Advice for Starting New Lawn in West-Central West Virginia

bobsaccamanno41

Forum Newbie
Joined
Sep 21, 2020
Threads
1
Messages
1
  • / Advice for Starting New Lawn in West-Central West Virginia
New to the boards here.

My wife, two boys and I both moved into our new construction home back in January of this year. Our house is located in central West Virginia near the western boarder (transition zone). My house sits on an old golf course and the soil is largely clay. I also have A LOT of rocks in the yard that are left over from the construction process. I did a couple of soil tests over the summer which basically showed that my soil is devoid of any real nutrients and is alkaline.

I'm currently in the process of doing lot prep and planning to put starter fertilizer down and to throw grass seed and I'm looking for any advice or tips.

For some context, shortly after we moved in, I had to get grass seed down in order to refinance our construction loan into a fixed rate mortgage. I did some poor lot prep which basically consisted of dragging the lot with a pallet and then I threw down contractor's blend and put hay (not straw) on the seed. I did get the grass to grow, but it died out during the hot/dry summer months. It's come back a little but its filled with weeds and there are bare spots all over the place.

Right now, I'm working on actually prepping the lot. I've recently bought a subcompact tractor with a tiller, box scraper, front loader, etc and have been grading and smoothing out the uneven spots. I'm going to hit everything with a tiller either tonight or tomorrow and throw down some starter fertilizer. Once i get everything prepped I plan to throw down a 50/50 mix of bluegrass/tall fescue and cover with straw. I also plan to wait until spring next year and spread zoysia to hopefully get a decent mix of warm and cool season grasses. I plan on picking up a plug aerator for next year as well.

I'm not sure if I should try and kill off what is growing in my yard now or if my scraping of the top layer off will be enough to prevent weeds from taking over again. If so, what should I use? I have regular round up (not the extended release or the 365 stuff), so I could spray that on everything if that would be a good idea.

Any advice, tips or suggestions are greatly appreciated. I've attached a few pictures to give you an idea of what I'm working with.

1 Yard.jpg2 Yard.jpg3 Yard.jpg4 - Yard.jpg
 

mechanic mark

Lawn Pro
Joined
Jul 15, 2013
Threads
175
Messages
7,381
  • / Advice for Starting New Lawn in West-Central West Virginia
Give your local county extension agent a call & see if they can come out & give you advice for free, it's part of their job. I've called them a couple times concerning trees & a culvert. I had the large Poplar, 36" across at stump, taken down per agents advice & he had the county deliver 36 tons of large granite stones for culvert.
 

Darryl G

Lawn Addict
Joined
Apr 5, 2017
Threads
27
Messages
1,685
  • / Advice for Starting New Lawn in West-Central West Virginia
You can throw all the time, money, grass seed and fertilizer at your lawn that you want, but if you have crappy soil you'll never win the battle. I suggest that you address the underlying issues by amending your soil or adding quality topsoil.
 
Top