Nice @Modawg2k! What do you think made the most difference?
Honestly just watering correctly. This area had issues due to overall poor watering strategy, old sprinklers not reaching, and coupled with the dog peeing in the area I’m sure that decreased irrigation didn’t help.
@Modawg2k Curious as to your watering freq & duration these days. I wasn’t happy with how my lawn was coming in so I dethatched and fertilized. Until it’s full and green I’m not confident of the watering schedule / zone settings that I have right now.
I have 3 grass zones on the same schedule. They run 2 cycles with a 12 minute soak.
Zone 1: 15 min/cycle
Zone 2: 8 min/cycle
Zone 3: 11 min/cycle
The differences in times are purely based on my catch cup results. So Zone 2 is low because it’s a small area and gets watered a litte by all 3 cycles. The schedule tends to run every other day. I would say about every 3-4 waterings it might do 2 days in a row.
2 Likes
2 Likes
It’s come a long way broseph.
I assume it’s a female dog from those pics.
No, male… but he’s special 
1 Like
Hahahah he pees like a guuuuuurl!
3 Likes
@Modawg2k Transformation of your lawn is fantastic! Curious what type of nozzles did you had before replacing with new ones? Did you replace them with the exact same type? What do you think was the problem with the old nozzles that they were not reaching the dry spots in the lawn? Were they getting clogged?
2 Likes
Thanks! The nozzles I had were Rainbird VAN-12 series and I replaced probably about 5 heads, but I really need a few more to do. I just went to Lowe’s and got the Orbit nozzles with the same specifications (VAN and 12’). As far as the older nozzles, they were about 6 years old, so wear and tear probably caused them to not spray as effeciently. I opened some up and try to clean them, but the replacement nozzles are so cheap I just went with new.
Here are several possible causes that I’m sure all combined were ultimately the reason
-
Not watering correctly (pre-Rachio days). Until this forum and support articles, I never knew how to correctly water. One day I’d have grass drying out and dying, another day I’d have mushrooms.
-
Thatch: I went through a phase where I didn’t bag clippings. There are arguments for both sides of this, but regardless, this left large amounts of thatch.
-
Dog urine
-
A rabbit was getting into my yard and was alway hanging out in that area. So him eating grass, peeing and pooping in the area probably wasn’t great. At first I didn’t mind the rabbit because my boy loved watching him, but once I realized the massive defication that was going on out there, I blocked all accesses around the yard.
-
Winter Rye Overseeding: I overseed with Rye every winter, and every winter I let it go at some point because I get dejected after all that hard prep work and with not watering correctly, dog peeing, it was just a disaster.
3 Likes
Rabbits! There’s a new one. I probably have some older nozzles that need replacing as well. Thanks for the info.
1 Like
Sure thing. if you need any assistance, start up a thread on it and you’ll get lots of help
2 Likes
The cottontails probably aren’t really the problem. Sure they eat some grass, but our desert cottontails are coprophagic, so they don’t “poop and pee” on lawns that much at all.
We tried blocking holes under the gates–they dig. We put river rock around a raised deck to keep them from going under there–they squeeze through the tiniest spaces. We fenced the garden and yes, we dug about six inches down and installed hardware cloth along the sides and bottom of the raised beds. So far, that keeps them out of the garden.
Any late afternoon, I can look out in the back yard and see from 2 to 5 lying in the grass, cooling off, legs outstretched, belly down. I just wish they would eat more St. Augustine and faster so I don’t have to mow so often.
1 Like
I’ll have to respectfully disagre on the poop part because that was fairly obvious 
I found success by poutting blocks under our gate, and plugging the holes in the block wall. I have a view fence but fortunately they can only escape that route, they can’t really get into the yard that way due to the height.
OK, talking about poop–these waskly wabbits eat the first formed pellets to extract as much moisture and nutritional value as possible. The second time “through”, the pellets are very hard and probably won’t cause harm to lawns since they have been digested twice.
As many rabbits as love our yard, I rarely see pellets they leave behind (no pun intended there).
They are little eating and digging machines and their digging in the dirt causes more harm in my yard.
1 Like
BTW, @Modawg2k, your lawn looks great! Thanks for the info about the rainbird u-series nozzles. Some of ours need to be replaced and those sound like just what we need!
1 Like
Gross
I was bored at work. What crazy is this google maps photos seriously had to have been taken in the past couple weeks. I can tell because of how the grass looks, plus other items that are not there that used to be outside. Side note, there’s my nozzle breakdown.
2 Likes
@Modawg2k I’m pretty sure the rabbits don’t think it’s gross. In fact, I’ll bet they think humans who eat rabbit stew are gross! 
1 Like