Tag: lawn

Seeding a Lawn

This story starts in the spring when the horribly pruned English walnut was removed from the front yard. This was wonderful. Now we have a beautiful view of Mount Timp, no more hazardous tree right over the house and way less clean-up. (Note: don’t harshly prune, or more accurately ‘top’ your trees because they are right by the house and might fall on it. Severe pruning will only make new wood weaker and the hazard will be worse.) Now the only problem was the front lawn was fine fescue. Fine fescue is a wonderful grass for the shade, but in full sun it just gets stressed.

I decided we needed to redo the front lawn. So I set to work trying to kill it. I sprayed it with round-up, waited a couple weeks and sprayed again. I did it a third, even fourth time. Expect the lawn had gone dormant because I was spraying  in the heat of the summer. Round-up kills only activily growing plants, and my lawn wasn’t growing so it wasn’t dying either. Eventually I gave up trying to kill certain patches and tilled it up.

Prepping the ground for seeding

By this time it was the end of the late summer/early fall seeding window. Late summer, or about mid-August to mid-September here, is the best time to seed a cool season grass. To prep the ground it was tilled and then rolled out with a sod roller. I seeded the lawn with a dwarf tall fescue, using a fertilizer spreader. With the spreader, I went up/down and across several times to make sure it had full, even coverage.  It came up, but  pretty spotty and some of the fine fescue came back too. So here is what it looks like now:

Patchy, new grass

I haven’t despaired. I re-seeded just yesterday. This “dormant seeding” should pop up in the spring and cover all the current bare spots. Plus grass will naturally fill in by itself. (That’s one of the reasons we plant it.) But I think I should have seeded it better in the first place. Here are some things I did wrong:

  • I should have tried and killed the lawn in the spring, not summer. It would have been actively growing in the spring and actually died. Instead, I still have fine fescue in the lawn. I could have also irrigated it more in the summer, but I’m not a huge fan of drowning lawns in water.
  • I didn’t quite irrigate enough right after I seeded. I think this is why it came up a little patchy. Next time I’ll irrigate two or more times a day right after seeding to make sure it doesn’t dry up and germinates more evenly.
  • I was a little late in seeding the lawn. I wish I had a few more weeks for the lawn to establish before winter.

The one good thing about this was I spend about $30 total for all the grass seed I needed along with renting the sod roller. Seeding grass is a lot cheaper and it can get good results if you don’t make the same mistakes I did. I recently saw a hydro-seeded lawn that was seeded a few weeks before I did mine. It is a nice, thick lawn right now. Seedling a lawn can take a bit more patience than sod, but it’s much cheaper and can be a lot easier. If you do seed and get bad results, just take advantage of the next seeding window (spring, late summer and late fall) and re-seed over the top like I did.

Rain, Sun, Rain

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It’s been quite the wet spring. We finally got a bit of break this week from the rain, but it’s back again today. I have yet to turn on the irrigation system. (I did see someone hand watering their yard the day after a week long rainstorm. Why do people think that lawn is aquatic?) I finished planting up the veggie garden (I have three spots this year to garden due to an unforeseen move.) Now I’m starting to think about the ornamental part of gardening. I want to get a good perennial bed in somewhere. I also have to move the few perennials I planted at my old apartment. They are a few weeks a way from peak bloom, so I might miss out on some good blooms.

I’ve been killing off a section of grass in the front of the condos. I’ve sprayed it twice with round-up. After the first time, it was extremely spotty. To cover that up, I mowed it extremely short with the mower. I think it’s worked pretty good–the only problem is now getting funds for mulch. Hopefully people don’t mind the dead grass for a while. I think it is better than the dying grass that was there. The section I was killing no longer had irrigation due to foundation problems. And I was more than happy to get rid of some of the mowing and trimming I have to do.

Lately I’ve been thinking about all the lawn everywhere. People tend to think of it as a low maintenance plant, but it’s not. The only way lawn takes less maintenance than a good shrub bed is with a large-deck mower.  At my condos where I do maintenance mowing takes forever because of the amount of grass and all the trimming I have to do. I would much rather have good shrub beds.

But I think the reason behind the huge amount of lawn is relatively low installation cost, and a lack of weeding in other garden beds. It’s really easy to let garden beds get overrun with weeds. I think if someone was out weeding every week, like they mow, the overall time of maintenance would decrease with more shrub beds. Now I want to actually try this out.

