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| I live in zone 7 on the east coast. People are saying Kentucky Blue Grass is a good grass that becomes thick in time. From what the experts are saying thick grass is key to preventing weeds. But I have a somewhat shady backyard and even the front yard has a significant size tree. I would like a thick grass that can tolerate some shade. Can someone help me out with a pick? I see some of my neighbors have a somewhat thick grass. I see home depot has Scotts shade and sun mix. Is this going to give me the thick grass I desire? I will reseed with the good grass this fall and hope it takes over someday. Thanks. |
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| "I live in zone 7" To paraphrase from The Princess Bride, I don't think that means what you think it means. I live in zone 6 (leaning toward 7), but it snowed here on May 31. It probably won't snow again until mid October. But my zone 6-7 is very different from most people in zones 6 and 7, so I say it's 5 when I post. The zones only tell us about the coldest it's likely to get in the winter. We need to know a lot more than that to help you with a grass selection. Can you give us a zip code? |
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| I am near Philadelphia on the east coast. Yeah, didn't snow here on May 31st. Maybe it was hail? |
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| That's a perfect example of a climate where zone 7 is somewhat misleading. When I first saw zone 7 east coast, I was thinking Virginia, Maryland, etc. KBG would suffer in those areas and tall fescue would be a better choice. Philadelphia has generally mild winters, so it's classed as zone 7, but the summers aren't nearly as hot as some of the other east coast zone 7 areas, so KBG is a perfect choice for most lawns. However, since you have a lot of shade, the KBG is likely to suffer. You might want to add some fine fescue to the heavily shaded areas. The sun and shade mix that you found is probably a mixture of KBG and fine fescues (creeping read, chewings, hard) and probably has some rye and tall fescue mixed in as well. One warning is that the fescues and rye will germinate much faster than the KBG, so don't cut back on watering for at least three weeks, or you won't have any KBG from the seeding. Once it gets growing, the areas that are dominated by the fine fescues (the shadier areas, mostly) will do better with about 1/2 the fertilizer and 1/2 the water as the KBG dominated areas. If you fertilize fine fescue as you do KBG, it will suffer. |
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| Thanks a lot bpgreen for the helpful advice. I plan to get started with the reseeding about September 20th when I get back from vacation. I just hope that's not too late. If I start earlier I won't be able to water it so that would probably be worse. Then I'll wait until after the grass is growing to fertilize with the Milorganite under the conditions you stated. If I'm starting reseeding too late let me know since I hate to waste the money for that seed. If I can turn this lawn around I will feel great. |
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- Posted by silver8ack none (My Page) on Mon, Aug 1, 11 at 22:20
| I think you better plan on doing it on the 20th. Im in south jersey. Im not a climateologist, but we can get some freakish weather here. The averages are averages... But we could see a week of sub freezing nights in October then be in the 70s during the day in December. Same for summer...we just had a few days in the 100s and like half the amount of rain as normal in July. So what I'm saying is...if you're planning on KBG, get it down ASAP in Sept or even late august if u can. |
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| I know what you mean we are practically neighbors. I will be on vacation late august to mid september so I don't have much choice unless I wait til spring. Grass seed is pretty expensive I think so I hope it grows fast. This summer has been as warm as I ever remember. Warmer than last year by a little bit and possibly warmer than 1980 which was the standard for hot summers. A week or so ago the nighttime lows on a couple of days in Newark, NJ was 86. That's a nightime low if you can believe it. Inner Harbor in Baltimore had an overnight low of 88F. That's like Mohave desert nightime lows. If anyone thinks September 20th is too late to plant seed near Phila area please let me know. |
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