Like many a man who owns a home, I have an obsession with my lawn. (I'll just wait here for a moment to give all the ladies that were previously reading this blog to link somewhere else.....OK, men, we'll continue) The problem is, my lawn stinks. Oh, I know all the right things to do with it, but nature seems to want me to fail. Here's the deal: grass grows best in full, or at least partial sun. My yard transitions from deep and continual shade to bright and equally continual sun. Additionally, my soil is basically hard packed clay. All those beautiful homes in south city were made with the soil that is in my backyard!
A quick sorting of all the 1000s of varieties of turf grasses available for ones that can survive in these conditions results in a pretty short list...It turns out there are no grasses that theoretically can survive in my yard! For a several years, this has meant that I just gave up. I mowed, I watered, I fertilized. What I got was a yard full of a variety of weeds, bare spots, and wild violets. I couldn't stand to look directly at the lawn.
During a momentary lapse of reason last fall I decided I was going to have another go at rehabilitating the lawn. I had learned that various tall fescue grasses are the best for this area and I bought a couple of tall fescue blends which resulted in me having about seven (7) varieties of this grass to plant. Step one of getting your yard ready for over-seeding is to loosen up the soil in the bare areas.
Easy enough.
I soon discovered, though, that between the weeds and occasional tuft of actual desired grass I had about 50% bare spots and 50% other vegetation.
NOT GOOD!
However, I stuck it out and in a few hours I had basically dug up my whole yard. I was ready for planting! I spread out the grass seed over my entire yard, plus this common area behind my house that I maintain. I put some starter fertilizer down and watered multiple times a day. Much to my amazement, the grass really grew! I was filling in bare spots and filling out the common area which had looked very bad, too.
Things were going good until my Neanderthal-throwback neighbor decided to destroy all my work in the common area by tearing around in his ATV. It's not even legal to ride these in this area, but he'd ride it around, doing donuts and then claim he wasn't actually riding the ATV (even though we were watching him) or alternatively claim that it wasn't hurting the grass. I wondered why he didn't ride in his yard, then. According to the police department, it was illegal in Missouri to shoot Neanderthals, so I put all my hope in a Mammoth coming out of nowhere and crushing the Neanderthal to the ground. I would have been glad to clean up the mess.
Fast forward to spring 2007. The grass was looking AWESOME! (look at the picture of my dog, in a earlier post for proof) I don't know why I didn't try this sooner! The only real negative was the common area the non-Mammoth-smashed-Neanderthal had destroyed. Due to the grass being systematically eliminated (I assumed what he didn't tear up, he probably finished off by grazing when he got hungry), it was replaced with thousands upon thousands of dandelions. I'd never had this problem before! I also had a problem with wild violets trying to choke my nice new lawn to death. If you aren't familiar with the violets, they are the toughest weed to ever strike a lawn. Really, nothing rattles them outside of fire, or roundup. Unfortunately, neither of these options are compatible with a lawn, either. I decided to fight these tough little guys with a combination of chemicals (always fun!) and brewed up a concoction that was so potent, it virtually left the weeds smoking after I applied this stuff. This witch's brew actually killed the thousand dandelions and upwards of 25% of the violets. I was calling this a success!
I was also NOT fertilizing. It seems that the best thing to do for your lawn is to NOT feed it. Amazing. At least, you shouldn't feed it until fall. It gets hungry over the winter, otherwise. So I did not fertilize...and the lawn thrived.
August was a bit tough, with high heat and no rain. Nothing a couple hundred dollars of water can't fix!
September, I was getting pumped to do the whole procedure over again. Unfortunately, it kind of snuck up on us that September in St. Louis was actually VERY hot and VERY dry this year. The lawn went dormant. Yep the same lawn I kept going by spending enough money for 20 CDs went dormant on me. It hasn't been until this week that I saw signs of life again, so I kicked off the rehabilitation.
We went big, this time: core aeration, many pounds of tall fescue (7 varieties) and starter fertilizer again. I'm also planning on testing the soil and adding lime as needed. Although I'm a bit frustrated by the current state of the lawn after last years work, I realized that all those bare areas and weed infested areas from last year all have grass in them!
I'm looking forward to what year two will bring for my lawn. I know I'll have wild violets and Neanderthals to battle. I have an attack plan for the violets. I'm still working on a legal solution for the Neanderthal.
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