Any lawn care junkies out there?

[theterminator93]

I'm a cheapskate to be sure - I want nice things but I hate paying other people for them unless absolutely necessary. As such I prefer to do as much as I can - hence why I started wrenching on cars. The same applies for home ownership and landscaping, and lawncare is no exception. I very much have a "keep up with the Joneses" complex regarding the yard, so I handle all the weeds, fertilizer, mowing etc., rather than paying someone else to do it for me. We're coming out of winter now and the lawn is almost ready for its first mow, so now the time for me to address a longstanding problem I've had (but only truly identified about a year ago).

When we moved in 7 years ago the lawn was a disaster - neglected, weedy, thin, etc. It took a few years of consistent fertilizing, weeding, overseeding etc. but the lawn is mostly remediated now, with relatively few thin patches and weeds. Any weeds that do appear I just spot treat with a selective herbicide and it usually dies off within a few days. Except for.... poa trivialis, aka rough bluegrass.

I identified it last year when I noticed more of it popping up throughout the lawn, crowding out and killing the fescue/ryegrass/bluegrass mix the rest of the lawn primarily consists of. It's an annoying shade of light green, grows faster than the rest of the lawn, has a very thick, carpety texture on top and the base is a rough, woody and ratty mess of ick. Altogether I must have at least 1000-1500 ft² of it throughout the yard, and I want it gone.

I was reading up on it last fall and the general consensus was that in order to kill it, you need to use a nonselective herbicide like glyphosphate - but that's been phased out because of the huge RoundUp cancer scandal a year or two ago. The alternative is to go out and dig it up by hand. With probably 1500 ft² of that crap... not happening. There are other nonselective herbicides out there, but I got to thinking... do I really want these huge patches of dead grass for several months? Not really. Wifey encouraged me to look for alternatives, so I did more research.

I found this self-proclaimed expert on poa and his recommendations were not to try killing it with herbicides, but to dry it out to kill it. Apparently trying to control it via herbicides alone is not very successful because the stolons can live for over a year even if they're isolated from the former plant, so it will often come back after a few months. Moreover, its roots are very shallow meaning it requires fairly consistent surface moisture to thrive. It also can't take the summer heat so it grows (and is most susceptible to being controlled) in the cooler months of spring. Finally, the selective herbicide Tenacity (a.k.a. mesotrione) has been known to kill/weaken it when applied during the cooler growing season in early spring. Rather than treating the symptom that is poa trivialis by killing it with herbicides, treat the cause to make it harder for it to come back: excessive surface moisture.

With this information, I've curated a bit of a regimen to try and kill off this crap over the next year or so...

1. Spot treat the areas with high concentrations of poa using mesotrione
2. After a couple weeks, dethatch (to remove weakened poa and its roots/stolons)
3. Core aerate and amend the soil with 1/8" of sand (this helps dry out the top layer of soil, making it harder for poa to grow)
4. Reapply mesotrione if necessary to continue to kill off the remaining poa (if it proves effective)
5. Adjust the irrigation schedule to water more deeply and infrequently (contributes to drier soil where the poa's roots are)

Anyway, if anyone else around here cares about this kind of thing, I figured I'd share the current battle plan and get feedback. This is as much just me rambling to keep all my thoughts organized as it is misery looking for company.

 

[Zep5.0]

Kudos to you for continuing the good fight. I just signed up for TruGreen after fighting violet for a few years, along with clover. I'm hoping that a year of it for $390 puts me back in a place to handle it moving forward.

 

[Vicinity]

New to land ownership. This place had(has) a dandelion problem that expanded madly. I want to see how far I can get by without chemistry. Pulling them out was an uphill battle. I'm trying to yank the heads off right when I see yellow. I've read here and there that dandelions might resolve themselves over a few years without chemicals, I guess I will see. Here is a shot from the drought that exacerbated the spread.



Thistles are the weed that will probably have me resorting to bombing. Luckily theres none in the backyard. Neighbor recommended "Crossbow" killer right on the roots, whatever that is.

