Sedge and Nutgrass Experiment – No Perceptible Change in the Molasses Section

Sedge Experiment on July 4

I haven’t seen any difference between the section of sedge treated with the molasses mixture and the control section. This picture is from July 4th. I’ve been applying a 1/2 cup of molasses per gallon every week since the last update.  I didn’t repaint the lines in this picture, but the treated section of sedge is to the left and the control section is to the right.  You can also see that the sections treated by Sedgehammer and Image Kills Nutsedge continue to slowly fill in with bermuda grass.  I’ll continue the molasses treatment until the beginning of August.  If there is no change then I’m going to hit the sedge with the rest of the Sedgehammer.


Bestlawn.info Soil Conditioner and Kelp Help Experiment on July 4

 

I also have an update on the soil conditioner and kelp help experiment. This picture is also from July 4th. There is no visual difference in how fast the bermuda is filling in between the treated and control sections. I’m probably going to call this one off soon and just start treating the entire area with the soil conditioner and kelp help.


Sedge and Nutgrass Experiment – Upping the Molasses

Sedge Experiment on June 23

Checking in on my sedge treatment experiment this week, the molasses treated sedge is still going strong.  I took this week’s picture in full daylight, so you can clearly see that the SedgeHammer and Image Kills Nutsedge sections are sedge-free, while in the molasses treated area between the white and black lines the sedge continues to thrive, just like the control area to the right of the black line.  I re-read Dirt Doctor article on treating sedge with molasses and now I think I haven’t been using enough molasses mixture.  The instructions say to drench the sedge.  I’ve probably only been using a quarter of a gallon sprayed over the area with my sprayer.  So, this past weekend I mixed up a full gallon of water with a 1/2 cup of molasses and poured the entire contents on the experimental plot.  I’ll continue drenching the sedge like this weekly for a few more weeks to see if that much molasses mixture starts to have an effect on the sedge.

 

Bestlawn.info Soil Conditioner and Kelp Help Experiment on June 23

Turning to the topic of if my use of the Bestlawn.info Soil and Kelp Help mixture has caused the bermuda grass to fill in faster, look at this recent picture. The treated area is roughly in the right half of the picture and the untreated area is in the left half of the picture. You can compare this to the starting picture from about a month ago below. So far I haven’t detected any differences, but temperatures have only recently warmed up enough to where the bermuda grass really kicks in growing. I’ll be continuing this experiment for the remainder of the summer.

Best Lawn Soil Conditioner and Kelp Help Experiment on May 20

Raising the Mowing Height as Temperatures Rise and Bermuda Grass Grows Faster

Scalped too low on turn

Looking greener

With daytime highs consistently hitting the upper 80s and lower 90s, my bermuda grass is growing faster, and I’m cutting off more than a 1/3 of the grass blade when I mow it, leaving the lawn looking a little brown and scalped after a mowing.  To stop from cutting off more than 1/3 of the blade when mowing, I could either mow more often or raise the mowing height.  Since I’m constrained on mowing frequency by real life, I raised the mowing height from 1 3/8″ to 1 3/4″ today.  Truthfully, I should have raised the height a week or two ago, but I wanted to keep mowing short to encourage the bermuda to fill in some bare spots.  The first picture is from today but shows you how a prior mowing scalped part of the yard.

The second picture is of how the yard looked after today’s mowing at 1 3/4″.  It’s definitely looking greener.  The diagonal lines are the wheel tracks from the lawn mower.  If anyone know how to eliminate these let me know.

Experiment on How to Treat Sedge and Nutgrass in Lawns – SedgeHammer Does The Job

Sedge Experiment on June 17th

Here is picture of how the section of my backyard that has a sedge problem looked today.  All the sedge in the the SedgeHammer (find it on eBay) and Image Kills Nutsedge sections has been eliminated.  It’s hard to see that in the picture because that’s the portion that’s shaded.  About 2 1/2 weeks after the May 20th treatment is when the sedge really started to die and turn black.  The black, dead sedge has decomposed and now the SedgeHammer and Image Kills Nutsedge section just have a few wisps of bermuda grass in them that will hopefully fill in more this summer.

The section I treated with molasses, which is between the white and black stripe in the picture, looks the same as the control section, which is the section to the right of the black stripe.  I’m going to start weekly molasses treatments.  Real life intruded and I wasn’t able to treat with molasses as often as I would have liked over the last month.

I also made another Bestlawn.info Soil Conditioner and Kelp Help treatment today.  And finally I put down some Moss Out granules in some areas that had moss and algae.

June Fertilizer Drop

Alfalfa FieldBermuda grass loves nitrogen.  I am on staying on track to fertilize once a month.  As I did in my last fertilizer drop, I put down a commercial fertilizer at a rate of a little less than 1 pound of nitrogen per 1000 square feet.  I finished the bag of  Lesco 24-0-11 I bought last month from Home Depot, and also used a Lesco 39-0-0 slow release I purchased from John Deere Landscapes.

John Deere Landscapes purchased Lesco and now serves as a main distributor of the Lesco products.  I am fortunate that there are several JDL locations close to me.  I did have to order the 2 bags and have them transferred from another JDL location, which took a couple of days, but saved me a drive out to the other location.  With roughly 7,000 square feet of lawn, these 2 bags will last me 6 applications.  That doesn’t give me a full pound of nitrogen per 1000 square feet, but I’m supplementing with grains.

