How do I kill my lawn?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Yup, that’s right. I want to kill my lawn.

3+ years ago, Mr. Athena and I moved into a house set on almost eleven acres of land. Most of the land is native forest. The braniacs who built the house, however, decided in that oh-so-American way that they MUST have a lawn around the house itself.

The house is not visible from the road. There’s a good bit of forest between us and our neighbors. The only people who see the lawn is us and any guests we invite over.

Neither of us are big lawn people. The last thing we want to do on our weekends is cut the grass. Add in that we are not particularly fond of all of the chemicals involved in keeping the weeds out of a lawn - with eleven acres of forest, there’s a LOT of non-grass stuff that wants to grow - and we have an impasse.

Towards mid-year last year, we decided the hell with it. We’re not doing the lawn work.

This year, we’ve done nothing, other than keep up the veggy/herb/flower bed I put near the house. I don’t mind doing non-lawn gardening. It’s the You Must Grow Grass thing I hate.

So far, we’ve got a nice crop of dandelions, now gone to seed. My family is horrified. Me and Mr. Athena are thrilled. We have declared that in our yard, at least, dandelions are not weeds, they are flowers. They are yellow and pretty and beneficial. So that’s fine.

There are big patches of bare ground cropping up under the pines. Fine with us. If I walk in the woods, the ground under the big trees is mostly bare. This is what nature has intended.

The last few years I’ve bought wildflower plugs, and they’re spreading quite nicely. I found forget-me-nots in the front yard yesterday, that’s a plus. There’s also buttercups, and our daisies are coming along nicely. Last July I took all the lupine seeds from the lupines in the garden and tossed them all over the yard. I’m hoping in a couple years I’ll get more wild lupines. There’s a few spots of wild columbine and black-eyed susans.

We planted a hydrangea yesterday, smack dab in the middle of the yard. No, it’s not all nicely placed next to a wall or corner of the house or a flower bed. It’s right where it gets the requisite sun/shade that I think it wants. Maybe I’ll plant some other flowers around it so it doesn’t get lonely.

Despite all these efforts, there’s a big patch of hated grass in the front yard. Yes, it’s weedy long gone-to-seed grass, but it’s grass. I suspect it’ll go away as the native plants take over, but that might take a few more years. Any gardener types have any great ideas for making it go away faster? The goal is a self-sustaining natural yard, like the other 10 acres we have. No need to mow, fertilize, or anything else, except those few plants that we deem worth giving up our free time to cultivate.

2

Roundup is your friend.

Keep it from drifting onto anything you don’t want dead, dead, dead.

3

  1. Round-Up

  2. Cover it with black plastic.

  3. Till it under and plant a groundcover.
    I have more if these options are unsuitable.

4
  1. Mow the grass really low during the hottest days of summer and let in burn out. Leave the cut grass on top. You might need to do this twice.
  2. If you have a bagger or sweeper for the mower, collect up the dandelions when they have gone to seed and store for a few months.
  3. In September spread the dandelions over the dead patch, along with the miscellaneous clippings and let nature do its thing.

This is cheap, chem free and should work pretty well to speed up the process a lot.

Jim

5

Er, I was looking for something a bit less chemically than round up. That’s one of our big beefs with lawns - the chemicals needed to maintain them.

Also, if you kill stuff through round up or just rototilling the whole damn yard, you have to replace it with something. I’m looking to get it back to it’s natural state as quickly as possible. I realize that it might take years. But maybe there’s some hints that will make it go faster?

6

Just be aware that grass works as a means to keep soil in place. Depending on how your house sits and how drainage flows you may find soil washing away from or towards your house during heavy rains if there is no grass there.

7

I like this idea, but this “burn in” bit I don’t think will work here in the frozen north for a couple reasons. One is that the yard is at best partly sunny. There’s big trees all around, and most of the yard is shaded either part or most of the day.

The second reason is that this is the UP. It’s 50 degrees out right now. This “sun” thing you speak of is rare and ubiquitous.

That said, what will this do? Like I said, we had a nice crop of dandelions this year. But dandelions, though officially a flower in our yard, are not native. I don’t see them in the woods. Will the native species eventually hone in?

8

I see other houses around here without grass in the yard. I’m not going for straight dirt. I want native plants and ground cover that is more easily maintained without the chemicals and excessive watering that grass requires.

