Yard Work 2009 #4

19 - 12 - 9

April 7 th - cut #4 of the year. The days between cuts are getting shorter. Cut #5 will be due in about a week at this rate.

The grass is starting to really get going, and the with the temperatures in the upper 70°s yesterday - there is no turning back now. The grass cuttings are now in the two-bag range. The back yard almost filled up the mower's rear bagger attachment. Now - after 4 or 5 days of sun, rain is due to return for a few. Hopefully sun returns for Easter...or the egg hunt will happen indoors again. Not as much fun as the wide outdoors!

I've managed to keep up with the emerging weeds in the lawn - not many are visible at this point. I did have to put down a lot of moss-killer fertilizer back in February. The wet winters out here in Oregon causes lots of moss growth. The moss-killer did most of the work, and the moss is now mostly dead. Now I have to go and thatch it out. And keep an eye out for weeds - that keep getting re-seeded from the neighbors. Not much time is spent on their yard work....

I really need to go find a good aerating tool, too. There are sections of lawn where the ground is really hard, and the grass is sparse. I've seen a tool at Home Depot that will put nice holes in the ground, but it does not pull out a plug. I'd really like it to do that - and then spread those topsoil rich plugs to areas of the lawn that were formally bark chips areas. That grass seems to die out rather quickly come July, and the ground doesn't hold any water there - and I'm sure there are not a lot of nutrients either.