Fertilizer Snow

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I felt a little strange today. I was mowing the lawn and it started to snow a bit. I fertilized after: the snow and fertilizer looked exactly the same. It was hard to tell where my fertilizer was going and where it was snowing. It wasn’t too bad while I was outside, but now it is sticking to everything. Oh bipolar spring, when will you be happy?

Little sidenote: I read elsewhere about the problems with Scotts. But serisouly, they are the only company that tries to make lawn care easy for homeowners. It would be nice if instead of Scott’s we had horticulturist telling eveyone to mulch their clippings, mow heigh, fertilize properly (Scotts isn’t quite there), and put compost on those bad spots insted of more chemicals.  Or better yet, get rid of the lawn and plant gorgeous underutilized perennials. Even with all that, sometimes lawn does need a traditonal round of fertilizer and Scott’s makes it easy for a homeowner to get it on.

The lawn I’ve inherited hasn’t been fertilized, the clippings have been hauled away, plus it has been extremly overwatered. I finally gave my leached grass some good old fertilizer (and yes it was Scotts). As I was doing it, I thought that it would be cool to put a layer of mulch on instead. But for an acre of lawn, it just isn’t going to happen. (I would love to get rid of a ton of it–one step at a time though.)

Cheap Can Be Better

You get what you pay for. I was thinking of this saying and plants while lying in bed. I do not think you get what you pay for when you buy plants. For instance:

  • A pack of seed can turn into hundreds of great plants and costs only a few dollars. You have to spend extra work making them into those great plants, but at the same time you have control and know it’s done properly.
  • Larger plants cost more, but often just develop transplant shock when you plant them, and their smaller counterparts outgrow them quickly. This is especially true with perennials. I love 4 or 6 inch perennials. I won’t buy a gallon plant unless there is no other option.
  • Big box stores often stock from local and reliable wholesalers, but they don’t have the mark-up that many garden centers do.
  • Neglected plants are usually knocked way down, but can often quickly be brought back to life.
  • More expensive, newer varieties aren’t necessarily better: sometimes the older cheaper ones are.
  • If you get starts from neighbors it’s completely free and you know the plant will grow well in your exact location.

My neighbors redid their landscape right after I move here. Later on, I inspected their lawn and was pleasantly surprised to see a turf-type tall fescue. Tall fescue lawns are more drought tolerant, pest resistant, and often just look healthier and greener than their Kentucky blue counterpart. It also still handles traffic well, and the newer turf-types aren’t as stiff and spiky as the regular species. I inquired about there lawn later on and found out the reason they bought it wasn’t because it’s one of the best type of lawns to plant. (They had no idea.) It was the cheaper variety of sod.

Another time I was going to buy perennials. I went to about every garden center and store and finally found what I wanted at Smith’s Marketplace. They had the largest selection of perennials in the area, all in 4 or 6 inch parts, and a fraction of the price of the other garden centers. I noticed that a lot of the perennials came from local wholesalers–reliable companies that grew some of the best perennials to plant in our area. I ended up with better plants than many of the traditional varieties sold in garden centers and for a fraction of the price.

I have also bought plants that are poorly taken care of and succumb to rot or other problems soon after purchasing. I have also bought more expensive plants because it was the exact variety I wanted, or even because I loved the garden center it was sold at. But more expensive doesn’t mean it’s better.

Irrigation

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So in college, I learned how to determine how much to irrigate. I learned how in so many places and so many ways I was beginning to get confused. So I wrote up this lovely little article on everything I knew about irrigation. I did leave out the more difficult calculations. (So much fun, but really why waste all that effort when a simple one would do?) Fast forward to now. I was running an irrigation clock and had my doubts on how to run it. In other words, I was doing it badly. Finally the nagging I was giving myself caused me to look at the wonderful article. (I just realized I said it was little. It’s not.) Within five minutes I was throughly refreshed all my knowledge, realized that, yes, I should irrigate more, but no, I wasn’t killing the plants.

I have to admit right now, I have no real information on irrigation systems. But when to irrigate…I learned about that in 4-5 classes: one of which involved the difficult calculations that I so much enjoyed, but forgot quickly due to no reason to actually use them. With all this rambling, I am now going to post my article that noone besides me has had access to before now. Feel free to use, leave feedback, and copy (but don’t plagiarize). I understand it perfectly but not sure everyone will, so if you have questions ASK. And enjoy.

