By DoMyOwn staff
Paul has done a lot of stuff to the yard this season! Weed control, ripping out moss, pruning trees, and everything in between all of that. In this video, Paul will go over everything that he has done in his rehab program. He will talk about what he did, when you did it, and touch on future plans.
It has been way too long since we've seen our friend!
We had a lot of good interaction on our last video on how to get rid of crabgrass. There was lots of good comments, and questions and I wanted to speak to some of those. But first let's see how our crabgrass is doing.
The product I used gave it a real good punch in the gut. Not a lot of green left. Lots of brown, some shades of purple, but not a lot of green. So it's dying off.
In the comments of that video people asked me why I didn't just use Glyphosate to really just wipe it out of this area.
The simplest answer to that question, I've heard a lot of people using the product that I used for crabgrass control, and I just wanted to try it out and see how it worked.
I think it's done a pretty good job, so, good product!
Another comment, or question really that we got on the last video, asked if we would do some kind of overview or recap of everything that we've done in the yard so far. This person said that they've been watching the videos as they've been coming out, but it would be really helpful if we would just recap all the stuff that we've put down and when we've done it.
When I first started shooting this series, it was the beginning of fall here in Georgia. Fall time, here in Georgia, it's kind of a funny thing. It's either really warm, or it's starting to cool and things are starting to go dormant.
This past year, it was the first part of that statement. Weather was still pretty warm. This is when I should have taken the opportunity to do my fist initial pre and post emergent application.
The first video was all about figuring out where my yard was at, as far as the weeds that I have, what kind of grass I'm dealing with, and just formulating a game plan, and putting together a rehab program for my particular needs.
Doing that, opened up my eyes to the fact that I've got a lot of tress on my property and they're really overgrown and kind of out of control, so that's what the second video was about, pruning. Pruning those trees back to open up the yard and get more air flow and sunlight, so that I have a better chance of getting grass to grow.
After doing some pruning, I busted out the tape measure to figure out how much square footage of actual lawn I'm going to be tackling. This is a really smart step to do at the beginning of a rehab program. Because you want to figure out the actual surface area of the lawn that you're going to be dealing with, to maximize the product that you're putting in either your sprayers or your spreaders. The last thing we want to do is waste or money by putting down too much or too little. So knowing the square footage, that will tell us how much we have to mix up or put into our spreader to put into the yard.
And speaking of spreaders and sprayers, that's what the forth episode was about. I went over the basic tools that you need to tackle a rehab program.
Following that, and this is where I kind of messed up, I did my first initial pre and post emergent applications to the yard. What I should have done at this point in the game is what I did in episodes nine and eleven. Episode nine was dethatching and episode eleven was aerating. And I should have done those before I put down my pre and post emergents. And the reason for that is, I put those pre and post emergents down and then later on is when I dethatched and aerated, thus breaking the protective barrier that I put on the lawn.
I should have done it in reverse. Should have dethatched and aerated, and then put the pre and post emergent down, so that those could stay in the yard and really do their job.
Episode six was all about getting soil samples of my yard to take to my extension office. The extension office, again, for a small fee will take those soil samples that you gathered out of your yard, they'll do a test on it, and that test will tell you where the pH level is, where your nitrogen, your phosphorus, and your potassium levels are. It will also tell you what nutrients are missing from the yard, if there are any. And they'll recommend what kind of fertilizers that you're going to need going forward.
The next thing that I did after getting my soil samples, was a spot kind of treatment, to get my weeds under control. I awaited the allotted time per the product label that I used in my first weed control application, to do a follow up application to really try and wipe out a lot of the weeds in my yard.
The next thing that I did was tackle the moss problem that was in the back yard. The main reason for getting rid of the moss was to prep for fertilizing and more specifically over seeding the back with a dense shade tall fescue mix.
After hitting the back yard with a power rake to get all that moss out of there, that's when I took the manual dethatching rake and dethatched the entire yard.
Now at this point in the series, the weather was being really up and down. It was warm, it was cold, we had a freeze come through. It was really just kind of chaotic. So I kind of had to pump the breaks and wait for the weather to get a little bit better, for the temperatures to get a little bit warmer before I could move forward.
And it worked I bought myself some time, the temperatures started to climb after that last frost, and I started to notice some growth happening in the yard.
Once the weather got nice enough, I was able to bust out the core aeration machine for episode eleven and aerate the entire yard. The day I aerated, I also fertilized and over seeded, but I made separate videos for each one of those steps.
So in one day, I aerated, I fertilized the front and over seeded the back. Three videos in one day. That was a long day!
Having shot those three videos in one day, this bought me some time. Because we release these videos every week, I was able to just kind of back off the yard for three weeks, and let it sit and kind of do what it needed to do to bounce out of the winter and going into spring.
That pushes us to episode 14, my Poa Annua problem!
Episode 14, we're now getting into spring time, and the yard was starting to come back to life. Or so I thought. Like I explain in episode 14, a lot of the grass that I saw, was actually Annual Bluegrass or otherwise known as Poa Annua, so that's what I tackled there. I tackled getting rid of the Poa Annua out of my yard, so that the Bermuda could pop up and thrive.
After that, we talked about watering the lawn in episode 15.
Following our watering episode, we talked about general maintenance tips in episode 16. More specifically talked about good mowing practices.
And after that, we talked about doing preventive fungicide applications; so that we don't get a disease setting into our yard.
And because I live here in Georgia, everything that I've done so far applies to warm season grasses. So, we wanted to do something for all of our friendly folks up north, so we covered our lawn care guides for episode 18.
In the lawn care guides episode, we went over the cool and warm season maintenance calendars. We also talked about the different grass types that you'll find in the cool, warm and even transitional zones of the United States. We also talked about the five most common weeds, pests, and disease that you find in the lawn.
Which brings us to the last episode on how to get rid of crabgrass. We talked about what crab grass was, the best ways to knock it out of your yard, the products that you could use, and then I used a post emergent to spray the area where I got a lot of crab grass growing to help knock it out of my yard.
So, short story long, that's everything I've done to get my yard where it's at right now!
And again, I cannot stress this enough, what I've done for my yard is most likely going to be different for your yard. It's not a one size fits all program.
I've preached it in a couple of different videos. You have to factor in weather conditions, the region you live in, the climate, the type of grass you're dealing with, the weeds you're dealing with, your soil type, all of that stuff plays into what kind of rehab program you're going to take on to fix your yard.
Now I know that was probably pretty hard to follow, so, in the description box below, I'll list out what I did for each episode, and any kind of products I used for that episode.
Going forward, we still have a lot of work to do. Like this problem!
One of these days, the jungle will be no more.
I have plans on making videos on how to tackle that back portion of the yard, aka, the jungle!
We cannot thank you enough for following along with us, and learning what it takes to do your own lawn care! It's really satisfying for us to get phone calls of people saying that the series has really helped them out, that it's saved the money, and that they've empowered themselves to take care of their own lawn.
If you have any other further questions, leave them in the comments section below like you have been doing, you can email our customer service staff or pick up the phone and give them a call!
I hope you'll continue to follow along with us, please subscribe to our channel by clicking this button, you can click this playlist to see all of those videos that we've recapped, and you can click this playlist to see our Do My Own Gardening series where we're learning how to grow a tomato garden!
And as always, thanks for watching!
