I'm sure they're overwhelmingly sterilized by just being in a bag of fert... But still feels like it shouldn't happen.

Not limited by brand either. Andersons, Harrell's, spring valley, etc.

That being said, I go through 20-40 bags of fert a day, so I see a lot of seeds because I just use a lot of fert.

Neat.

That's all.

Biggest rock I've found so close to the surface to date, but far from an anomaly.

The crazy part is I usually just randomly stumble on them... Maybe 1/10 is from a particular spot just doing badly.

Genuinely every time I dig, I find a rock that is way too big.

Well, that's why I can't get anything but l kbg to grow on 90% of the front lawn.

Rainbird 5006 rises 6 inches, vs the standard 4 inches.

AND Toro T5 rises 5 inches, but the body is the exact same height as standard 4 inch heads, so you don't need to dig deeper (unlike the 5006). The 5006 does have a side port, as long you don't get the SAM or PRS models...

That being said, 5006 wins in terms of even distribution. T5 throws a smidge further, just does it by throwing a bit heavy on the top edge of the nozzle orifice.

5006 is crazy expensive though, $30-40. Toro T5 is like $20.

Been alternating Anuew and trinexapac ethyl, which seemed to really punish the poas.

(Firstly, a single experiment doesn't prove anything. It's just a good demonstration... Extensions have long since proved it)

Background:

Had a 10 day stretch with no rain or irrigation. My kbg was doing weirdly well, despite growth potential getting into the teens for several days straight... Darn clay holds water too well.

This section along the driveway was starting to wilt a bit faster because it's got a deep sand base from the driveway. So it's hot and dries out faster. Still green, but it was getting that dark dull hue of drought stressed grass.

This spot gets about 80% sun.

What I did:

Saw we had some rain coming the next morning. So I applied propiconizole, chitosan oligosaccharide, azoxystrobin, and chlorothalonil (for science 😉). Let it dry for a few hours.

Next I hand watered slowly for 20 minutes. Just a slow but really heavy drench.

Then I took a leaf blower and dried off the foliage and stems... This is the step that essentially guaranteed ascochyta would be favored over any other disease (assuming the fungicides didn't do that already), by kicking up any dormant ascochyta spores and avoiding the leaves being wet *all* night.

Rain came over night. Didn't check the totals, but it was plenty.

Next day was sunny and still warm. Gave it 2 light midday mistings to ensure the results weren't obscured by heat triggering actual dormancy.

Leaves began going more brown.

After the syringing, I did another bit of chlorothalonil because I assumed it was probably all washed off by that point.

More rain over night.

Next day, it was all a sickly gray.

2 more midday waterings.

Rain in the morning.

Next day (today) it's in full blown ascochyta breakout. Active lesions on everything, confirm ascochyta pycnidia under microscope. The effected area perfectly aligns with the spots that were hit by the blower.

Neat!

It's okay to let kbg and fine fescues go dormant by reducing watering frequency. They'll recover totally fine as long as they get .25-.5 inches of water every 2 weeks while dormant. (.25 every week is probably the safest bet)

Prg and tttf, not so much. You shouldn't let either go completely dormant... But you can safely teeter on the edge of dormancy with 1-2 waterings a week (.5-.6 inch minimum).

When growth potential plummets, grass doesn't photosynthesize very well (or at all if it's at 0%) so fighting dormancy with aggressive watering can exhaust the carb stores of the grass and weaken it long term. Not to mention, high frequency watering is a recipe for disease. You can see your growth potential with [Turf Tools](https://arc167.github.io/turf-tools/index.html), the turf growth factors tab.

I'm still at 60% GP, but the humidity and dew point are super high, so I've cut off water completely this week to prevent disease. (Haven't watered in like 3 weeks, but we've had a lot of rain and for all the faults of my rocky clay soil, it sure stays wet for ages)

Had a few isolated spots of dollar spot about a month ago... Shockingly, the grass actually died. Went to manually aerate them with a pitch fork, found big rocks precisely in the center of every spot, all less than 3 inches deep.

Genuinely the only spots in my entire lawn that have had any dollar spot. (No fungicides this year, even skipped the early season DMI)

Just goes to show how diseases don't exist in a vacuum... It's all connected. The rocks obstructed root growth, which hurt nutrient and water access for those patches, which made that grass weaker... And therefore more susceptible to disease and less able to recover.

There was a 6th car down a bit further with a flat tire.

link to riddle 9

Going to do something a little different for this one!

But first, a reminder of the format:

These are logic riddles, not as much knowledge-based quizzes.. This one does require some knowledge! So if you have to look stuff up, thats entirely fine. Just don't use Al, thats no fun, and it will almost certainly be wrong.

It's my intention to craft these in a way that makes them difficult, but possible to get right without guessing wildly..

Winners get a flair, if they didn't have one already.

Winners will be chosen by closeness and the first satisfactory answer. Ties will be broken by the highest proportion of correct info in the comment (so listing multiple different/unconnected answers will lower your chances).

Identify the grasses! Submit answers in a numbered list.

Hints:

• these are all cool season grasses (that doesn't mean they're all desirable lawn grasses) .
• each is a different species, no repeats.
• they were glued with clear nail polish to the paper, so the shape of the cross section is hidden... That will significantly increase the difficulty of guessing one of these.

Here are the full resolution versions:

https://ibb.co/XZbdLs6G

https://ibb.co/HcN5PMr

Note: comments will be hidden on this post until someone gets them all right!

Lot of dog pee in the same spot over the winter. So I cut out a square of the dead KBG and replaced it with a square I took from above a downspout emitter that had gotten over grown.

Just set the square of dead kbg on the log thinking "surely has a lot of microbes and nitrogen, might help decompose this log a bit"

This was all about 6 weeks after the rest of the grass had greened up.

Definitely didn't expect the kbg to come back... What's even crazier is that up until yesterday, we'd only gotten .49 inches of rain for the month of May. Irrigation doesn't hit it.

So the grass must've rooted in the log (don't want to check, want to see how long it survives) and has been able to pull moisture from the rotting wood.

Crazy!