I’ve never had to take care of a lawn before, but I do now. From my brief experience so far, I’d like to share
some important information with the board. Namely, the plant stuff out there doesn’t just grow. You’re supposed to take care of it somehow.
This is a shock to me. I always figured it rains, stuff grows, and then winter snuffs it. When all my previous landlords were out there tending the grass, I guess I was too busy playing Baldur’s Gate to notice.
So I’ve been doing a lot of reading on this lately and as near as I can figure it, it boils down to this: the stuff you want to grow won’t. The stuff you don’t want to grow will.
Who planned this system? Wouldn’t it be a better idea to landscape with the stuff you can’t kill with a blowtorch? Why don’t they have some sort of disclaimer about this when you buy a house?
I really would have appreciated some sort of heads-up that said, having a lawn requires only about as much attention as starting up a new business. Oh, and you will be subject to community association rules, hustled by lawn-care services and looked down upon by neighborhood Lawn Snobs.
So please, fellow dopers, help me become a Lawn Snob in my own right.
Currently I have started a composting system. Only I didn’t call it a composting system. I called it “chucking a lot of the dead stuff over the back fence.” There’s a big pile back there now. Once in a while, it seems to move. I think I’ve hit on the formula for bringing The Swamp Thing back to life.
Then I got a notice that I have “brown patch disease.” I mean, my lawn does. (See how having a lawn works into your psyche – once I would have said “the lawn has a disease.” Now I say I have brown patch disease.)
It’s a disease? So where’s the Centers for Disease Control? I always thought if there was a brown patch, you just hit it with some water. Now I have to rescue the fescue. (Hah! I learned a word.)
I figured I’d have all I needed after buying a mower, a rake, a hedge clipper and a hand-operated weed-whacker. Hah! Then I got the leaf mulcher/blower and figured my inventory was complete. I am now finding that marijuana is not the “gateway” grass with its roots in hell. Nossir, it’s fescue.
So I’ve just come back from the store with a little wheel-barrow type spreader, some fertilizer, some grass seed, a soaker hose, some stuff for the brown patch disease and a claw-thing to rake the soil. Cause everything’s dying.
Everything except the greenery growing up through the cracks in my driveway. That’s doing just fine. Apparently it thrives on car exhaust, oil drips and road salt. Ain’t nothin’ putting a dent in the plants I don’t want.
If you have any advice for a lawn newbie – or if you just want to improve my mood by griping about your lawn – let me know.
Oh, and you’re not supposed to mow pine cones. I found that out.
I feel for you, man. When I bought my house 5 years ago, I was determined to turn the weed infested dump into a gorgeous garden…and that meant having a nice lush looking lawn. It took a while before my lawn looked anything like the lawn does in those numerous gardening magazines I buy. I fed it, killed the weeds and watered it like I was supposed to. It started to look OK and then it began looking more brown than green. These last two years we have experienced water restrictions here in Sydney, so I felt guilty about wasting water on my lawn. I ended up removing my lawn and replacing it with a drought tolerant grass, Sir Walter buffalo. It’s a dense grass so there are less weeds and it stays green throughout our frosty winters. Most importantly for me, it requires less mowing. The lawn is now half the size of what it was…what was once lawn has been replaced by masses of hardy flowering plants and a stone driveway. I think my rambling garden looks much better with less lawn.