When to start lawn renovation
Why You Should START Lawn Renovation Now... // Project Lawn Full Renovation Intro
all right so we are walking across the
street here to the project lawn
because i got some stuff to tell you
about what's coming up for fall and
actually a very big project coming up
for fall so let's get into it so if
you've been following along with this
yard basically what we did was we took
it
last year at the beginning of spring and
kind of had a very thin
weed filled kind of yard going on and we
took it to a place where
definitely is looking a whole lot better
we got rid of most of the weeds we did
some pre-emergents so that we don't have
crabgrass problems and things have been
going
really well with that but as you can see
here now we are basically in a severe
drought so
this yard doesn't have any irrigation
we're just letting it sort of be what it
is at this point and now it's completely
dormant
so at the same time that all this has
happened my neighbor has definitely
become
a big time lawn care nut and he said
you know i really think about renovating
this yard i want to do something with it
because
it's really patchy in terms of grass
types there's darker cultivars there's
lighter ones there's ones that are
withstanding the heat better than others
and so knowing me and knowing that i
love
renovations i said sure let's do it so
that's exactly what we are going to do
so i'd say there's two things that i
love the most in lawn care one
is definitely mowing but two is
renovating a yard and taking it from
something that someone's not extremely
happy with and turning it into something
that they are happy with getting some
new grass cultivars going in here and i
think this is going to be fantastic once
we get it done
but you also have to realize the
expectations of not getting in too ahead
of yourself
in terms of thinking that everything's
going to go perfectly during a
renovation because you can almost
guarantee that there's going to be some
struggles but
it's all part of it it's all part of the
fun and in the end
it will definitely turn out the way that
you wanted to you just have to have some
patience
and some hard work put into it so you
should be able to see here what we're
dealing with
in terms of different grass types you've
got some of this that's really really
dormant
we've got some that's still kind of
hanging on a little bit and it's greener
but actually right back here you've got
a patch
of tall fescue and so this happens all
throughout the yard it's really not very
uniform
and then there's areas you can see here
much higher areas we want to bring in
some soil
and actually try to smooth everything
out make it less bumpy
and also just kind of change the grade a
little bit to make it more gradual
so here's another example of just a big
section of kind of an old junkie type of
tall fescue as well so you've got this
wide blade doesn't match anything else
around here
and so really the only thing you can do
to remove this stuff is to renovate
and some people are okay dealing with it
and just letting it be and
leaving it what we're going for here is
to just really up the game in terms of
uniform color cultivars that look a lot
better that are
just better overall for withstanding all
of our stresses and heats and
fungus and all that stuff so the other
thing that my neighbor wanted to do
was he wanted to fill this in a little
bit better so i told him we could
definitely do that but the problem will
be
if we bring in soil here and we plant
seed on some new soil then it's
definitely not going to match the rest
of the yard around it and that's really
when he
kind of made that decision that he'd
like to do this whole thing with new
seed
and start over because going to look
really really weird if you have to do
any sort of major leveling work on your
yard or some kind of damage happens and
you need to bring in new soil and just
see that with some newer grass seed
it's just never going to look the same
as the other grass that's there
unless you knew exactly what was planted
and you can find that exact seat again
and basically over in this area the
exact same thing is happening in terms
of a low spot we wanted to smooth all of
this out fill this in a little bit
better as well so
same type of scenario here if we're
going to do this part and we're going to
put in new soil we might as well
smooth out the rest of it kind of get a
grade that's much more smooth and won't
be so bumpy to mow
and go for it so it might not seem like
you need to start this as early as you
do
very soon we are going to be starting
the process of removing this grass
as far as spraying it so that it will
all die all the weeds will die
we will do the leveling work but you
need to start this process because you
need a few weeks of time to let weeds
come up make sure you didn't miss any
grass
and do that process again so that's
usually what i do and we need to plant
here
where i'm at because of frost date
usually around
late august to right at the beginning of
september is about the latest you want
to really go and that will just help
give you a lot more success because you
have
the actual soil temperature up your
germination should happen faster
and then also that will get us a really
good establishment before we get to
frost for the year
hopefully which is early october here
where we live
for the actual first frost date so if
you plant too late you just risk that
your grass is not going to be mature
enough you might get a hard freeze
you might lose some of it so that's
really the plan with that now if you
want to know how to spray it i've done
two videos on this already in the past
when i did renovations at my house so
i probably will not show you exactly
again how to do all the spraying because
it's the same exact process
and you can do the exact same thing as
those videos nothing has really changed
with the process there
so check out those videos i'll have them
linked the other thing is a lot of
people say that you cannot spray a
dormant yard but a couple times here
i've done it with these grass types
and sprayed it looking exactly like it
does right now
and had no problem with it now it would
definitely probably be better if it had
rained and this wasn't completely kind
of
in a dormant state yet but we can throw
some water on it after we do our first
spray
try to get anything else to grow up and
then we'll do our spray again
so we're going back and forth on what
we're going to plant these are all going
to be the high-end
cultivars of things that will give you
great color
give you a lush yard like you want and
it'll be much more uniform than what's
there right now
so in preparation of any of your
overseeding or renovation projects that
you want to start here
i wanted to point you to a couple
resources that i have available for you
so
one is i have an overseeding video from
last year that covers all of these steps
in one video so if you're looking to
overseed your cool season lawn you want
to know the actual steps
what order to do them in all the info
about it you can check out this video
right here
and that's going to give you all that
info then the second thing you can do is
if you're looking for a full renovation
playlist i've got two of those
one is from a couple years ago on my
side yard section and i did a full
renovation playlist there so every
single step
in separate videos that actually explain
pretty in-depth what's going on with the
renovation that i was doing also last
year i did a renovation on the north
side of my house and that involved more
of a sloped area there's some options
there if you're dealing with something
like that and i show kind of what i did
on that section as well
so there's two playlists there full
renovation playlist if you're interested
in that process
and then also i did a podcast here with
my good friend ryan just this past week
on preparing for a renovation
we just recorded another one on the
actual steps for renovation
what you should be thinking about and
some of the in-depth information both of
these are around an hour and a half long
so they are a bit more detailed and they
are going to take a little more time to
check out if you want to do that so i
know they're a little bit longer but
throw on that podcast maybe and listen
while you're doing something else
that'd be a great option for you to get
some more info there also what's coming
up here is i'm going to be showing all
the rest of the steps here on this
renovation on this yard we're going to
be getting to this very soon that the
weather is looking like
it's kind of in an ideal section now
that we actually concede maybe a bit
sooner this year
than normally i would have in the past
so i'll be showing you all of that
coming up
and check out those resources there for
more info on all these processes and
previous videos that i've made
thanks so much for watching this one
we'll see you next time
