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Today is the 1st day of Spring on the Calendar…
Time to step it up a notch although the night time temps are gonna be up and down for another couple weeks…________________________
OK… Got everything in those beds with the “Free Dirt”…
about 100lbs of mineral compounds and 200lbs of SOM && OM per cuyd…Need some study heat and a little rain to get that cooking…
Will test it again and let ya’ll know what really happened…
Wanna start planting those around 4/5-4/15…________________________
Stick…You’d better lay that Zoysia sod tight as a manhole cover and push the sh#t out of it to keep that ‘mudagrass down…
I’d put 2lbs per 1000 sqft of MAP on the ground before laying the sod… plus your lime and NPK… Then hit it a couple of times with a weak batch of liquid N as soon as you get new growth… gonna take 5 nights in a row at 60*F+ before anything happens on tops… but the roots will start growing as soon as they hit the ground, if installed correctly…Then tell your yardman he fired if you don’t see him washing his mover BEFORE he mows your yard…
________________________RT … are those ‘maters of yours “Red” yet ???
#NCSU-North Carolina's #1 FOOTBALL school!Today is the 1st day of Spring on the Calendar…
Time to step it up a notch although the night time temps are gonna be up and down for another couple weeks…________________________
OK… Got everything in those beds with the “Free Dirt”…
about 100lbs of mineral compounds and 200lbs of SOM && OM per cuyd…Need some study heat and a little rain to get that cooking…
Will test it again and let ya’ll know what really happened…
Wanna start planting those around 4/5-4/15…An experience/knowledge with this stuff that Supersod recommends that you lay down before the zoysia sod or seed? Looks like a mix of fertilizer/compost to me. And thus far, no yard man messes with my yard. Wonder how much an illegal would understand anyway of the “wash your freakin’ mower Jose!
________________________
Stick…You’d better lay that Zoysia sod tight as a manhole cover and push the sh#t out of it to keep that ‘mudagrass down…
I’d put 2lbs per 1000 sqft of MAP on the ground before laying the sod… plus your lime and NPK… Then hit it a couple of times with a weak batch of liquid N as soon as you get new growth… gonna take 5 nights in a row at 60*F+ before anything happens on tops… but the roots will start growing as soon as they hit the ground if installed correctly…Then tell your yardman he fired if you don’t see him washing his mower BEFORE he mows your yard…I’m not prematurely jumping the gun on doing this though cause I’m gonna spray and kill, and kill, and kill bermuda and then till and rake, and may kill again…
________________________RT … are those ‘maters of yours “Red” yet ???
"Whomp 'em, Up, Side the Head"!
Stick… mowing your own grass is the best thing you can do… for two reasons…
now… sell that rider and get you a push reel mower…Warm season grass SEED takes two whole seasons to get a good stand… that old ‘muda grass is gonna eat that alive…just bite the bullet and buy the Zoysia sod…
once that sod is rooted in good…. take that Zoysia down to about 1″…get some sand and topdress / smooth out the low spots…
turn the irrigation on and make that damn yard look like a fairway at Augusta National from the street…As far as that stuff SS sells… would need a soil test to determine if, and how much, Stable Organic Matter you need…
“compost” is highly variable stuff == you pay for what you get… except the cheap stuff ain’t worth buying… regardless—none of it works right if it’s not tilled in the ground…there’s a few other tricks… call me or email, you got both ##s…
BOTB
#NCSU-North Carolina's #1 FOOTBALL school!Atrazine will fry the fescue but you must apply in Dec-early Feb.
Taking Bermuda out of zoysia would be a stretch.
Fusillade maybe?
McCallum
I took Bermuda OUT on about 15acres back on the Sod Farm… Easy…
two crops of wheat and beans… back to back…
sh#t WILL NOT grow in the shade…Now in the yard… the best you can do is … when it’s just getting going is to mow it low at 3/4″ and hit it with roundup…then till it up and put the fertilizer and SOM in… then cover it with the Zoysia sod… just make sure… no hole and no gaps…
IF the Zoysia is tight… the Bermuda won’t make it back up to the top…
Otherwise, Most Bermuda in Zoysia occurs when the MOWER leaves the stolons on the top and the stupid sh#t grows down…
———————-Stick, I can get you a good discount on a good soil test… better than the ASCS – 1979 versions…
#NCSU-North Carolina's #1 FOOTBALL school!I took Bermuda OUT on about 15acres back on the Sod Farm… Easy…
two crops of wheat and beans… back to back…
sh#t WILL NOT grow in the shade…Now in the yard… the best you can do is … when it’s just getting going is to mow it low at 3/4? and hit it with roundup…then till it up and put the fertilizer and SOM in… then cover it with the Zoysia sod… just make sure… no hole and no gaps…
IF the Zoysia is tight… the Bermuda won’t make it back up to the top…
Otherwise, Most Bermuda in Zoysia occurs when the MOWER leaves the stolons on the top and the stupid sh#t grows down…
I’m going to do a combo of Zenith sod and seed. Since I’m doing it myself, I have not decided on how much of each yet. My thought is to really cover the worst areas with the sod like you say, but I do want to experiment with the seed in the side and back yard and I don’t get that much bermuda in the back…It’s more of the crap blowing across the street from one of my neighbor’s that started this. He killed his fescue and put in bermuda and I’ve been fighting it ever since. I thought about mixing seed varieties with Zenith and another one that grows roots even deeper.
