make soil amendments your best friend. add organic matter, spread Hydretain, aerate and topdress with biochar, spray soluble mycorrhizae while halting applications of chemical herbicides, synthetic fertilizers, and fungicides, and start watering twice as long and half as often. if you currently water every 2-3 days then start by watering 50% longer and every 4-5 days...and let your grass grow twice as long as normal. Mow almost as regularly but don't cut it as short. Longer cut grass will hold moisture in the soil better making it easier to go longer between irrigation sessions. After working on the lawn for a year then it should be easy to move back to every 6-8 days between watering sessions depending on weather cycles. during the transition phase it's ok to see drought stressed grass, trust the process and plan on this taking a full season to make the change. It's worth it in the long run; things that are hard in life are usually worth the effort in the long run. Hope that helps!

You'd be amazed how many people want to know if they can just drop seed on the ground, water, and walk away. Millions. I hated doing this to the lawn when I filmed this video. It's SOOO much harder to grow grass by just sprinkling the seed on the ground and walking away. It can be done but as you said, why wouldn't you rake it in or even better, cover it up with peat moss or light textured top soil?

We've got a language barrier but I think you are asking how to get nitrogen into the soil - if you have access to clippings, weeds, or other plants that would otherwise go to waste or compost you could submerge them in water and let them sit for a couple weeks. The water will get pretty gross and smelly but a lot of the nitrogen will leech out into the water and once strained it can be used to inject nitrogen into the soil for either lawns or gardens. The physical material that is strained out of the water after a couple weeks can then be placed in a regular compost pile for use later if desired. As for soil pH, the more life you can inject into the soil via plants, grass, soil biology the soil will slowly revert to a more neutral zone as the season pass. You could speed it up though by topdressing with soil sulfur (elemental sulfur). Once the soil is closer to 7.0 ph or upper 6 ph than most plants, grass included, will perform and grow much better with fewer inputs. Hope that helps a bit.

most lawns are low in plant available nitrogen, microbial life in the soil transforms unavailable nitrogen into plant available nitrogen so the more healthy biology exist in your lawn the more nitrogen becomes available to the plants naturally throughout the year. In the interim adding extra nitrogen and in your case phosphorus can help thicken up a lawn. Milorganite is a good add of nitrogen and Phos but also I use Lawnbox products, the Fall Fix product is a 5-5-5 mix of NP and K. Otherwise a cheaper synthetic blend of locally sold fertilizer should be fine for you, just stick with anything balanced or higher in phosphorus. No need to go crazy though, starter fertilizers are high in phos but you probably don't need that high concentration rate for an established lawn.

you sure don't need to go that extreme but if you want the best lawn possible (dense turf) then that's the goal, daily or close to daily for those first weeks or months a new lawn is growing. If you mow that often then in subsequent years your lawn will be so thick that you'll need to water way less frequently and you won't have to mow nearly as often if you don't want to.

great comment, thanks a bunch. As for your area you might want to consider switching out some of your lawn spaces from Bermudagrass to Buffalograss, it's just as heat tolerant but it requires probably half the water that Bermuda needs. I've got some vids on the channel about buffalograss, just search RU-vid for "turf mechanic buffalo grass" and you'll get a lot of them listed. I'm about to apply Hydretain to my lawns this coming week, it's a great tool. If you do apply it to your lawn make sure to water it in well. If it isn't watered in well I've noticed it just doesn't work as good.

You know I don't mind, 😁, glad you liked it!

Yes, the flow is restricted with the vast majority of quick connects/disconnects. The only one I know of that don't restrict flow are the Eley quick connects. They are spendy but seriously high quality accessories that I use on my own hoses. I am not sponsored by them and I buy their stuff with my own money too. Couldn't recommend them more. I don't have a video about them but I do have a blog post on this topic: turfmechanic.com/best-garden-hose-quick-connect-sets-reviews/

@@TurfMechanic great, thank you so much!

I'm talking about adding soil amendments and building better dirt. If you improve the soil a bit here and there then over time the grass will grow better without adding synthetic fertilizers that are meant only to push grass growth faster.

Nice! Did you do it yourself? Any hiccups with the procedure? I will be doing that for sure but I haven't put it on my calendar yet.

@@TurfMechanic Yes I did it myself, added the valve right after the backflow preventer. PVC I wired it up to common and master/pump 1 on the control box then went in the app. select more, system setup then turn the master valve on. Irrigreen told me how lol I tested it and it does shut the water off for sure, Thanks for the help you have given me. Just pre germinated seeds with ur help!!!!!

I don't think that's a waste of money at all. For most locations I would overseed in mid-August expecting germination before Sept 1. That will give your fresh KBG about 75 days or so to mature before the overnight cold of November and short off-season days put it into dormancy. Without trying to kill off the existing grass in your lawn it will be a bit patchy looking but probably better than it was before.

I don't know the answer to this definitively however I would bet the shrub is hardy enough to stand up to FeHEDTA just fine, especially if you are being careful around it. For the clover, you'll probably have to apply a couple times at least, maybe a month to 45 days apart if you give it a try.

I'm always happy to waste your time, come back again and I'll enjoy wasting even more of your time...lucky me, I can even waste your time in my sleep, I don't even need to see your face to waste your time; it's so easy for me to do it I can waste your time even when I don't know I'm wasting it. It's the little things in life that bring me joy. :)

Hope you like the way it turns out. I still need to redo a few stubborn spots on my driveway but it's already clearing up nice

Where I live there are lots of aggressive stoloniferous grasses that spread above ground and need to be edged. Many lawns here have hard borders between property lines to help control these grasses and halt the infestation of these grasses between neighbors as well as landscaped beds. My neighbor has a lot of Kikuyu grass that would easily encroach on my yard but the curb makes this a lot easier to control.

