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He wants the lawn to be pure grass, just grass forever without any clovers or wildflowers or anything else sprouting...
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Feb 23, 2017 23:28
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Get him a dandelion weeder and a family-size bottle of ibuprofen for Father's Day, and a card that reads "good luck".
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Feb 23, 2017 23:45
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peanut posted:He wants the lawn to be pure grass, just grass forever without any clovers or wildflowers or anything else sprouting...
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Feb 24, 2017 00:34
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Hubis posted:This. I had a kid, and now I am suddenly obsessed with lawn care and wood-working. Kids are a few years out for us, but I'm approaching 30 and drat I want a lawn and a nice little shed with a table saw and some chisels and...
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Feb 24, 2017 05:00
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drat! Microclover sounds perfect, esp for the square gaps in our brick path.
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Feb 24, 2017 05:50
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I'm planning to overseed with it this coming planting season, hopefully it lives up to all the hype! From the little hard information I could gather it seems to work, it just isn't popular yet because the trends seem to be going toward either non-grass lawns, OR high maintenance "lawn dominator" lawns, and it seems like an interesting middle-ground that looks good but doesn't require a lot of work or chemical inputs.
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Feb 24, 2017 15:11
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Safety Dance posted:Kids are a few years out for us, but I'm approaching 30 and drat I want a lawn and a nice little shed with a table saw and some chisels and...  Alereon posted:I'm planning to overseed with it this coming planting season, hopefully it lives up to all the hype! From the little hard information I could gather it seems to work, it just isn't popular yet because the trends seem to be going toward either non-grass lawns, OR high maintenance "lawn dominator" lawns, and it seems like an interesting middle-ground that looks good but doesn't require a lot of work or chemical inputs. I'll probably go this route as well once I finish my regime of selective herbicides to clear out the weeds that have already become established because of under-maintenance.
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Feb 24, 2017 15:54
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Alereon posted:I'm planning to overseed with it this coming planting season, hopefully it lives up to all the hype! From the little hard information I could gather it seems to work, it just isn't popular yet because the trends seem to be going toward either non-grass lawns, OR high maintenance "lawn dominator" lawns, and it seems like an interesting middle-ground that looks good but doesn't require a lot of work or chemical inputs. Our irrigation system is getting unfucked AS I TYPE. The dude confirmed we have Augustine grass in most of our yard so we're going to fill in the dead spots with sod. He seems to think we only need to put in around 50% coverage of sod and it will fill in the rest. Does that sound sane? They've done good work for us to date including tree trimming. We have a happy bushy tree now that there has been plenty of rain instead of a scraggly monster in desperate need of trimming.
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Feb 24, 2017 17:47
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H110Hawk posted:Our irrigation system is getting unfucked AS I TYPE. The dude confirmed we have Augustine grass in most of our yard so we're going to fill in the dead spots with sod. He seems to think we only need to put in around 50% coverage of sod and it will fill in the rest. Does that sound sane? They've done good work for us to date including tree trimming. We have a happy bushy tree now that there has been plenty of rain instead of a scraggly monster in desperate need of trimming. St Augustine will spread as I understand it (I've got a cool season grass lawn so no first-hand experience). I'll pimp the Lawn Care Nut on Youtube again here -- he's moved to Florida so he does a lot more warm season stuff that isn't applicable to me, but he's generally pretty informative. He did a series on planting a new St. Augustine lawn using plugs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNFiuJLq8JM e: Here's a video where he makes the plugs himself from sod, which might be of interest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDnf2Q5_ei0 Hubis fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Feb 24, 2017 |
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Feb 24, 2017 18:11
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peanut posted:Flies update please! Cleaning out the drains and getting a better trash can seems to have helped, although they're not completely gone yet. (I did check the fridge drain pan as requested by my wife, but it was dry as a bone.)
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Feb 24, 2017 19:44
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Hubis posted:St Augustine will spread as I understand it (I've got a cool season grass lawn so no first-hand experience). I'll pimp the Lawn Care Nut on Youtube again here -- he's moved to Florida so he does a lot more warm season stuff that isn't applicable to me, but he's generally pretty informative. He did a series on planting a new St. Augustine lawn using plugs: Thanks, I'll watch these soon.
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Feb 24, 2017 20:18
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H110Hawk posted:Thanks, I'll watch these soon. .... and I just found a guide to starting your own plugs for cool season grasses from a small amount of seed. It's essentially as easy as doing seed starters for an herb/vegetable garden. This way lies madness...