9

I respect your dislike of chemicals, but killing grass is not a maintenance situation. One application of Roundup does the trick, and it is essentially inert after application to the specific plant.

You will have to pick an arbitrary moment in time and declare that the “natural state,” as most ecosystems evolve.

Why do you object to planting a groundcover? Ivy, for example. Or something less aggressive. Ask your extension agent what would be a good native plant.

10

In my experience, you need to really, really, really want the grass to grow for it to die a rapid death.

That’s been my experience anyway.

And kudos to you. Allowing your 11 acres to remain as natural as possible is wonderful.

11

I’d be tempted to let the lawn go naturally. Keep on planting what you like & let nature take its course.

Here’s some info on Michigan’s Native Plants. (Down here in Houston, we have no problem with nature “taking over.”)

Some of your plants will not be “native”–but imports that do very well. No problem–as long as you don’t plant kudzu. (Although I think you’re too far north.)

12

Plant one teeny Kudzu plant, nature then will take over your lawn. Write back in three years how to get rid of Kudzu.

13

I have the same situation, living on the edge of the forest. I still enjoy my grass, but the encroaching forest and associated stuff reduces my grass-to-weeds ratio a little more every year. I’d say I’m at about 50/50. It’s an uphill battle. We won’t use any of the evil killing potions, either. I think you should just bomb it once and then plant some indiginous plants. They’ll take over in no time and your mowing will come to a close.

14

I don’t object to groundcover. I’m just trying to figure out how to get from grass to indigenous groundcover as quickly as possible.

15

If burn out won’t work, I still recommend a couple of buzz cuts to help kill the grass. I have no idea about native plants. It sounds like your yard is effectively a clearing in the woods, so what do you get in shady meadows near your home? That is what I would expect to grow. I would guess that you should get a lot of moss and some wildflowers that like shade and some native weeds that will make your family gasp in shock. :wink:

In my area, we get plenty of dry sunny weeks in August, if I buzz cut and leave the clippings, about half my lawn would die immediately. Instead, I keep the grass fairly long and sweep up the clippings.

My yard happily grows clover and eventually the clover will push all the grass out, but I am in no hurry. I have dandelions, wild onions, miscellaneous native plants (“weeds”) and a lot of clover mixed in with my grass. I like the clover, it is green, a good ground cover and grows slower that the grass. I don’t like a burnt out dirt patches which is what I would have if I did not reseed the lawn last year. So, my compromise is to let the clover slowly take over and keep cutting the grass.

Jim

16

Creeping Charlie also takes over the grass. You can’t kill it, from what I hear. Plus, it’s kinda pretty in it’s own way, so I sort of encourage it along with clover.

17

Have you tried just busting it? Get a flat-blade shovel, or rent a sodbuster from a home improvement store, and just slice up the top layer of soil and remove it, along with the grass. It’ll take some effort, but it’ll get rid of the grass mighty fast.

If you can afford to wait a while and don’t mind looking silly in the meantime, buy some big sheets of black plastic and cover it up. Weight the corners down with bricks or rocks. Deprived of sun and water, it’ll die before long.

18

A buttload of Roundup, and let the forest take over.

19

Remember that nature doesn’t ‘intend’ anything. The area/soil the grass is growing on is now suited to grow grass, with most of the required nutrients, soil type and the wormies, insects and other organism to support it.

To kill it w/out chemicals you need to starve it of light. And after you kill off 99% of it, you will still have some type of half-arsed weed-riddled lawn. Grass will grow there…other non-ornamental grasses will grow there.

Clover is a safe bet, and you might want to find some native ground covers that you can plant. Otherwise, the soil will continue to attract grasses and weeds that permeate ‘‘lawns’’, and you will still have a lawn…albeit a terrible one.

20

I agree with Auntbeast.

Try this:
(1) fertilize the lawn weekly.
(2) water the lawn nightly.
(3) cut it every two weeks.
(4) remove/pull any weeds that might arise.
(5) aerate the lawn weekly.
(6) inspect regularly for disease.
(7) inspect regularly for insects.
(8) don’t let anybody ever walk on it.

Also you might want to do some nice landscaping around the edges of the lawn.

Guaranteed. I mean, absolutely guaranteed, to kill your lawn.