This month I wasn’t able to get soybean meal so I used alfalfa pellets.  The thing I don’t like about the pellets is that they lay on your lawn until you water them, which causes them to expand and become brittle.  Then, with the next mulch mowing they get broken up and absorbed into the lawn.

So far this season my care has been:

An Experiment on How to Treat Sedge and Nutgrass in Lawns

Sedge Experiment on May 20th

My backyard has a sedge problem. You can see the bright neon green color of the sedge from a mile away. Sedges like wet conditions, so unsurprisingly the sedge grows best where the water tends to collect in a mini-valley in my backyard. I’ve decided to do an experiment to find the best way to treat the sedge. The contenders are:

  • SedgeHammer (find it on eBay) – I’ve heard very good things about this herbicide on the lawn care forums
  • Image Kills Nutsedge – I’ve heard that this works well too.  When I went to buy some I overheard a woman complaining that she had used it on her lawn last year with no effect
  • Molasses – I found this method on the Dirt Doctor site.  1/4 to 1/2 a cup of molasses per gallon of water

In the picture you’ll see that I divided the expanse of sedge in my backyard into 4 sections.  Far left was treated with SedgeHammer, middle left was treated with Image, middle right was treated with molasses and the far right wasn’t treated as it’s the control.  Now I wait and see how effective the different treatments are.

 

Best Lawn Soil Conditioner and Kelp Help Experiment

My second experiment is to see if the Soil Conditioner and Kelp Help mixture from Bestlawn.info helps my bermuda grass fill in faster.  The mixture already has many beneficial properties for the soil, so if it helps the bermuda fill in better that’s just a bonus.  In the picture, the right half has been sprayed with the mixture while the left half has not.

I’ll post updates periodically this summer.

So far this season my care has been:

Don’t Violate the 1/3 Rule and Keep Your Bermuda Grass Green

Black & Decker GR280C - blade in situI can no longer mow at 1″ without breaking the 1/3 rule.  The 1/3 rule says you don’t cut more than 1/3 the length of the blade off when you mow.  On my bermuda I can tell that I’m cutting too much off because the lawn looks brown and scalped after mowing.  All the green part of the grass blade is being cut off, leaving only the browner portion of the grass blade.

Fortunately, bermuda recovers from this very quickly and greens up again nicely.  With warmer temperatures now settling in, the bermuda is growing faster.  To not violate the 1/3 rule and mow at 1″, I’d have to cut the lawn when it reached 1.5″, but the bermuda is growing that 1/2 inch every couple of days.

So I’ve raised the cutting height to 1 3/8″ and started mowing more frequently.  After I made the first mowing of this season back in March, I was mowing once a week.  (March was particularly warm this year otherwise I could have mowed less frequently.)  I  slowly upped my mowing frequency to about every 4 or 5 days.  That’s not going to cut it, so to speak, so I’m going to a frequency of every 3 1/2 days.  Saturday morning and Tuesday evening.  That’s as often as I’m able to mow with all my other obligations.

Eventually, when the late June and July heat kick in the bermuda will really take off.  Since I can’t mow more frequently I’ll have to raise the mowing height again.

So far this season my care has been:

Battle With Weeds Continues

Clover

Clover by Paul Horner under CC Atribution

Tonight I sprayed the second treatment for clover and oxalis.  It’s been a couple of weeks since the first treatment, and I used the same Bonide Chickweed Clover & Oxalis Killer.  The clover isn’t going away as quickly as the broadleaf weeds that I treated for last month.  I again spot sprayed for the clover.  I have not done any blanket spraying of a post-emergent herbicide and hope I don’t have to.

I also spot sprayed a few other persistent weeds with a solution I mixed of Bayer Advanced All-in-One Lawn Weed & Crabgrass Killer.  It has the same active ingredients as the Weed-B-Gon I used in prior treatments, but in slightly different percentages.  I doubt that it will be any more effective, but we’ll see.

So far this season my care has been:

Continuing the Commercial and Organic Fertilizer Program

Today I put down a bit of commercial fertilizer at a rate of a little less than 1 pound of nitrogen per 1000 square feet.  The only heavier nitrogen fertilizer I could find that was close was some Lesco 24-0-11 at Home Depot.  I used about 3 pounds of this per 1000 square feet, which provides .24 X 3 = .72 pounds of nitrogen per 1000 square feet.  I followed that up with almost 20 pounds of soybean meal per 1000 square feet.

So far this season my care has been:

 

Getting Rid of the Luck in the Lawn

Clover

I’ve treated the lawn for broadleaf and grassy weeds with good effects, but the herbicide I used didn’t do too well on the clover in my yard.  That’s okay, as sometimes you have to get a specialty herbicide to treat very specific weeds.  The important thing is to first eliminate as many weed varieties as possible so you get to the point where you can use a very targeted herbicide with spot spraying.

A couple of days ago I mixed up a solution of Bonide Chickweed Clover & Oxalis Killer in my sprayer and went after the clover and what looks like oxalis.  I hope to have good results in a few weeks.

So far this season my care has been: