About to go all Hank Hill over here.

[wils]

Howdy y'all. I've had my property for a couple years now and it's getting time to start in on the lawn.

I'm working on a couple acres here. Current landscape is all field grass and weeds. The ground here is pretty much limestone and granite rock, there's some soil but any sort of trenching requires a rock saw. Tilling is out of the question, it'd just get beaten up. Here's a link to a few pictures that has the ground in it. https://photos.app.goo.gl/sajXwLKmkVvY6HRR9

Research shows zoysia is going to be my best bet here, Central Texas just west of Austin. Need high drought resistance and have lots of nice oaks (shade).

Okay so how do I go about this? I'm going to start with about 6lbs of seed and target a couple of sections. It's getting time to start here so I've got to get moving.

Should I do a 3 and 1 first to try and murder some of these weeds? Since I can't really till is the seed going to take hold? Would it be better to fertilize some and then seed?

I've got no idea what I'm doing here, but I'm willing to put in the work.

This is going to be a multi-year process probably, I'd like to come up with a schedule of what I should be doing and when I should be doing it. I just mowed real close yesterday (scalped).

Thanks y'all!

 

[mechanic mark]

The time to aerate & put grass seed out is in the Fall months, September-October is germination season. Some folks put it out now early Spring. I would use a weed & feed fertilizer first & let it rain to soak it in then use pelletized lime & let rain soak it in to bring soil PH up. I would then put out grass seed. Good luck, let us know how it goes, thanks, Mark

Scotts lawn care program - Bing

Intelligent search from Bing makes it easier to quickly find what you’re looking for and rewards you.

www.bing.com

 

[bertsmobile1]

Lots of oaks = lots of nice leaves to make compost with so put in some big compost bins & start making it all summer.
If you collect the grass and compost it with a good amount of chicken manure it will kill off the seeds and use this to start to build up the soil levels.
Drought tollerance comes from having a lot of organic material in the soil to hold moisture.
Lots of charcoal is also good
If there are lawn mowing companies who pay to dump their clippings take them for free and make more compost
Under the oaks dump a few tons of bark mulch and put some benches there to enjoy a cool beer in the summer shade .
Spray anything that comes up through the bark mulch and in a couple of years you will kill off the weedy grass and have built up a couple of inches of humus over your poor soils.
Have a talk to the local arbourist and see where they dump their leaves and ground up branches.
often you can get these for free and the high amounts woody chips deplete the soil of nitrogen making it difficult for most plants to grow, thus again surpress the weeds, for free while you are having that nice cold beer.
Again after a few years tip some compost over the top add a lot of urea to bring up the nitrogen levels & then plant your grass .

 

[wils]

The time to aerate & put grass seed out is in the Fall months, September-October is germination season. Some folks put it out now early Spring. I would use a weed & feed fertilizer first & let it rain to soak it in then use pelletized lime & let rain soak it in to bring soil PH up. I would then put out grass seed. Good luck, let us know how it goes, thanks, Mark

Scotts lawn care program - Bing

Intelligent search from Bing makes it easier to quickly find what you’re looking for and rewards you.

www.bing.com

Very good info. I like that Scotts builder program you linked, exactly what somebody likes me needs to get started.

I hear Zoysia is an early spring grass, the builder said the same thing. I'm not one to argue about something I don't know much about though. At this point I should probably be doing both spring and fall.

Okay have a little bit of a plan to get started... wait for some rain (to soften up the land) and try to aerate, put down some weed and feed next rain, put down some lime next rain, and then seed and water after that. It's been raining about 1/2" once a week lately.

 

[wils]

Lots of oaks = lots of nice leaves to make compost with so put in some big compost bins & start making it all summer.
If you collect the grass and compost it with a good amount of chicken manure it will kill off the seeds and use this to start to build up the soil levels.
Drought tollerance comes from having a lot of organic material in the soil to hold moisture.
Lots of charcoal is also good
If there are lawn mowing companies who pay to dump their clippings take them for free and make more compost
Under the oaks dump a few tons of bark mulch and put some benches there to enjoy a cool beer in the summer shade .
Spray anything that comes up through the bark mulch and in a couple of years you will kill off the weedy grass and have built up a couple of inches of humus over your poor soils.
Have a talk to the local arbourist and see where they dump their leaves and ground up branches.
often you can get these for free and the high amounts woody chips deplete the soil of nitrogen making it difficult for most plants to grow, thus again surpress the weeds, for free while you are having that nice cold beer.
Again after a few years tip some compost over the top add a lot of urea to bring up the nitrogen levels & then plant your grass .

