What Happened?

One of the things I would change about this house if we owned it is the yard. The Sprinkling system is set up in a way that there is no way to grow things on the sides of the house without having to manually water it. There were so many weeds there when we moved in that 3 years later I am still fighting them off. Also the soil is so sandy that getting anything, even grass, to grow takes a lot of effort and extra water. There is also a lot of Crab Grass mixed in with the real lawn. My dad joked with us that if we bought the crab grass killing fertilizer we would not have a lawn at all.

The first summer we were here, there were huge patches of holes in the lawn were there was no grass. In the front yard and the back. We have gotten the front yard to fill in pretty well by changing some sprinklers and a little grass seed. (The back yard is still a work in progress.)



This spring we have had lots of moisture so the need for sprinklers was not as urgent. This is a good thing for us because we have to let the property management company turn on our system so we are not liable for anything. This can sometimes take them a while. I was watching our lawn and it was still green and doing good, so I didn't water yet. Ryan mowed the lawn a couple of times and it was green and lush. Then one day suddenly it was dry and dying. I was not looking forward to having to go out and drag the hose around to water the lawn, but just when I was about to the guys showed up to turn on the water. The thing I did not understand was that our next door neighbor has just as bad of soil as we do, never waters, mows or does anything with his lawn and what he has of a lawn was still very green.







The maintenance men commented and asked me what happened to the lawn, but I had no idea. Except that we have to be really diligent about watering it when it gets hot in the summer, but I have never had it die like this in the spring. So they turned on the sprinklers and ran them. Usually if the grass starts to dry out we just water it an extra time and it bounds right back. The next morning I heard the sprinklers going again. I thought oh good. It seemed to really need the water yesterday it could probably use the extra.


When I went out that morning I noticed that not only was the lawn not rebounding but it truly looked dead. Again the neighbors unkept lawn was still long and a lush green.


I didn't worry too much because the sprinklers were up and running now so the lawn would bounce back it always does. Then that afternoon I got a call from the property management company. He started off by saying I don't know what your lawn looks like today..........


I thought, "Oh no the maintenance men went back and told them that we are not taking care of the yard." But that sentence was followed by an explanation of why our lawn had died.




The fertilizing company that they send out accidentally sprayed our lawn with their mixture of a weed killer like Round Up, instead of fertilizer. Hence the lawn is going to die no matter what we do so turn the water off.


I have to say I was relieved, and there are some great benefits from this. We don't have to water for now so our water bill will not go up yet. The lawn is not growing, so we don't have to mow it. And the fertilizing company is going to come in the next few weeks and take out the old lawn and put in sod. So hopefully, we will have a nice lawn this summer.

As for the lawn right now. Please don't judge us. It wasn't our fault.