is about 1,200sq/ft. Here everyone grows Turf Type Tall Fescue as its the best grass the handle both our cold and snowy winters that get down into the 20's frequently and our hot and dry summers which frequent over 100.
Sunday October 6th I scalped the lawn, detached by hand, and then ran a Core Aerator over it (first time I have aerated this lawn since it was first seeded probably 6-8yrs ago.
Monday October 7th I then put down a very light application of a fairly low balanced NPK (tripple 8 or something)
Tuesday October 8th I then brought in 2 yards of Screened and Washed sand( called Plaster Sand here) and spread that out with a lawn level at anywhere from 1/4-1/2 of an inch because there was some very big bumps and ruts from compaction and settling over the years. after this I put down about 5lbs/thousand of 90/10 mix of High Quality TF and Bluegrass (common sod mix here) raked it in with a leaf rake and then put another 5lbs/thousand on top as well as a starter fertilizer at the bag rate.
From then until now day time temps have been very fall like with highs in the mid to upper 70's and lows generally mid to upper 40's I have been watering lightly twice a day at about 6am and 2pm and staying completely off the lawn.
October 26th its now 18 days later and there is a small amount of germination happening, there were some pretty big ruts and bumps that I leveled with sand that were basically bare of grass to begin with and I see 0 new grass germination there and a very small amount of germination in places where the grass was a bit thicker to begin with.
At this point i'm wondering what I should do, the lawn still looks like a beach with grass poking through and big bare sand patches in between.
Did I do something wrong? I'd like to mention that I have overseeded several customers lawns at nearly the same time I did mine and their germination rate is far better then mine but of course I didn't level nor sand their lawns. The existing grass I scalped is coming back but is growing slower then I expected as its only maybe 2 inches tall not at best.
Any ideas? What would you suggest if this was happening to one of your clients?
With this in mind my back lawn has been a pretty big area where I have gotten to experiment and test things out for the last 8yrs or so. This was the very first lawn I did from seed, its a mixed sun and shade lawn with trees, ect ect.
That being said I decided this year I wanted to try and do some lawn leveling and overseeding to thicken up an ok but not great turf and I wanted to do it with sand. But I seem to be having bad results and am concerned because I do infact like to use my lawn, and curious as to what I may have done wrong and where I should go from here.
A little info on the lawn and what I did to it. I live in the Foothills of Ca at about 3,000ft elevation. The lawn is about 1,200sq/ft. Here everyone grows Turf Type Tall Fescue as its the best grass the handle both our cold and snowy winters that get down into the 20's frequently and our hot and dry summers which frequent over 100.
Sunday October 6th I scalped the lawn, detached by hand, and then ran a Core Aerator over it (first time I have aerated this lawn since it was first seeded probably 6-8yrs ago.
Monday October 7th I then put down a very light application of a fairly low balanced NPK (tripple 8 or something)
Tuesday October 8th I then brought in 2 yards of Screened and Washed sand( called Plaster Sand here) and spread that out with a lawn level at anywhere from 1/4-1/2 of an inch because there was some very big bumps and ruts from compaction and settling over the years. after this I put down about 5lbs/thousand of 90/10 mix of High Quality TF and Bluegrass (common sod mix here) raked it in with a leaf rake and then put another 5lbs/thousand on top as well as a starter fertilizer at the bag rate.
From then until now day time temps have been very fall like with highs in the mid to upper 70's and lows generally mid to upper 40's I have been watering lightly twice a day at about 6am and 2pm and staying completely off the lawn.
October 26th its now 18 days later and there is a small amount of germination happening, there were some pretty big ruts and bumps that I leveled with sand that were basically bare of grass to begin with and I see 0 new grass germination there and a very small amount of germination in places where the grass was a bit thicker to begin with.
At this point i'm wondering what I should do, the lawn still looks like a beach with grass poking through and big bare sand patches in between.
Did I do something wrong? I'd like to mention that I have overseeded several customers lawns at nearly the same time I did mine and their germination rate is far better then mine but of course I didn't level nor sand their lawns. The existing grass I scalped is coming back but is growing slower then I expected as its only maybe 2 inches tall not at best.
Any ideas? What would you suggest if this was happening to one of your clients?
