best lawn mower with roller image
soCleen
im planning to build a putting green in my backyard this spring. Im going to use bent grass, and I need a mower. definitely looking to spend under 300$ for the mower.
Answer
Because it needs mowing everyday at 250 mm (3/16) you will need a greens mower with a heavy steel drum roller and grass catcher. It's a very expensive mower. Start calling golf courses to see if any have used ones for sale. Also call John Deere and Toro for refurbished lease greens mowers.
How do I get my lawn greener?
Katie
I inherited a home from a relative who passed earlier this year. The lawn has always been green but its steadily getting more and more brown this summer. I water nearly every night and keep it mowed regularly. Am I not watering enough? Do I need a fertilizer? Please help! I have a black thumb and this could only happen to me!!
Answer
First, let me say that I am a HUGE Jerry Baker fan..from WAY BACK in the "olden days". My favorite book of his is one I got in 1988 called "The Impatient Gardener", and he recommends some things that some people think are not "good for the environment", but if you look at the natural chemistry of things, there's really nothing that will hurt it! And when you take into consideration that what he suggests generally is very inexpensive and gets GREAT results, who can argue with that?!?
Start with easy--and maybe obvious--things first. Do you know what type of grass this is? If it's Bermuda and wasn't kept watered through the winter, you may be in trouble. However, if it's St. Augustine, it may just be choking itself out. (St. Augustine is used a lot in the south because it can withstand the heat and drought, and it can go dormant for a LONG time!) Ask some of the neighbors if the know what kind of grass it is. If they don't know, you may have to go to a nursery to find out. If you're watering every night, it may be getting too much water!! Water it "deep" about every 3-4 days at the most. If you set out some tuna cans (the shallow ones) and water until they're full, you will be giving your lawn enough water, and the water will soak into the soil deeper and encourage deep root growth.
Until you find out for certain what type of grass it is, there are some things that you can do to help the lawn--or at least it won't hurt it any. If the lawn has been mowed in a manner that "thatched" the grass (chopped it up really fine so it goes to the soil to decompose and "self fertilize") you may have too much thatch and that could be "choking" the lawn. There are "dethatching" hand rakes or blades you can get for your lawn mower that will help pull up all the thatch. If you don't want to go to that expense--and don't mind some manual labor--you can use a regular rake and get quite a bit of it up. When you do, DON'T throw it away!! Start a compost pile with it, and any other grass clippings, leaves, other plant matter, and even "kitchen waste" such as vegetable peels. (If you want, we can get more into composting later. I'm a huge fan of composting!)
Another thing that may be happening is that the soil is compacted and water is having a problem getting through the surface of the soil down to the roots. There are aerators you can rent or buy (it's a big roller with spikes that you put some water into to weigh it down, and the spikes poke holes in the ground) OR if you have some golf shoes, you can use those and just walk all over the lawn to poke holes in them. You could also do what I've done on several lawns--get a pitch fork (probably around $20) and casually walk around the yard dropping it into the soil. You don't have to go very deep, just enough to break up the surface. I did one backyard over the course of 3-5 days while my toddlers were playing in the yard. I just made sure they weren't anywhere near the pitchfork when I was poking holes! LOL Remember, you don't have to dig up the yard, just get some holes into the soil.
Another thing that will help with water penetration into the soil (and this is going to sound really strange) is to "wash" the grass! Invest in a hose-end sprayer (about $10-15, and one of the most useful garden tools you'll ever get) put some cheap, cheap, cheap dish washing soap (liquid) in it and attach it to your garden hose, then spray the whole lawn. Plants "breathe" (aspirate) through their leaves, and a blade of grass is that plants "leaf"! Between natural dirt and pollen, as well as human created air pollution that falls onto the grass, it may not be able to breathe!! Besides washing the dirt off the blades of grass, the dish soap also helps the water to soak into the soil more efficiently.
Those are basic things you can do to get started. If you have a used book store, see if you can get a copy of "The Impatient Gardener" by Jerry Baker. I did what he suggested without questioning it or thinking about it--and some of my friends and family members laughed at me...AT FIRST!! But once they saw the results I got, they all wanted to know what I was doing because the results are FABULOUS!!
Good luck!!
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