This is my first hard look at my new lawn at my new house. I’ve lived here for three days at time of filming and am trying to identify grass types, weeds, irrigation problems, and other obvious challenges that I will have to deal with in the near term.
Soil test I’m using to start off will be the Yard Mastery kit along with a basic jar test to quickly get an idea of soil consistency. Later I’ll do a more substantial soil test before I start renovating lawn areas one zone at a time.
First major task for this lawn will be to cut it back down to size and repair sprinkler heads and replace the control box (the clock) with something modern.
► You can see the Yard Mastery soil test in the link here: https://shrsl.com/2d3aw
Late Fall (early December) tends to be a good time to do this for most people anyway as most lawns don’t get fertilizer applied much after Halloween.
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21 Comments
It's almost too cool there for Bermuda to really thrive. Bermuda loves 85*+ weather. I'd say a fescue would love those temps, would even stay green in the middle of winter. With all those areas that are partial shade many other type of grass are going to struggle. If it wasn't for the water situation I would suggest a "Bluemuda" lawn. Maybe a "Fesmuda" lawn?
Hmm, the lime-green bladed plant might be Yellow Nutsedge. If your see a lot of 4 offshoots from 1 parent rhizome/tuber, then that might be it. A pain in the keister. Always seemed to grow around broken irrigation heads, over-irrigated parts of the lawn.
Marathon Sod is a very popular grass type in SoCal
Good luck. Looks like a lot going on with the front. I had kikuyugrass. It’s roots and runners very aggressive. I used Triclopyr Ester. That was last year. This year I had Bermuda. No luck with Quinclorac or Tenacity. So went extreme. Applied numerous applications of Roundup. Then dug up the lawn. 2 weeks ago I planted a California Native by Stover. I got it at Green Thumb Nursery. Various locations in Los Angeles & Orange County. I think they have one in Thousand Oaks (about 20 minutes east of you?). Saw new grass in 5 days. Much faster then Marathon (aka tall fescue). This new grass is supposed to be drought tolerant when established. Supposedly it can also be planted any time of year. I am in zone 10 – in “the OC” (aka Orange County). Not sure what zone your in. Can’t wait to your adventures over the next year plus.
What made you want to move to California?
Welcome to Cali, Brian & fam 👍
The hellstrip can be a bit frustrating with all dogwalking pee and poop lol. Good luck with everything!!
Do a video of the jar test please!
Hey man, welcome to CA. Im down the road in Fillmore (local former Oregonian). You just had an awesome SOD farm go out of business last month in Camarillo. If you need any help with anything, hit me up. I'm right down the road from you.
I've heard there are some extremely drought tolerant varieties of Bermuda grass. Might be as good or better than Buffalo Grass, and likely cheaper. I don't know the details because it gets too cold where I live.
You must have received an amazing job offer to move because that landscape beyond your old back yard was simply beautiful.
Sheep Fescue?, Just say Kik (ki koo you) it's from South Africa.
Kill the Kik as fast as you can.
Looking forward to seeing future videos
Congrats on your new home. Couldn't have asked for a better property to make new content and help out so many people that are in the same situation. Looking forward to the transformation. 👍💚🦸
Fun. Looking forward to following along as you tackle this.
oh you're going to have so much fun experimenting at that place. That kikuyugrass (if that's what it is) is really versatile, much more so than St. Aug. It's a popular golf course grass in the Pacific, so it can be mowed down really low w the right cultivar.
If you find that you have quack grass in your lawn, use Certainty. It’s the only thing that works
3:30– curious to see how you go about ridding that type of undesirable grass. We have "wide blade" clumping fescue in cool season areas. Between have splotches of that which I had and some persisting heavily rooted crabgrasses, and how I had like 20-30 different grass types..that's what led to my decision to nuke everything.
Congrats and can't wait to see more content!
Beautiful property it has a lot of potential
Congrats on the new place. 🙂 looking forward to updates on this. Looks like the lawn has had a bad summer, sprinklers left on, probably not great for kikuyu. The patch in the front almost looks like it’s been a walkway or a car parked on it! Anyway love the channel 🙂
Hey Brian, I'm from Australia and that grass 100% looks like Kikuyu, it's everywhere here.
You pronounce it "kai-koo-yoo".
You’ve got your work cut out for you with this lawn ! I’m looking forward to it .