voljack wrote:

gtnike wrote:One other thing I didn't add. When I started this little project, I had no idea the city was going to increase our water and sewer rates. They raised water by 40% and sewer by 60% (and, oh by the way, just increased our property taxes 100%). So the cost of my project just got more expensive than I budgeted for, of course I guess that's life...

You may ask why sewer matters. It costs $2500 for a second water tap (plus the cost for a plumber to connect to my house) that wouldn't have sewer. Right now our sewer bill is based on how much water we use, regardless of how much actually goes in the sewer.

I had a new/2nd tap added here in the big city of Gainesboro (Jackson County) for $750.
It is $1500 in Cookeville.
$2500 in Smyrna is crazy!!

Nice to another lawn guy from Middle Tn on this site.
I am going try to post some Pics of my TTTF reno the good, bad, and ugly.

You'll have better luck with fescue over on the Plateau. That is, assuming your water is affordable!

not really up on the Plateau...actually Gainesboro sits down in a hole along side the Cumberland river.
Both of those shields us from a lot of the tornado's which is good but, it also guards us from a lot of the summer thunderstorms and rain my TTTF needs.

I just got in from mowing, mainly the weeds, but at least a lot of the zoysia loooks good! I am a little disappointed and mildly concerned about the zoysia plugs I planted 2 weeks ago. When I picked up the sod it was green, but when I cut it into plugs they all turned brown and most of them are still brown. I watered them every day last week and started every other day this week, but still brown. I am thinking it is just TOO hot and dry right now. Next week the highs are going to drop into the 80's so hopefully the grass won't burn up so quick, but I don't know what, if anything, I can do to get the plugs to green up. Thoughts?

Well, this will probably be my last update for 2011. We have probably another 4-5 weeks that the zoysia will be green and growing and I'll probably add more notes, but with the temps starting to drop and my last fertilizer drop last week, I don't expect to see much change in my plugs for the remainder of the season. Here are a few final thoughts and pictures on reno year 1 -

This picture below is one of the areas where I laid out some of the extra sod when I had too much back in march. Take 7-10 pallets of sod and I could probably sod the remainder of the yard. At $100 a pop, that's not too huge a cost and I might suggest this to anyone considering doing plugs. If I hadn't been "surprised" by how successful my original plugs turned out to be after 3 years, I would be disappointed with my progress. The sod turned out well



Here is one of the plugs. If I didn't know better I'd say this plug hasn't grown, but it is about twice as big as the original plug I planted.



This plug has also grown but is putting out runners.



This is one of the plugs I recently planted. I'm definitely disappointed, it looks dead. I'm hoping it is just dormant and will green up next spring. Only time will tell. Of the several hundred plugs I planted in August, most look like this. Of course my initial zoysia test plots looked like this several years ago, so I'm hopeful.



My back yard slopes in the middle. This is the "north" slope, and due to the lack of shade it gets hammered with sun in the summer.



This is the south slope, as you can see the fescue looks very good right there in front of the oaks, it's pretty thin under the oaks due to the shade, but all-in-all, this area does very good even in the summers because of the shade. I'll be keeping the fescue in this area for the foreseeable future.



Realistically, if you wanted a zoysia lawn in 1 year, you would need to plant your plugs about 6 inches apart. If you use 3 inch plugs like me, that means you will need 6 inches of grass for every 18 inches of yard. So if you needed 12 pallets of sod to completely sod the yard, you would need 4 pallets to plug it. Considering there is a substantial amount of time and effort required to cut and plant the plugs, I would say this is not the way to go if you're looking for a change in 1 year. Plugging only makes sense for someone who has an ok lawn but wants to slowly implement change. Or for someone like me who is looking for an experiment!

So as we get closer to winter and the nights get cooler, I'm definitely losing the growth and dark green color in my zoysia. What's interesting is I have actually noticed more runners in the past few weeks when it has still been warm (ground tempps above 60 degrees), but not "hot." I don't know if I just noticed them more, or if they were actually new runners. I'll pay closer attention to this phenomenon next year.

But something I find interesting, last week as temperatures really started getting cold we had one night where the low was right around freezing, and then another night where the low was below freezing (was 26 degrees that morning). But I do still have a good amount of green in the Zoysia. I'm pretty impressed that it has maintained some color since all of the bermuda lawns have gone brown. I'll add an update on here for a point of reference once the lawn is completely brown, bur so far based on my experience of a green up in mid-march and a brown out in mid-November, that's 8 months of a useable lawn with Zoysia; I'll take it! Today through Wednesday we are looking at highs in the 60's - 70's so maybe I'll get closer to december with some green remaining?

Where did you find Zoysia around here for $100 a pallet?

Ok, I'll tell you but only if you let me buy any of your extras

Southeastern Turn in Eagleville, ask for Debra when you call - 615-274-3009. I bought Meyer Zoyisa. Pricing is seasonal, here is the info I got last year:

"Thanks for contacting us about our sod. We carry both Meyer and Empire Zoysia. All of our zoysia is grown at our Lynnville farm location, however, we can usually group orders and transfer pallets from our Lynnville location to Eagleville for you to pick up in Eagleville. Our Zoysia is cut in 16 x 24" slabs and one pallet covers 450 square feet. Each pallets weighs approximately 2500 lbs. Our price per pallet (without delivery) is $100.00. This is current pricing and is subject to change in the spring, depending on fuel prices.