Tell me about the soil test. I’m not far from the Clempson office in York, SC, but I have not had one done…I’m not in a huge rush because it’s too cool and too windy right now to deal with spraying Roundup. Will probably start spraying in a couple of weeks, wait a couple of weeks to see how that’s working and hit the other places again before starting to till. It will probably be mid to late May before I actually start sodding and seeding.
———————-Stick, I can get you a good discount on a good soil test… better than the ASCS – 1979 versions…
"Whomp 'em, Up, Side the Head"!
Any negative on adding horse manure? Doesn’t smell like cow guano!!!
"Whomp 'em, Up, Side the Head"!
The idea that the diehard MOST State/Gamecock Man I know would consider doing bizness with the Tiggers is incomprehensible and abhorrent to me…
Marketing guys got everybody’s heads messed up these days….
Manure and Mulch are black and pretty but they ain’t compost…
Compost ain’t Humus…If it ain’t Humus / Colloidal / Stable Organic Matter it doesn’t count…
There’s a minimum of a 10/1 ratio between the two and it takes years, not days to fully decompose…Even longer if you ain’t got soil microbes in abundant quantities in all four categories…
Besides you don’t know what steroids and hormones and other stuff they fed them horses…
Yeah… I can get biological tests and tests for toxic stuff but that’s overkill for a yard job….
Just send me 1-lb of dirt and enough $$ for some cold beer….
POP!!!
#NCSU-North Carolina's #1 FOOTBALL school!Hey bill,
I said take bermuda out of zoysia.
Had that issue in the early 90s. Fusillade was the only option and not a good one.
But one more for you, the operation I managed was peaches, tobacco and sod. Late August early September, about 300 acres of tobacco land would open up that had historically been drilled with rye. So I throw out the idea of seeding fescue sod but one snag, tobacco roots can’t be cut up and they would hold up the netting.
First 50 acres I gathered enough amigos and we picked up any tobacco roots left, threw them on trailers and dumped them. After that I dug a 4 point moldboard plow out of a briar patch, put it behind a 1066 International and buried the damn other 250 acres.
Easily the most profitable crop rotation in the state.
Tobacco-fescue sod (gone by June)-beans-rye cover-tobacco-fescue sod-etc
McCallum
^everything is late this Spring…
The “moldboard/turn plow” — a little used relic of the past!
A good Field conditioner, which was unheard of back in the day, would have been faster…But your story is a good example of what “Farming” used to be…
Nowadays … all the “new” farmers learn “Farming” out of a book or online, not in the field, not at the barn, not at the store…
#NCSU-North Carolina's #1 FOOTBALL school!The idea that the diehard MOST State/Gamecock Man I know would consider doing bizness with the Tiggers is incomprehensible and abhorrent to me…
Marketing guys got everybody’s heads messed up these days….
Manure and Mulch are black and pretty but they ain’t compost…
Compost ain’t Humus…If it ain’t Humus / Colloidal / Stable Organic Matter it doesn’t count…
There’s a minimum of a 10/1 ratio between the two and it takes years, not days to fully decompose…Even longer if you ain’t got soil microbes in abundant quantities in all four categories…
Besides you don’t know what steroids and hormones and other stuff they fed them horses…
Yeah… I can get biological tests and tests for toxic stuff but that’s overkill for a yard job….
Just send me 1-lb of dirt and enough $$ for some cold beer….
POP!!!
PM me a mailing address…I didn’t know it was you…and granted, I don’t trust people who wear Urange.
"Whomp 'em, Up, Side the Head"!
re: sod – I was gifted some sod last summer (made friends with developers building nearby) and renovated a small area (~200sq.ft.) that had been a barren dustbowl. I hand removed about 3″ of “soil”, tilled the remainder and added to it with a mix more suitable for growing sod. The grass looked great, and seems to be coming back fine. There are a few weeds and bluebells poking through now, but I can stave them off.
Duly inspired, I’m considering replacing larger areas. In the front about 600sq ft, in the back as much as 2000 sq ft. RoundUp is banned here, and hand removing that much old crappy grass/crabgrass/weeds/moss would be a daunting task. What about using a sod cutter? I’ve never used one before but it looks like they cut pretty deep. A neighbor has a nice sized pickup and we have a “tip” nearby where I can dump the old soil/sod for free.
Any other ideas?
I’m slowly expanding my garden areas and would take the opportunity to do that at the same time. The regional sod farms have a nice selection of grasses including drought resistant varieties that require much less water, which is good since we’re on watering restrictions every summer.