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Feb 24, 2017 20:52
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Oh, good, we're doing lawn care chat! Has anyone actually rented a core aerator and done the work, themselves? I got quoted about $450 to aerate and overseed about an acre-and-a-half of lawn. Wife immediately got an attack of the vapours and collapsed on the faintin' couch, so I never had the work done, but I will be good god damned if I go through another season with my poo poo-tastic lawn. The soil is super-compressed in many parts, so it definitely needs it, and everything I've read seems to indicate that core aeration is so tedious that paying someone else to do it is well worth it. In addition, is there such a thing as eco-friendly lawn fertilizer that isn't just manure? I've got two dogs and can't have them tromping around in feces, and my desire to have a great lawn is lower than my desire to not hasten the death of the ecosystem.
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Feb 26, 2017 18:59
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(double post)
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Feb 26, 2017 18:59
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null_pointer posted:Has anyone actually rented a core aerator and done the work, themselves? I got quoted about $450 to aerate and overseed about an acre-and-a-half of lawn. I've done it by hand (well, with a foot stomper thing a-la this) over small areas of not super compacted soil and it is tedious. 1.5 acres? You might see if you can rent something with a motor or similar to do it with some mechanical advantage, then you can probably get it done in a day w/ seed. If you get her a manual one and set her to work the $450 might seem like a bargain in a few hours. 
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Feb 26, 2017 19:30
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null_pointer posted:In addition, is there such a thing as eco-friendly lawn fertilizer that isn't just manure? I've got two dogs and can't have them tromping around in feces, and my desire to have a great lawn is lower than my desire to not hasten the death of the ecosystem. Bonus Edit: There's a lot of controversy about this, the best I can tell it's because there are different grades of sludge for different purposes. Commercial farmers typically buy lightly-treated sludge that can contain pathogens or chemicals from waste discharged into sewers, there is concern about allowing this to be used for food production, or at all because of potential toxic runoff. However, the kind of sludge sold to individuals and small-scale farmers is heavily treated, sterilized, and monitored for the presence of toxins. It's not technically organic, but it's perfectly fine to use. Alereon fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Feb 26, 2017 |
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Feb 26, 2017 19:34
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We're starting from a fresh dirt lot so we just added a layer of loose rich soil on top of the hard sand. He already ordered half a lawn of sod (?) and got a bag of grass seeds to fill in the gaps. Lol if they're completely different varieties.
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Feb 26, 2017 23:28
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null_pointer posted:Oh, good, we're doing lawn care chat! You can rent the aerator for something like $40-100 per day. If you do, make sure you get a "core aerator" and not a spike one (which are usually cheaper) since the latter won't really do anything useful. It's completely doable, provided you've got a truck/vehicle capable of hauling it from the rental shop. Depending on the size of your yard the actual work is only a couple of hours, so you could possibly get away with a half-day rental. Or do what I did and do the full day rental, then split the cost with a nearby friend/neighbor and do a couple yards at once. It's also fairly hard work -- the aerator is weighted to help make sure the spoons punch into the turf, and while you CAN steer it, the spoons make it quite hard to adjust without pushing it down and levering it up. Going back and forth across your lawn a few dozen times becomes a lot of heavy lifting. Pro Tips: - Water the lawn thoroughly 24-48 hours before. This will make the turf soft enough to pull cores easily, but not too muddy, and make sure the grass is happy before you go ripping into it's root system - Plan to go back over your lawn twice, with the second pass at a 90' angle to the first. This helps avoid any gaps in coverage and gives you the desired 14 plugs/sqft - Get steel-toed boots. It's pretty hard for you to run over yourself with one, but you don't want to be in flip flops when you do - Wear work gloves! It looks and feels like a heavy duty lawnmower, but the amount of vibration and lifting you do will shred your delicate, manicured white-collar suburban hands (at least it did mine) - Aerate just before the "growing" season for your grass type -- early fall (or very late winter) for Cool Season grasses, late spring/early summer for warm season - The foot aerator H110Hawk mentioned is nice to have as a backup to pull plugs in areas where it would be awkward to get the machine - Aerating is great for trees! Compacted soil is even worse for them than grass because their roots often run deeper, so they get robbed of even more oxygen, nutrients, and moisture; however, be cautious about running over very shallow roots running close to the surface, as hitting those with a spoon will definitely do more harm than good. null_pointer posted:In addition, is there such a thing as eco-friendly lawn fertilizer that isn't just manure? I've got two dogs and can't have them tromping around in feces, and my desire to have a great lawn is lower than my desire to not hasten the death of the ecosystem. You can get Milorganite ( http://www.milorganite.com ) from your local home store. This is basically the sanitized sewer sludge Alereon mentioned, but it really is great stuff. Not only is it a great organic fertilizer (which means it breaks down slowly over a longer period so you have to add less, and it contributes useful microbes to your soil ecology) it's also a good supply of iron which is great for cool-season grasses if you want that nice dark blue-green color. There's a distinctive but (in my opinion) unoffensive, faint, and short-lived odor to it given it's source, but that fades pretty quickly after the first rain/watering. If you don't want to put poop on your lawn, another option is Ringer ( http://www.saferbrand.com/store/organic-lawn-care/lawn-fertilizer ). This is also organic, but has less in the way of iron. It's another very good fertilizer, and even if you are happy using Milorganite it's worth considering adding it to your schedule, because being a different organic source means its microbiome is different. Using both over the course of a year will help maintain even more soil biome diversity. I'm doing a 3x/year Milorganite schedule (4th of July, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving) with 1xRinger in the Spring (with some additional starter fertilizer when I over-seed).
