C'mon Dave! Andy said you go first - We're in the wings waiting on you!

Shhhhh!! Don't disturb a Texan's beauty sleep!!!

When I first arrived here I thought number 3 was the Big 1. That was after 30 years of my own lawn care on several different properties. What I've learned since coming to GW is that fertilizer and/or -icide usage is really lower on the list and much less important than watering and mowing properly.

I realize I've been a little shy about posting "my" formula but here it is...

2. Water deeply and infrequently. Deeply means at least an hour in every zone, all at once. Infrequently means monthly during the cool months and no more than weekly during the hottest part of summer. If your grass looks dry before the month/week is up, water longer next time. Deep watering grows deep, drought resistant roots. Infrequent watering allows the top layer of soil to dry completely which kills off many shallow rooted weeds.

3. Mulch mow at the highest setting on your mower. Most grasses are the most dense when mowed tall. Bermuda, centipede, and bent grasses are the most dense when mowed at the lowest setting on your mower. Dense grass shades out weeds and uses less water when tall. Dense grass feeds the deep roots you're developing in 1 above.

4. Fertilize regularly. I fertilize 4-5 times per year using organic fertilizer. Which fertilizer you use is much less important than numbers 1 and 2 above.
   

Please realize that I did not invent this. This is what I have come to learn on these (and other) forums. There have been some serious disagreements that changed my stubborn mind over the years, and this is the result. The epiphany about watering came after a discussion with a lawn pro in Phoenix. After he convinced me to change my frequent watering schedule to infrequent, my lawn really became easy to manage.

I should also add that my first choice in sprinklers is the oscillator attached to a Craftsman (lifetime guarantee) hose. I fought with an impact sprinkler for years because all the magazines said the oscillator wasted water. I'm hear to tell you that I wasted a lot more water with the impact because of all the places it misses. I had to continually watch the lawn for dry spots and then re-water. There was no way to water infrequently when so much was missed. Life is finally good with the oscillator sprinkler.

Shhhhh!! Don't disturb a Texan's beauty sleep!!!

That's right! And if someone can help me with my browser crashing 5x per day, every day for the past 3 weeks, I'd be much obliged. Doesn't matter which browser, they all crash after a random period of time. So please forgive me if I seem a little preoccupied. I really am.

My approach was learned from my father's ways.

A little background first. Here in Chicago, before there were any big companies doing schedules lawn feedings in the late 60's, before Chem Lawn, before Tru-Green, there was Chicago Lawn Service. My father owned this little business as a side job / passion to his regular job and I was his little helper. Dad loved his lawn with a passion and he cared for others with the same attitude.

I still remember dad measuring out pure liquid urea, phosphate and murate of potash and I mixing it in the water tank with a canoe paddle! Liquid fertilizing and weed killer was his business. 2, 4D had recently come on the market and it was terrific. Everyone wanted dad to kill their dandelions.

After dad liquid fertilized a lawn, the watering was the owners responsibility. Dad used a lot of simple truisms when speaking to his customers and I was there by his side. His mentoring of customers stuck with me.

Dad would preach: Having a green healthy lawn isn't hard at all once you understand how simple it really is!

He would say - It's a living, breathing thing, just like you and me. You can't breathe with a 2 ton elephant on you so the kids having that picnic table upside down on the lawn will kill it.

It needs to eat and drink, just like you and me, and you can't go without water for a month, can you? And when your real thirsty in the hot summer time, do you want just a sip of water? Give the lawn a real good soaking once a week but do it in the morning so it can dry up before going to bed at night - just like you don't climb in bed after a shower without drying off first.

If his customer cut their grass too short, dad would compare their grass to his bald head. What would happen to my head in this sun, if I didn't wear a hat? It would burn, no? Well you gave your lawn such a short hair cut, it's going to burn out without a hat on! Mow your grass tall in the heat, the grass will protect itself then.

Take care of your grass like you take care of yourself or your children. If the grass gets sick, we give it some medicine, just like the doctor does for us or the kids. Take care of it like a living breathing thing and your grass will be healthy.

Yeah, my dad was a character all right, but he was right! It really is THAT simple.

From mid May (when the snows are finally all gone) until it gets hot (my wife objects to the way the grounds smell when it's hot out), I collect coffee grounds from Starbucks and spread them on the lawn. I resume when it starts to cool off. I have a small enough lawn that it's practical to fertilize solely with coffee grounds.

I have an automatic sprinkler system and I can run it through three cycles per run. I usually try to run it from just after midnight until around 7 AM once a week (although it usually ends up going to twice a week in the heat of the summer).

I generally use a weed hound for any weeds I see, but I'll spot spray with a broadleaf herbicide every once in a while.

I plan to change my watering this year because I'm transitioning to a native grass lawn and the native grasses will benefit from much less frequent (and deeper) watering.