I try to define things as much as I can but obviously acronyms sneak in, especially where the acronyms are the common language (think atm, nobvody says automated teller machine). RTF is rhizomatous tall fescue, its a bred version of fescue (frequently called TTTF, or turf type tall fescue) that has some rhizomes underground to allow for lateral spread. Natural fescue grasses don't have rhizomes so RTF is a boutique product that wouldn't exist in nature without a science lab.

I used 8oz (roughly) for 1 gallon of water.

Thank you very much Sir

oxalic acid ~ www.amazon.com/dp/B08PDKNZSC ~ not sure if you can get that exact product up in Canada but the active ingredient is what you should look for. It's frequently marketed as a wood brightener or wood cleaner while also labeled for use on concrete.

John WINS!!! :)

I did! Not sure if you noticed this video is almost 4 years old when I had freshly started the channel. Hope you got something from the vid anyway ✌️

It's not a dumb question at all, imo it would work great if the stone added enough oxygen to the bucket. I've seen gardeners do things similar to this to make liquid fert full of oxygen loving microbes that would otherwise not thrive in stagnant water. You'd probably still need to do at least a water change every day or two though, not sure about this one but Ive read seed soaking in water can release toxins that should be flushed away. That's something I'd have to research more though. Also, related to this video, the seed that I took all the way to root development before spreading it on the ground is lagging WAY behind the seed that I spread on day 6. I personally would almost never recommend the average lawn owner to wait until roots emerge to spread. It can work for divot repair on golf tee boxes and fairways when mixed densely with sand, but for the lawn tons of seed goes to waste. I'll post some pics soon (maybe a video) showing the huge difference I'm seeing in my parkway strip.

@TurfMechanic Thank you for very detailed reply! I've been digging around methods for seed pre germinating seed. The reason behind is I did a full lawn renovation of the front yard a couple years ago with super seed stores SS6000 fine fescue and kbg blend. Just under 2k sq yard. We watered that 3 times a day for a good week or 2, the fine fescue started poping up after about 5 days. This year I'm planning on doing the back yard which is about 3 times the size as the front ( need to measure still to be exact) got super seed stores tall fescue blend of 3 cultivars. Really trying to avoid the intense watering for this size of yard.. From your comment it's looks like there might be a small window for the perfect time to get this on the lawn. I'll check in and see how yours turns out :) thanks again man🫡

Not yet, I reached out to oto about 6 months ago hoping they'd send me some equipment to try so I could better compare it to irrigreen and even another cheaper option on my radar but they weren't responsive to me at the time...I have yet to decide whether or not I'll go buy it on my own to do the comparison. My gut tells me to is going to be best for small yards and people that either can't or don't want to put in ground sprinkler pipes in the ground. oto needs a hose connection as far as I know while irrigreen can be fully below ground.

That's a scary thought, I don't have a way to notify me of something like that right now. Neighbors would probably notice and eventually call the water company to have the main shut off at the street. I now see the VERY important piece of the Irrigreen system I'm missing, a master valve. I can setup a master valve to depressurize the system between irrigation sessions and the Irrigreen control box can control that in addition to the sprinkler heads it already controls. I will be looking into that this summer for sure because a full pipe leak puts out about 10 gallons of water a minute, that adds up very fast. Important to note the sprinkler isn't the problem, it's the piping going to the sprinkler that's the issue. If that can be depressurized when the water isn't needed then the risk for catastrophic water leakage is almost gone entirely. The other spots I briefly mentioned in the video is a test (for a video) I'm doing on KBG resilience to fluazifop, an herbicide that is not labeled for use on KBG. Video on that will be coming out late this month or early July. I think I may have a solution to killing Bermuda out of KBG, not that that problem applies to many people other than myself. LOL

@@TurfMechanic That sounds swell (the fluazifop video) Me and another fella on The Lawn Forum noticed Roundup has a weed spray containing Triclopyr and Fluazifop but probably still not safe to weed out Bermuda on cool season turf.

interesting about the roundup version, I didn't know that; I'll look it up to see how it differs from what I did. There are academic papers published on the use of Triclopyr to minimize the negative effects of fluazifop on KBG. Fluazifop is labeled for Bermuda control in zoysia and fescue (LCN just published something on this a couple weeks back I think) but for KBG the Triclopyr may end up in tolerable damage to the KBG, damage that fixes itself in 4-6 weeks. Time will tell. I bet the roundup version is less concentrated but it certainly would probably be a great off the shelf product for fescue!

@@TurfMechanic Label ACTIVE INGREDIENTS: - Triclopyr, triethylamine salt.. -0.122% Fluazifop-P-butyl. 0,097% Diquat dibromide 0.073% OTHER INGREDIENTS 99.708%

👊

I've been planning on picking up a drum composter to use just for soil mixing; probably very similar to your use of a cement mixer. I mix soil a lot these days so I think that's probably a much simpler and clean way of doing it. Thanks for the comment and idea!

@@TurfMechanic trust me when i say , it save a decent amount of time,. and makes for a homogenous mix .. im going to make a larger version using an old large drum .. eg diy version of a cement mixer . same thing but bigger drum .

I agree, was very surprised that it fully separated with the soil packed around it, but I guess digging it in last year and all the trenching we did last year to install our flood water drain line probably kept the soil fairly loose, loose enough for the pipe to separate. 55 PSI water is a lot of force to hold back, as I said in another comment here. I think installing a master valve for Irrigreen to control in addition to the sprinkler heads is probably a lot more important than I originally thought.