Side note: there is a lot of new home construction here, I see sod installed all the time. But, more often than not they don’t do anything to the original soil. At one project they left the construction traffic compacted earth there, didn’t even clean up the leftover crap including glass, metal, plastic you name it and had about 2″ of topsoil (not the proper sod mix) slung on top. Of course it looked good short term, but this spring it’s patchy as hell and it will have to be redone at some point. Lazy. And that was at a house selling for over $1m.
Time for Flonase.
McCallum
Is that straight up, or cut with Fresca?
Stick.. check your inbox…
Got it…Will get that soil test sample out to you next week…with a couple of free Clempson Research soil sample bags!
I’m also going to send you a free lightly used book on Tobacco Diseases by an NC State prof from the mid 70’s era. You can use it as a door stop or cut open the pages and hide you concealed Glock inside. He gave it to me during my brief stint in the NC tobacco seed breeding industry. Until then, I thought Black Shank was something that Charlie Sifford did with a golf ball.
"Whomp 'em, Up, Side the Head"!
Time for Flonase.
McCallum
Is that straight up, or cut with Fresca?
No joke, the pollen this time of year drives me bonkers!
"Whomp 'em, Up, Side the Head"!
^everything is late this Spring…
The “moldboard/turn plow” — a little used relic of the past!
A good Field conditioner, which was unheard of back in the day, would have been faster…But your story is a good example of what “Farming” used to be…
Nowadays … all the “new” farmers learn “Farming” out of a book or online, not in the field, not at the barn, not at the store…
I had to look that one up…Seen it in use before, but didn’t know what you called it.https://www.deere.com/en_US/products/equipment/tillage_equipment/primary_tillage/moldboard_plows/moldboard_plows.page
"Whomp 'em, Up, Side the Head"!
One of the funny things ’bout farm implements is that when you go down the road the name of things change…
Moldboard plow
Turn plowback home… the top plow was called a bottom plow…
In the Piedmont… this is called a “harrow”…
Down East …. it’s called a disc…
#NCSU-North Carolina's #1 FOOTBALL school!Ply… What’s the name’s of those drought tolerance grasses ???
The only one I’ve heard of commercially is “Buffalograss”…
Yes … there are cases where $1M houses have cheap yards…
Most builders think they are landscapers, but fail… because they don’t want to spend $10sqft on the yards….
They do the minimum to get the CO and then leave the mess to the new owners…————————–
RE: Crabgrass…1. Crabgrass only spreads by self-seeding. New Seeds fall in late July and August. Seeds can stay in the ground a couple of years…
2. Crabgrass is a weak competitor with other grasses and plants… and does not like shade…
On a small area — 600 sqft… spot spraying might be an option…
If something ‘safer’ is needed… 20% Food Grade Acetic Acid ( White Vinegar) cut 1 to 1 with clean water should do the job. Spraying on a dry sunny day is required. Two times around the track about 5-7 days apart when the crabgrass first comes out ’bout 2″ tall…
Then make sure you check it monthly with spot spraying…
There are some pre-emergents, but they are iffy and in the South it’s too late for that…
———————-
Good turf needs minimum of 4″ of soil – pH 6.5 with balanced minerals exp Fe, Mn, Zn & Cu… plus ’bout 1/2lb of P & 1/2lb of K per 1000sqft at the beginning of the season … then during the growing season 1lb of N per 1000sqft every 4 weeks or 4” of rain, whichever comes first… DO NOT BAG clippings…
Good turf on good soil == minimum problems with crabgrass and weeds…
#NCSU-North Carolina's #1 FOOTBALL school!I like msma for crabgrass. But If your neighbors don’t like Roundup, telling them that you are spraying arsenic may not be a good idea. You would be amazed how much of this stuff is used on hay off label. Never tried it myself, but I hear it can lead to some issues with planting livestock.
Bill, we call the top one a breaking plow and the bottom a disk harrow about an hour east of Raleigh. We use them to break land and disk land.
^Yep! I’ve done both bigtime…
and back on the sod farm — we sprayed gallons of MSMA — mostly with good results, but I’d wouldn’t do that in a yard…Now here’s some “modern agriculture” that speaks about plowing….
That bottom plow, on my old Big Blue – Ford TN10 at 110hp… you could pull 4 – about 6ft wide – so slow, you could fall asleep going across a 20acre field… just don’t hit a big rock…
With the cutting / offset disc – you could move up a gear and pull 10.5ft wide…
With the Field Conditioner – move up another gear and pull 15ft wide…Then consider this… Good Soil is 25% AIR….
The bottom plow removes 80% of the AIR in the soil…
The disc removes 40% of the AIR in the soil…
The conditioner removes 20% of the AIR in the soil…Don’t take long to figure out what to hook up when with those numbers, does it?
Now this is the implement that IMHO, is the most underutilized…
just need to change those points out for wide vibrating ones..
#NCSU-North Carolina's #1 FOOTBALL school!
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