IRRIGATION FOR THE HOME GARDENER (PDF)

IRRIGATION FOR THE HOME GARDENER (DOCX)

I did notice: this is Utah based. So its more useful if you live here, but still applies everywhere else.

Watering the Lawn

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When I went outside to give my kid a ride on the swing, I discovered the mystery of the lawn irrigation. When they started the irrigation around my place it was going off multiple times a night, every night. I set out a tuna can, and found out they were applying a little over a half inch of water. Recently the irrigation was shut off entirely. The lawn is now quite dry and no longer lush green. So a neighbor came up to me and said that I must be cringing over the lawn. (I wasn’t. Just confused.) Turns out they had a leak in the system that needed to be fixed. She then said that they had an owner come up and say that this place looked like a dump due to dry grass. (Now I’m cringing.)

Where I am at, a lawn will survive with one irrigation a month. Not day, or even week. Month. This irrigation, and all irrigations for that matter, should be at least a half inch of water. One is better. If you do water that infrequently, the lawn will go dormant. Yellow, crispy, dormant. This is not a bad thing, and certainly doesn’t make a place a dump. Once it cools off, the lawn springs back into the lush greenness we love.

But most people like lush green lawn. That’s okay. You can get it by irrigating. But watering every day makes me cringe a lot, especially at a half-inch of water per irrigation. Its tons more water than the plant needs. Water the lawn ever day is a common practice around here, although why in the world it’s caught on is beyond me. More does tend to make lawn greener, although in a short-term non healthy way. It’s a lot like caffeine. Quick fix–but in the long run, the plants will crash. Plants, including the non-aquatic lawn, need a good night’s sleep rather than quick fixes. They need deep watering, much less frequently than is common.

I set one of my client’s clocks. Their lawn is watered twice a week, pretty deeply. (They also had a free water check, which is a great program if you are in Utah. They tell you how much to water based on the output of your system. So I really didn’t have to figure out how long to water to put a half inch on, I just set the clock.)  I’ll step it back when I stop by next time. Their lawn looks amazing. It’s getting less than a third of the water than the lawn at my complex was, and it’s actually more lush and healthy.

Do we have to maintain unnaturally lush green lawns in the heat of the summer? We can conserve a lot of water by allowing summer dormancy. But even if you want a green lawn, it needs a lot less water than you think. Please don’t follow what a neighbor is doing. Stop drowning the lawn.

Clarifying my view on lawns

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I’ve spent some time thinking about my opinion on lawns. I like water-wise landscaping and being environmentally conscious, so that means I don’t like lawns, right? Well, not really. I was going over some old school notes, and saw the good points of lawns. Here they are:

  • Tolerate traffic, and lots of it
  • Protect soil and adds organic matter
  • Prevent erosion
  • Sequester carbon (Getting rid of the growing CO2 and greenhouse gases)
  • Keeps down the heat
  • Prevent weeds
  • Productive

In many situations, the replacement for lawn would be pavement. No other plant can take the abuse that we give to our lawns. What other surface is as playable, usable, and as pretty as lawn? It is better to have a living, purposeful thing than weeds or pavement. And lawn itself is not bad for the environment: as a plant it is very GOOD.

So what’s the big deal about getting rid of our lawns. Well, here’s the bad about lawns.

  • Chemical use, including pesticides and fertilizers
  • Water use, especially culinary water
  • Mono-cultures: nothing but lawn
  • Emissions from lawn mowers, weed whackers

In this list, I think a lot of it goes back to management. Chemical use can be reduced to virtually nothing, and water use decreased. We don’t have to get rid of the lawn to get rid of the bad effects of our lawn. I think more education is warranted on better, sustainable management of a lawn.

But that doesn’t mean I like to see large fields of useless lawn. Although it is better than weeds or pavement, lawn is better used incorporated with other plantings. Trees, shrubs, and perennials should all be incorporated in every landscape. Lawn is not a filler plant. Give it more credit. It is the solution for large traffic areas, and the only one that involves plants. Large areas that seem to have no functional use would be better adapted to solutions like shrub and perennial beds. My last post is a great example.

Sum up: Lawn is good. Just don’t use it everywhere.