Learning About Lawns

This will be the first of several posts in this thread. Near the end, I'll be asking lots of questions and displaying my nearly infinite ignorance on lawn care. From the short amount of time I've been reading here, I'm amazed at the lack of knowledge I, and possibly the German landscapers, have about lawns. The fact that I've been able to keep the lawn mostly green for the past ten years is amazing.

We bought our house in October 2011 from the original owner. She contracted three years earlier for the construction with the builder for "Bezugsfertig". This means the house is ready to occupy, but not finished. In her case, Bezugsfertig meant a weatherproof dwelling but no landscaping, exterior paint, or finished garage. The interior was completely finished, including the basement, and was done to a high standard. All of the walls and floors are cast in place reinforced concrete, unlike the block construction of the unfinished garage.

She was a motivated seller and I saw the potential, so we negotiated on a price that still gave us room to finish the exterior of the house to a similar standard as the interior.

Here are some before and after pictures taken in August 2011 and September 2013 after the landscaping, house painting, and garage were finished. It took nearly a year an a half of searching to find a landscaping contractor who was willing to give me what I wanted instead of offering what they were comfortable doing. With one exception, none of the landscapers wanted to install the white picket fence (yes, how cliche) or the automated sprinkler system. While I would have been satisfied with a wooden fence, the contractor provided a man-made material that is maintenance free.

The sprinkler system is by Hunter and has four zones. Two are for the lawn and two are for the flower beds. Instead of tying the system to our residential water, the contractor dug a well since the water table is only nine meters below yard level.

East side of house before. That mound in the lower left corner is a huge pile of concrete. It was the excess dumping point for the concrete delivery. The rest of the yard was filled with construction debris, to include excess rebar. The majority of the green vegetation is not grass, but weeds and other undesirable growth from three years of neglect.




East side of house after.




Another before and after view of the east side.







Before and after view of the front porch.







Before and after view of the back porch. This is a southern face and receives sunlight most of the day. We experimented with a few pots of cherry tomatoes, and they were better than expected.

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The best part is the "Freisitz", or free sitting area in the yard.

 

Here are some construction photos that started in July 2013.

 

Looks great Mike . How come lawn care fertilizing - lawn stripes etc not a thing in Germany ? Or is it just a British obsession wanting a lush green lawn with stripes

 

In August 2019, I noticed a small patch of strange grass, about one square meter near the middle of the yard. I didn't think much of it and pulled out as much as I could. By October, the patch had thumbed its nose at me and had grown to an area that was now about 20 square meters.

After a bit of research, I discovered it was Quecke Grass, also known as queck or couch grass. It goes by several other names, but it is still evil and was growing faster than I could pull it. I decided to manually dig up the affected area by hand and then back fill the area with topsoil.

This is about as far as I went with shovel and wheelbarrow before throwing in the towel.




This is an example of what I was digging up after all of the soil was washed away.




Time for the heavy artillery. I called the landscaper I used earlier to build my yard, and he confirmed it was indeed quecke grass and I had three options. The first was to ignore it and enjoy a horrible lawn until the sun explodes. The second was to kill everything with Glyphosate and hope it reached the roots. The third was to continue what I started, but a bit smarter and certainly more efficient. I decided for the third option. He agreed to send his team out the following year and take care of the problem.

By then, the Devil's spawn had extended along the north fence line and all of the soil in the affected area to a depth of 30 centimeters was removed. The Bobcat operator excavated until he was well clear of any of the rhizomes, which meant a lot of soil had to be removed.







New topsoil is going in and the sprinkler system was tested to make sure there were no breaks.




We decided to plant another tulip tree to balance out the tree on the other side. In a few decades, they should be about the same height.




Tree planted, seeds sewn, sprinkler set, now we wait. The boss told me once the new grass had grown in, I wouldn't be able to see where the old lawn ended and the new work began.




On a moonless overcast night, you can barely tell the difference, but any other time the difference is still obvious. The soil has settled somewhat with the new work, but I hope I can work it out in the years to come.

 

Most lawns in Germany are not large, and I think I have the largest lawn in my residential area, at about 400 square meters. The houses are typically built close together, with little room for lawns.

The closest my lawn had to stripes was when I tried to use the drop spreader for applying fertilizer. The unintentional overlap created the poor man's version of lawn stripes.

 

And now for the reason I joined GC and plan on asking lots of questions. Be candid (brutal) with your responses, I have a thick skin.

For years, I neglected my lawn and treated it like dirt. Other than mowing weekly during the growing season and keeping the sprinkler on, I did little more. The landscaper dethatched after the second year, and we scarified it once, about three years ago. I applied fertilizer twice in that same time. This year, I decided to put more effort into the yard after spending over €3K to purge the quecke grass.

I started by a very aggressive scarification. Rather than rent again, I bought an electric AL-KO Comfort 38E from the local hardware store. It came with dethatching and scarifier rollers and was about the same cost as a two-day rental of the version I used before. I attached the dethatching roller and made two passes on the lawn, with the first east to west and the second north to south.

After raking up all of the thatch, I then attached the scarifier roller and made one pass at a 45-degree diagonal to the dethatching passes. I was going to make a second pass with the scarifier, but the lawn was now mostly visible soil. At least the thatch and moss were mostly gone. In all, we packed thirteen 120-liter paper bags of thatch from the yard and hauled them to the bio-recycling center.

I then used the Gardena hand spreader to apply the fertilizer recommended by the teenager working in the garden shop for freshly scarified lawns in need of moss control. I can't remember what I used, but will look for it tomorrow and post it in this thread. I was not happy with the distribution of the drop spreader, and the larger broadcast spreaders are special order. I have a cunning plan for future lawn care.

The iron content in the fertilizer was about 10 percent, and it seems to have worked for the moss problem. The moss that survived the Great Purge did not stand a chance with the iron application and I was able to scrape the dead moss away and sew new grass seed. The last picture in my previous post is how the lawn looks now. There is still much room for improvement, but I am happy so far with the changes.

I reseeded the areas that were barren because of the moss, and overseeded the lawn somewhat. Later on, I had to dress up a few areas with more seed, but the lawn is looking much better now. The water from the sprinkler no longer visibly beads up and is absorbed quickly by the soil.

To make the care and feeding easier, or at least more consistent, I bought a Solo 475 Comfort backpack sprayer. My learning curve on this will be a flat line for a while, but from what I've read and seen on the Internet, these will produce better results with the correct fertilizers and herbicides.

I am open to suggestions, critiques, and comments about how to care for my lawn. Don't be bashful.