Typically Zoysia comes out of dormancy in mid to late April, just depending on the weather. If we have a cool spring, it could be a little later before it comes out of dormancy."

I got mine last year on 3/18, and I would encourage you to contact them now and see if you can get some before the greenup (which will probably be early this year). I bought 6 sheets of sod in August to make some additional plugs, but those plugs never greened up (I still see the dormant plugs in the ground, I have no doubt they will survive, I'm just not sure how quickly they will start to grow).
Delivery was $150 but since I was just getting 1 pallet, I went down there and got it myself with a truck and trailer. Also played golf at the nearby Champions Run Golf Course. Since I was already driving way out there thought I should make a day of it!

I called them and they have gone up to $125, but that is still much better than the $200-$300 everywhere else. They said they wouldn't have any until late May or early June though. Thanks for the information!

Yes, unfortuantely I noticed yesterday that I now have a good amount of green in my zoysia, and sod farms won't cut it during the transition. Last year when I bought in mid march we were coming off one of the coldest winters in years. This year was one of the warmest winters so the transition from dormancy started earlier.

Your grass type is Zoysia, just curious do you currently have Zoysia and are adding to it? Or are you renovating your yard into Zoysia?

Any new pics?

bboggess wrote:Any new pics?

I will get some, I haven't yet because my blackberry broke last year and after a week I finally got a new one only to find out the camera doesn't work

I can get it replaced for free but I just hesitate waiting AGAIN just because of the camera.

I guess it's time to borrow the wife's phone!

OK, time for some updated pictures! The plugs are coming along nicely. As I look back I realize I didn't plant nearly enough plugs to cover my lawn in any sort of reasonable time, so I'm going to need to put in more plugs. I'm going to buy a plugger and just mak my own plugs from the current areas that are covered. My current concern is, should I have done this 2 months ago? I know it's counter to what warm season folks say (that you should wait until the grass is alive and groowing), but I would say about 80% of the plugs I did last March survived, but of the plugs I did in August, maybe 10% survived. Anyway, here are some surrent pictures:

I've decided that zoysia likes organic matter a lot more than I was ever aware of. Last year, I had an area that was bare that the zoysia was trying to creep into, but wasn't moving terribly fast in my sand. Guess there wasn't much incentive. I mulched a boat load of leaves in that area and in the surrounding grass. MAN, that stuff has taken off and is growing in every direction. It's even steadily moving toward one of my oaks where the ground is shaded. I think that I'll start plugging into the bare areas in the front toward the end of this month or early June. Any later in the summer and I can't stand to be in the front yard because it gets hotter than heck out there.

It looks like your zoysia is spreading nicely from the pictures. Are you just hoping that it just over takes your fescue or are you planning to hit the fescue with an herbicide once the zoysia fills in more? Some of my fescue seed appears to have washed out of the back yard into the zoysia around front - that and poa annua.

Thanks. I am not doing anything to stress the fescue and am waiting for the zoysia becomes more dominant. I am thinking of dropping some milorganite this weekend since I didn't do a high nitrogen feeding in April.

[ Post made via iPhone ]

Tennessee I do not know much about so I googled Fescue Tennessee and I found this guy (The Turf Doctor - Robert Stroud in Nashville)
the pictures of his lawns are pretty impressive and he lists some good things for homeowners to be doing to their lawns. He has been using 1/8 pound of fert with Sumagreen
Click here for more information

Late last week they were forcasting rain to last for about 24 hours from late Saturday into Sunday, so I decided Friday would be a good time to put out some fertilizer and lime. I put out Lesco's 24-0-3 in the front and back where I'm trying to help the zoysia along (I didn't hit the area that I plan on remaining as fescue) and watered it in Friday night/saturday morning. I decided not to use the organics this time, my plan is to hit it again with organics in late June/early July.

Fortunately the forecasts were right and we got about 2 inches of rain over Saturday and Sunday. The plugs are looking great, I'm even finding some that I thought were dead (not much grass on some of these plugs, but if there's grass, they're alive and that's all that matters!

My next plan is to buy a sod plugger and start plugging in some of the bare spots with my existing zoysia. I still do not know if I will push to stress the fescue. I thought I would have by now, but honestly the fescue doesn't bother me that much because I know from past experience that the zoysia will eventually takeover everywhere it can.

I had some polka dots from where I sprayed weeds in the zoysia back in February with Round-up thinking it was dormant. It looked dormant, but apparently was there was some green there somewhere that drank the Round-up and gave me the polka dot effect this spring. Now that it's fully awake, those spots are starting to get little green blades in them - thankfully. It's also growing so well in a once bare area just on the front side of the fenced back yard, that it will soon be encroaching into the back yard fescue. Should be interesting. I don't really want to put a barrier between them, but the colors defintely don't match. Back yard will look really funny then - nice calico combo of tall fescue, zoysia and poa trivialis!