I don't have a way to catch it now, but I'm looking into a catcher. Right now I've got a Deere x540 that just spits it out the side. I'm looking at my options here, I really want to catchment system so it'll pick up some of these sticker burrs. They're everywhere, and they hurt. Dogs get a sticker every time they go out, and so do I. Building a compost pile will be a nice side effect.

I'm out there a little bit, we don't really have mowing companies out here. Sometimes they'll come out but not enough to get clipping from them. We do have lots of trees but those just get burned most of the time. I could chip them up but I don't think that'll help me much here. Tons of oak leaves though, so that'll help once I can get them into a bag. Also tons of cedar, I put those chips down in areas that I don't want things to grow. It works pretty good, good for getting bugs away too.

 

[wils]

Speaking about compost piles, I've never made one. It gets hot here in Central Texas. Is there much risk of one catching on fire? I had a 6' pile of cedar chips a while back that looked like it was smoking when I got to the center.

 

[bertsmobile1]

Never hear of it happening except for the person who tipped old cooking oil into the pile
Some of the bacteria excrete hydrogen gas which is why a good pile smells like ammonia .
Most of what people think is smoke is actually steam
To prevent this you turn very regularly.
People forget that bacteria reproduce 24 / 7 , the only thing that changes is the speed which is directly proportional to the temperature .
I use plastic bins but that is just for a 1/2 acre block and in summer toss them every morning & night If it is an all grass batch, then at lunch as well.
Got 14 bins and always make sure there is an empty one a the end then just toss from one to another using a hay rake.
Takes about 3 minutes a bin and I can make about 5 cu yards in a good season
If you mow like we did in the pre-catcher days by doing a right hand spiral you end up with a pile of leaves & clippings which is easy to rake onto a pegged down tarp then dragged away.
You then finish by mowing where the pile was in a left hand spiral to spread the left over out .
Depending upon your finances you could look at a second hand Walker or Hopper with counter rotating blades and use it after you have mowed to mow a path slightly lower than the remaining grass thus giving you spike free paths.
Also look at a chipper & chip all of the off cut timber rather than burn it thus you are using a waste product in place of buying it in .
Dig a pit to burn the branches too thick to chip and then do a charcoal burn

 

[wils]

Good info, thank you Bert. There's no digging out here, everything we do underground requires a rock saw. But I can easily quarantine off a nice area. It's not uncommon for 100 days straight of 100 degree weather, typically close to 100% humidity. I'll put this compost area in a safe place just in case.

My current burn pile is about 100' long and 30' wide and you can barely even tell I've done much out there. I've got plenty of organic material to work with. A chipper sure would be nice. One project at a time LOL!

Talked with a landscape guy out here yesterday and we've got a plan. Most of the "lawn people' out here are just day laborers, so it was nice to talk with somebody that knows how to navigate the entire process. Between the two of us we nailed down more of a plan, y'all had me on the right track and he had some ideas as well. First section we'll just scrape clean and start over with some top soil. Throughout the rest of spring and summer I'll start prepping the next section and when it comes time for that we'll come up with more of a plan there. In the meantime I've got plenty to keep me busy there. Can't wait to have that beer on my nice lawn under those oak trees.

 

[wils]

Here are some pictures with what I'm working with.

Entire property here:

Narrowing down to the part I'm most concerned about now:

The arial view has changed, I put in a fence for the dogs that's approximately like this:

And then I'll section it off... Here's sections 1, 2, 3 and 4

Section 1:

Section 2:

Section 3:

Section 4:

Front yard I might cut in half, leave half be and just mow and then the other half I'll see if I can make it better through spreading stuff.

Section 1 (and the front yard) would do best with bermuda, section 2 and section 3 will have to be zoysia. Not concerned about section 4 at this point.

 

[bertsmobile1]

That's how you do a big job
One little bit at a time
Good luck & enjoy that beer.