I have three mats yet to rip into plugs.
They aren’t plugs, they are mats of grass scored to be easy to pull apart into squares.
It has been very hot and dry, so it has taken a while. Much easier to do today after a couple of thundershowers, easier to drill holes and to pull the damp mats apart.
With a lot of sprinkler watering, everything I’ve planted is still alive. I think it is good to drill a deep hole, smash the plug in and scoop some dirt over and around it.
With the intensive watering some of the original lawn has begun to grow again.
We’re going to buy some zoysia seed and sprinkle it about to try and get grass again in less than three years.
So, I’m not the only one that lost grass in Arkansas after last summers drought? In the past, I had always let it turn brown and trusted it would come back. Well, thanks to last summer, it didn’t come back. Parts of my backyard looks like fine hay because there’s so much dead grass. Last weeks rains piled up the dead grass in clumps the size of my fist.
I had two really large bare patches in the front and side that took 50 yrds. Next Spring I may need another 75 yrds to repair the backyard.
I’ve been watering like crazy getting the new sod established and trying so save my old grass. This summer’s drought isn’t helping. All I can do is fight through and try to save what I can. I decided against sodding the backyard this year because of the drought. I got my hands full keeping what I put down alive.
We’ve been working on a clover lawn for a couple of seasons now, and it’s coming along beautifully - we haven’t watered once this year, and it’s looking great. Of course, we aren’t in the drought part of the season yet - I’ll let you know how the fall went. It’s actually going a bit too well - when the grass is less happy, it doesn’t grow as fast and we don’t have to mow as often.
The guy in the story in the OP is a fool - you don’t put stuff on your yard without reading the label carefully first.
With having two kids with cystic fibrosis to take care of, the guy probably has enough distractions in his life to not read the label that closely, and to take the word of the lawn “experts” he consulted.
I know from personal experience that between figuring out the right timing and dosing for inhaled tobramycin, IV vancomycin, IV zosyn, and an armada of oral drugs, I do let the lawn care issues slide a bit at Casa Mercotan.
Probably. I’d like to think that I would catch that label, though.
I wonder why he is annoyed at the manufacturer rather than the guys who said, “Use this”.
Yeah, I like to think that too. Experience has shown me that I often don’t. Fortunately on the real critical things, my track record is better. And to me, lawn doesn’t come anywhere near a critical issue. Others take it more seriously than I, though.
Because they’re local and he’s got to deal with those guys again, is my guess. Easier to blame faceless corporations.
For those talking about zoysia or St. Augustine grass, know that they are warm season grasses, and in Minnesota, where the guy in the story lives, if the grasses were to grow at all, they’d be brown and dormant from September to May.
If you buy a house with over an acre of lawn, I would think you’d make some small effort to understand how to take care of it. That’s like having a house with a huge pool, but not knowing that it needs chemicals and regular cleaning.
We’re in a neighborhood where everyone definately spends a fair bit of time and money on landscaping and lawns. A couple several homes down gave me a chuckle a month back when I saw what mistakenly had happened to theirs. Whoever applied their fertilizer did so in a perpendicular, x,y crossing pattern but apparently was a bit too tight on his pattern. The result was a green lawn but at every intersection there was a foot square ultra-green patch, all perfectly spaced checkerboard style throughout the expansive lawn. Each week when it was time to mow those patchwork squares would not only be greener but higher too. Everytime I’d pass I was tempted to shout out “Knight to King Four!”
I dunno. I can easily see myself making a mistake like this (like the time I tried to buy an online game for $7.49 and accidentally bought a different package for $74.99). And I might carp about small fonts and easy-to-miss directions (which I did). But ultimately, I’d blame myself–and I definitely wouldn’t advertise my goof-up to the news.
I made a small version of this mistake once. I was spot spraying weeds (wild “strawberries”) and when I went to reload the sprayer I noticed I had used the grass/weed killer instead of the weed killer. I immediately hosed down the sites to try and dilute the stuff but there was still damage.
But this guy was also getting “help” from the store. I didn’t even have that excuse.
I honestly don’t understand the attraction of lawns. Left to myself, I would do what mrAru’s grandfather did - pave the space and paint it green. The most organic thing that actually appeals to me is flagstones with thyme and pennyroyal in the cracks.
The only issue I have with your plan aruvqan is the painting it green
Our new (22 months and counting) house is going to have a fairly tiny back yard so I’m planning to build a couple of tree holes and a couple very slightly raised beds that will have grass for now so the dogs have somewhere to go and other than that we’re paving the whole damn thing. We’ve done it before and it was awesome. Patterned concrete in a colour that compliments the brick.
Once we are dogless again we’ll put something else in the beds, probably bushes or flowers as we’re going for low maintenance.
So how large was his lawn? Article says 40,000 square feet which is approximately 1 acre.
2.5 acres is approximately 100,000 square feet.
I’m inclined to believe it’s the former, not the latter because if he had 100,000 square feet to deal with then it adds yet another nail in the coffin of “didn’t read the label” as he clearly didn’t buy enough of the stuff to cover everything.
I take your point, but if he’s so busy and distracted that he can’t read a label, he needs to leave the lawncare to the people he hires to take care of it, not make a boneheaded mistake and try to blame everyone but himself.
Lawns suck. They’re a massive waste of time and money and environmental disasters. Everyone should kill at least most of their lawn and plant trees and shrubs and groundcover instead. And after he did that, he wouldn’t need to spray it with stupid chemicals anyway.