Is this the poa that haunts you? Here is something popping up in the lawn, which I hadn't imagined would be an issue until this post. They *are* popping up in the garden beds, which is a pisser



Will starving the poa of sunlight held your situation, or will it lay dormant and survive?

Just high level thinking here but poisoning a biome should be the last resort. I dont want it to alter myself, pets, other animals, and of course not the good established plants. There is a cosmic relationship plants have with eachother that mankind doesn't understand. If I had my way, I'd have a moss lawn

 

[Fred Smailes]

My wife is a dandelion hater!! So we have professionals come 4 times a year to control them and fertrlize the grass. It wouldn't be so bad but we live rural and neighbors on both sides don't own mowers let's alone control weeds. Me, I spend almost 3 hrs, twice a week with the Wacker/edger and my John Deere riding mower.

 

[theterminator93]

Will starving the poa of sunlight held your situation, or will it lay dormant and survive?

Just high level thinking here but poisoning a biome should be the last resort. I dont want it to alter myself, pets, other animals, and of course not the good established plants. There is a cosmic relationship plants have with eachother that mankind doesn't understand. If I had my way, I'd have a moss lawn

Funny you mention that, my MIL is having someone come out to convert her lawn into something with naturally low-height, low-maintenance turf. She's mentioned clover and some other species I can't recall exactly. I'm actually going to try the selective herbicide to avoid indiscriminately killing everything in the vicinity of the poa; if I were to lay giant black plastic over it, it'd certainly kill everything, including any desirable grass still hanging on. The other option that I could consider is renting a sod cutter, but the last time I did that I didn't have a good way to get rid of the cuttings, and there would be quite a bit of it.

These pictures aren't of my poa triv, but they show what it looks like - generally speaking.





I have a couple areas with huge swaths of it on the north side of the house (which makes sense, given it is in shade all day and much less prone to surface dryness), not unlike this poor soul.



I'm hoping the top dressing of sand helps get the moisture down to the roots where it's needed. Less watering, less runoff of nutrients, less weeds... wins all around.

On an unrelated note, the last time I did anything major to the lawn was about 4-1/2 years ago; I dethatched, aerated, spread 1/2" of compost then overseeded. That was a lot of work... but it was the single most transformative (collective) action that revitalized the yard. The following spring, the yard never looked better. (Though you can pretty clearly see the bright green patches of poa, as well as my neighbor's mudhole of a lawn and the plentiful dandelions it harbors )

 

[Vicinity]

Ah so the shade of its green is a big turn off especially in patches, and the growing speed. I wonder if theres enough diversity of species that can blend so that the patching is seamless

Wow Fred I love the weeping trees!

 

[Fred Smailes]

Funny you mention that, my MIL is having someone come out to convert her lawn into something with naturally low-height, low-maintenance turf. She's mentioned clover and some other species I can't recall exactly. I'm actually going to try the selective herbicide to avoid indiscriminately killing everything in the vicinity of the poa; if I were to lay giant black plastic over it, it'd certainly kill everything, including any desirable grass still hanging on. The other option that I could consider is renting a sod cutter, but the last time I did that I didn't have a good way to get rid of the cuttings, and there would be quite a bit of it.

These pictures aren't of my poa triv, but they show what it looks like - generally speaking.

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I have a couple areas with huge swaths of it on the north side of the house (which makes sense, given it is in shade all day and much less prone to surface dryness), not unlike this poor soul.
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I'm hoping the top dressing of sand helps get the moisture down to the roots where it's needed. Less watering, less runoff of nutrients, less weeds... wins all around.

On an unrelated note, the last time I did anything major to the lawn was about 4-1/2 years ago; I dethatched, aerated, spread 1/2" of compost then overseeded. That was a lot of work... but it was the single most transformative (collective) action that revitalized the yard. The following spring, the yard never looked better. (Though you can pretty clearly see the bright green patches of poa, as well as my neighbor's mudhole of a lawn and the plentiful dandelions it harbors )

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Beautiful place!