Andy wrote: what if everyone that thinks that they have a "formula" that works for them wrote up "their approach and why you think it works for you". I know it could be a series of long posts, but I think it could be very interesting and useful to others.
Great idea Andy. I started to get interested in my lawn about 7 years ago and more or less blindly followed a chemical weed and feed program just from reading the info on the lawn products containers. Five years ago I discovered this forum and improved my chemical approach to fertilizers and weed killers. Having a fairly nice common Michigan lawn, I wondered if I could have a "country club" lawn. With advise from my friend Bestlawn on KBG cultivars and Ajers suggestion for fine fescue blend in shady areas, I renovated in the fall of 2005. All that winter, I worried and fretted about killing my fairly descent lawn to plant a new one which was by then very thin and filled with ugly weeds. I found myself hanging out here every day and discovered some other interesting forums, Organic lawn care, Organic gardening, and the Compost forum. Dchall's Organic Lawncare FAQ and his posts in these forums made an enormous impression on me. Thank you David. I decided that once I get my weeds under control, I would try organic fertilizers and reduce herbicide use. Summer of 06 I applied soybean meal with spectacular results. Started a compost heap and got really interested in organic approach to lawn and garden. That brings me to where I am today: A strong advocate of organic lawn and garden fertilizing practices and a personal preference for using compost on all week or troubled areas of the lawn with heavy compost usage in flower, shrub and garden beds. Oh yea, I still have a half can of weed-b-gone and some round-up, but I use very little of this stuff anymore.
Bill Hill

I guess that I first "got into lawns" when I was about 10 years old. We had a neighbor on Long Island named "Mr. Harper" that lived 7 or 8 houses down from us, and I would walk down the block just to check out the perfectly manicured Merion KBG lawn that he had. He would sometimes still be out working on it at dusk, and Id ask him a question or two about how he did what he did to his lawn. When he told me that there were no more than five things that he concerned himself with, Id walk back to my house thinking "hes lying he doesnt want to tell some stupid kid that walks around looking at lawns his secrets".

I grew up and promised myself that I would someday have that lawn. After college and marriage, my wife and I moved to Stamford, CT and bought a house with a small lawn. Connecticut is famed for having land that is "1/3 poison ivy and 2/3 rock, or the other way around". Try as I might and spending as much as I could afford to, I couldnt make it turn into a lush lawn. I thought it was because I couldnt spend enough on chemicals and fertilizers.

Then we moved to the Hudson Valley of NY. We love it. The soil was a little better, but the property of the front yard is heavily sloped, and completely surround by very large trees on three sides. I mean B-I-G trees 80 Firs, giant Oaks, and more enormous Maple trees than Carter has little liver pills. Throw in a Wild Cherry or two and a Beech tree for diversity. As I matured in my career and had a little more money to spend, and with some college classes in biochemistry I overcame the "its because I cant spend enough on the lawn". I owned more chemicals for the lawn than Ortho does. I learned to water properly (deep and deeper, and once a week) and could be found moving oscillating sprinklers before dawn and at 10pm at night. I have created many a new dance step moving sprinklers on a wet slope. I tried and eventually succeeded at getting a nice PR/KBG/FF lawn to the point that people said it was the best in the area.

It wasnt enough. I still wanted Mr. Harpers Lawn. I nuked it and put in elite KBG (Moonlight/America KBG with some Oxford hard fescue for the shady areas).

In the past 5 years Ive noticed that the chemical route doesnt really work well every year I need more chemicals and synthetic fertilizers than last year, and the soil problems got stranger and stranger. I added Google to the formula and became a lurker on GW. I found that if I spun down the chemicals and started to pay attention to the soil microbes, the "ever-more" cycle began to reverse itself. Im envious in a way of the ability of some of the regulars on GW to use corn meal and soy this-and-that, but I found that I have to still use synthetic fertilizer because Id need 3200 lbs of corn meal a year for my acre. Thats not going to happen. I have changed, though I now treat the necessary application of synthetic fertilizer as an "injury" that requires immediate "molasses treatments" to help the soil microbes recover from. I dabble with a few Jerry Baker items (I really like the use of Epsom Salt to affect lawn coloration, but Ive gone way past what Jerry does). Ive learned to mow higher and Ive learned that I will never overcome the shade of the big, beautiful trees that surround me (especially my love affair with "Bertha" the giant Norway Maple).

My learnings:

(1) Watering deep and infrequently causes the healthiest growth.
(2) Mowing high is definitely better.
(3) Fertilizer is important, and on large plots (1+ acre) you dont have many options to avoid synthetics. Treat the application of a synthetic fertilizer like a wound to the lawn that needs to be healed by doing what you can to help the soil microbes. I like careful molasses treatments and the use of compost to help it recover.
(4) Get the lawn healthy enough that chemicals are only used for spot treatments. Treat the chemicals like major wounds.
(5) "Google" is one of the best lawn tools ever made. The regulars on GW are right up there.
(6) You are a "lawn crazy" when you consider whether a lawn tractor has good headlights so you can do work after darkness.
(7) Trees are a part of a great lawn, and should not be treated as annoyances. Hacking them "to get more light in" is a politically-correct way to say partially kill the tree.
(8) I will never have Mr. Harpers Lawn, but that is probably just a glorified fantasy that never existed in the real world. He probably had challenges too. Andys Lawn is OK, and Im fine with that.
(9) The more I learn, the more I realize I have so much more to learn.

> "Mr. Harper" [snipped] perfectly manicured Merion KBG lawn

hehehehhe - Merion is EXACTLY what Mr. C over here had, LOL!!!

> I will never have Mr. Harpers Lawn,

Nope, me neither - said good bye to it and nuked her last summer. Here's the old girl's last pictures.

{{gwi:81228}}

{{gwi:81229}}

There is something special about the way that Merion showed its "silver side" when it was cut right and healthy. Thanks for the flashback Gary.