Total Lawn Renovation

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Total renovation involves killing the existing lawn and tilling before reseeding. To accomplish a total renovation, you will need to use Remuda on the entire area during the beginning of August for a total kill of wild Bermuda grass and certain other weeds such as Nimblewill. This can take up to 3 weeks. Seeding of totally renovated sun lawns is ideally accomplished in very early September. If a shady lawn is not so badly weed infested as to require total kill with Remuda, total renovation can be accomplished as soon as the soil is workable in very early spring. With modern varieties of lawn grasses, a good lawn can usually be established in existing soil without major amendment. However, there are some places where unamended soil will not support a good lawn:

• Sandy soils that are so porous that they dry out quickly and nutrients just leach through them.

• Extremely compacted soils; usually caused by construction equipment.

• Hard, stony soil. Usually these soils are made up of small stones like gravel or more likely broken pieces of shale with little organic matter between the particles.
When these conditions exist the lawn must be established by the old fashioned tilling method:

1. Do a soil test and determine how much lime is needed to change soil PH level to approximately 6.5.

2. Kill the existing grass (if any) and weeds with Remuda and wait 3 weeks. Be extremely thorough, especially if you have wild Bermuda grass.

3. Apply Espoma 100% Organic Lawn Food or Turf Trust at double the recommended rate. That is, use a 10,000 sq. ft. bag for 5,000 sq. ft.

4. Apply the lime.

5. Till as deep as the tiller will go (at least 6 inches) and remove any large rocks.

6. Spread 8 bags of good compost, such as Chesapeake Green or Compro, per 100 square foot.

7. Till again.

8. Rake to make the soil totally level. In areas that have at least a half to a full day of sun, apply Black Beauty grass seed at the rate of 10-12 lbs per 1,000 sq. ft. In shady areas, apply Shady Nooks™ grass seed at the rate of 3lbs per 1,000 sq. ft.

9. Cover the seed to the depth of 1/4 inch by raking in with the back of a metal lawn rake. That is, you should hold the rake upside down with the tines pointed skyward.

10. If there is danger of erosion, use salt hay or a manufactured product such as a seed protector mat, “green mulch” or Curlex. Do not use regular hay or straw because of the danger of weed seeds.

11. To germinate, new grass must be kept moist. To start with, it has no roots, so deep watering is not essential - just five minutes, morning and evening. On a really hot windy day, a third watering at noon may be required. As the grass germinates and sends down roots, deeper watering will be needed. When the new grass is one inch tall, double the watering time to ten minutes and gradually increase to twenty minutes six to eight weeks after planting.

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