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Feb 27, 2017 01:46
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I worked on a golf course in high school, and I remember aerating as one of the worst jobs. That said, what made it so awful was disposing of the ejected plugs. We had a machine to pulverize them after ejection, for areas that could be the equivalent of residential lawn. None of you are mentioning anything like that though, is the pulverizer built into the small units you can rent? Or are you just skipping it and letting them break down/ get eaten by the mower?
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Feb 27, 2017 13:47
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Naively, I am imagining the mower firing the plugs out at speed, forcing pets and family to dive behind cover.
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Feb 27, 2017 14:16
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Raised by Hamsters posted:I worked on a golf course in high school, and I remember aerating as one of the worst jobs. That said, what made it so awful was disposing of the ejected plugs. We had a machine to pulverize them after ejection, for areas that could be the equivalent of residential lawn. None of you are mentioning anything like that though, is the pulverizer built into the small units you can rent? Or are you just skipping it and letting them break down/ get eaten by the mower? Yeah, you just let them break down naturally (so it's a kind of lazy-mans topdressing as well). Going over it with a mulching mower can help speed up the process.
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Feb 27, 2017 14:56
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Ayup, I think that hiring someone to schlep the core aerator around is worth the money. The descriptions in the various replies are only reinforcing my theory that shoving a portable hernia around my lawn is better left to a professional. It looks like I'll hire someone to aerate and dethatch, and I'll put down some of that Ringer stuff, and maybe oversees with some a mix of seed and micro clover. Thanks for all of the suggestions!
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Feb 27, 2017 16:16
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Raised by Hamsters posted:I worked on a golf course in high school, and I remember aerating as one of the worst jobs. That said, what made it so awful was disposing of the ejected plugs. We had a machine to pulverize them after ejection, for areas that could be the equivalent of residential lawn. None of you are mentioning anything like that though, is the pulverizer built into the small units you can rent? Or are you just skipping it and letting them break down/ get eaten by the mower? A golf course has to look pretty for the next tee time and not screw up peoples drives. That stuff is left to rot.
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Feb 27, 2017 16:59
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null_pointer posted:Ayup, I think that hiring someone to schlep the core aerator around is worth the money. The descriptions in the various replies are only reinforcing my theory that shoving a portable hernia around my lawn is better left to a professional. If you don't mind supervising a bit, you could rent the aerator and hire the labor directly.
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Feb 27, 2017 17:05
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null_pointer posted:Ayup, I think that hiring someone to schlep the core aerator around is worth the money. The descriptions in the various replies are only reinforcing my theory that shoving a portable hernia around my lawn is better left to a professional. It's honestly not that bad, but it definitely depends on your square footage/willingness to spend a day pushing around equipment. Still, if you've got a large yard or something that would be at all awkward (hills, trees, curvy beds, pavers) then just paying someone to do it for you is totally reasonable.
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Feb 27, 2017 20:13
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The mats of sod grass finally arrived and it's causing us so much stress! http://shibafu.sakuraweb.com/harikata/sagyou.html We laid it out in the second style, brick pattern with gaps to grow later. Then my husband and the kids and the cousins shoveled twenty bags of sand Today I went along and tapped the sand off each mat and filled in the gaps while removing excess sand to make the gaps slightly lower than the top of the mats to allow height for the grass to grow. Then my husband came home with a few more sod mats and more bags of sand and threw more sand on top of everything, and I had to go through again and removed almost exactly as much sand as he had just thrown on. Possibly more. My belief is that the sand in the gaps shouldn't be higher than the mats. I just want a flat lawn that looks decent and is fun to play on.
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Mar 12, 2017 12:29
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null_pointer posted:Oh, good, we're doing lawn care chat! I think you want Milorganite. Edit: 1st Crocus today, SEMI. Battered Cankles fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Mar 13, 2017 |
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Mar 13, 2017 02:05
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Lawn care: anyone ever fit a universal scarifier blade to a lawnmower?
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Mar 15, 2017 18:55
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cakesmith handyman posted:Lawn care: anyone ever fit a universal scarifier blade to a lawnmower?
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Mar 15, 2017 22:07
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Is there a correct way to use a thatch rake on more than, say, 10 square feet of lawn that does NOT result in you angrily throwing the thatch rake in the trash?
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Mar 15, 2017 23:56
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Raised by Hamsters posted:Is there a correct way to use a thatch rake on more than, say, 10 square feet of lawn that does NOT result in you angrily throwing the thatch rake in the trash? It's going to be a good bit of work for any reasonably large area, but if you get the angle adjusted so you can push/pull it comfortably and so the edge isn't digging into the ground it's not too bad.
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Mar 16, 2017 00:43
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I've got like 200 square metres of lawn I'm not raking moss up by hand.
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Mar 16, 2017 11:36
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Does anyone have experience with indoor and/or outdoor home security cameras? There's a billion of them out there of varying quality but I'd like to find a good balance between convenience and winding up on a botnet.
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Mar 16, 2017 18:22
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We're using Piper, for two reasons: 1. No monthly fee. 2. IFTTT integration. That means we can automate turning the cameras on and off, and have them automatically post the videos they record (triggered by motion/sound) to the slack channel that all 4 of us are in, so it's not just the responsibility of the one person who has the app to review them as they come in. Videos are stored on aws, which is as secure as I care about. I think they keep the past sixty video clips. Major downside (if you care about that sort of thing) is that there isn't an option to have your cameras call the police for you. We didn't want that anyway since the police in our area are notoriously uninterested in property crimes. You do have the option to have the cameras sound a very loud alarm, which seems as likely to scare burglars off as anything. Also, our roomba constantly triggers the cameras, so we would not want to call the police automatically anyway. Our cameras are all indoor. Not sure if they make an outdoor version. The night vision works great. We've had them for about eight months now and I'm totally content.
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Mar 16, 2017 18:44
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Arachnamus posted:Does anyone have experience with indoor and/or outdoor home security cameras? There's a billion of them out there of varying quality but I'd like to find a good balance between convenience and winding up on a botnet. In the other home owner thread there was a recent discussion on it. Starts about here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3774735&pagenumber=39&perpage=40
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Mar 16, 2017 19:29
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There's also the home security thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3635963
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Mar 16, 2017 19:31
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Thanks!
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Mar 17, 2017 07:58
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Is this a good place for asking about building/renovating walkways? I've got a cement walkway in the front of my house with craptastic looking slate tiles currently attached to it. They seem to come off just by sticking a screwdriver under the mudding and prying them off. How difficult is it to swap out the tiles with something different? Could I possibly use some kind of stone or brick instead? Is it just like laying tile on a cement floor in a house or do I need to use something different?
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Mar 21, 2017 17:03
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I want to know about installing tiles outside too. We wanted to do a brick driveway but even at 90 cents each, bricks were more than twice as expensive as concrete and gravel. We settled for a brick pathway and concrete driveway.
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Mar 22, 2017 04:20
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Interior design question! I'm thinking of repainting the kitchen. Right now it has plain white walls, and they're starting to look a bit dingy despite regular scrubs with a Magic Eraser. I understand gray walls are The In Thing these days, and I think a warm, light gray with white trim would look decent. The walls are partly painted, partly covered with tile in various shades of beige, with golden-brown cabinets and brownish granite countertops. Ceiling is white, floor is white tile with gray tile insets. There are gray and pink backsplashes behind the stove and sink. Major appliances are stainless steel or black. Do you goons think gray walls could work or should I play it safe and stick with white?  
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Apr 10, 2017 23:23
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