Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with lawn and grass

Help me help my yard

Weeping_angel — Sun, 05 May 2013 14:41:49 -0800

I've recently moved from renting an apartment in a complex to renting a privately-owned duplex. It has a little (8 ft by about 15 ft) yard-ish thing right now that I would like to transform into a real yard. The owners won't pay for it, but would be fine with whatever I do to it. The problem is, right now the yard is completely overrun with weeds; everything else gets choked out by them. I don't know what kind of weeds, there's a variety of them. The other problem is that I live in Phoenix and the ground is very hard and dry so pulling the weeds by hand is going to be... difficult if not impossible. I've seen previous yard questions, but I am a special desert-dwelling snowflake and a little bit of a hippy, so I'm looking for more ideas than the "poison the whole thing" that I see in some of the other questions and also Phoenix-specific advice. So, really, my question has two parts: how do I get rid of the weeds and then how can I plant something in their place and get it to flourish. I don't want to use chemical weed-killers if I don't absolutely have to, but I'm not sure how else to make them go away. In a perfect world I'd have grass, but that seems overly difficult and quite frankly a little irresponsible in the desert so I'm looking for some sort of drought-tolerant groundcover plant that ideally I can walk on barefooted comfortably.

I love this place and plan on living here for the forseeable future, so I'm opposed to spending a little money on getting this done, but funds are limited. The way I see it, on a scale from "just pay someone a bunch of money to deal with it" to "dig out all the weeds myself by hand under the hot Phoenix sun", I'm looking for something in the middle.

Also, when would the best time to do all of this be? The weeds are all currently dead for the summer, so would it be better to deal with it all now? Or would this be a bad time to try to get my groundcover growing? And with the heat and the dryness, the soil/dirt/whatever is very hard-packed so should I till it? The internets seem to think that tilling might just dig up new weed seeds. Or just dump a bunch of good soil over everything and sufficate the weeds? But will they just poke through the new soil?

Basically, I have a overgrown weedy lot and no idea at all how to turn it into a yard. Please advise.

(Oh, and it's small enough that I'm totally willing to water it, so that's not a problem, but can you also reccommend non-grass drought resistant groundcover plants? Thanks!)

I know it's always greener over there...

anastasiav — Fri, 03 May 2013 17:13:38 -0800

So, tell me about grass. Last July, big diggers came and dug up significant portions of our yard to install a new sewer connection. They planted (well, sort of sprayed on, actually) new grass over the areas they had dug up, and by the time the snow fell it looked like it had taken root.

It lied.

Now that it's spring I have huge swaths of gross, packed-down dirt in my front, side and back yards. This weekend I need to start sorting out how I'm going to turn this back into lawn, but I (despite reading a lot on the internet) I have no idea how to go about doing this.

Hiring a service is not an option. Buying sod is really not an option either (I'd like to, but I have no idea where I might buy sod.)

How do we, busy, somewhat lazy people make the grass grow in our messed up yard in Maine?

Have you converted to a clover lawn?

blue_beetle — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 09:20:28 -0800

We're starting a new backyard from scratch in the spring (new home with only dirt). We want a backyard that is compatible with our dog, and a toddler. The yard isn't large, about 1200sqft, and we're in hardiness zone 4a. We're planning on having trees around the outside for privacy, but we're not sure what to do with the rest of the yard. In our last house, our dog destroyed the grass, so we would like to avoid that happening again.

Is a clover lawn the best option? We've considered artificial turf, but it's not cheap. Are there any other low maintenance options? Do you have any examples or pictures that would help us?

I've seen this question, but am looking for more information.

How do you work with grass plugs?

RolandOfEld — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 10:32:11 -0800

Grass plugs, a small-tenderly kept area, and no luck... How am I messing this up? Full story (with background story included, free of charge)here, feel free to skip to the bottom for details.

Setting:

-- Florida townhouse
-- Zone 8 or 9
-- Back yard: 16 ft W x 24 ft L approx [View and Another] with 3/4 dappled shade with 3 to four foot drop off midway out (water runs towards the patio) and surrounded on all sides by 6 foot wooden fence
-- Front yard 8 ft W x 4 ft L with almost full sun that slopes slightly away from the house into the street

Intended usage:

-- Backyard is used as a playground for our two dogs [obligatory pictures are here] and as a path to our composter. The whole 'bare, moist dirt' thing is getting old, fast.
-- Frontyard has a small squarefoot garden with veggies and a short sidewalk to the cars. Foot traffic is mild but concentrated due to dogs needing to be walked.

Backstory: As of 2 years ago when we finally got around to working on it, our backyard was totally overrun by seeds/weeds/vines/seedling oaks/poison ivy/etc from when we bought the place. We kill/weed/pluck/whatever (no poisons for us where avoidable) and build the fence to keep the encroaching brushy area at bay.

In the meantime, we send off 2 soil samples from the yard, I can't remember if they were both from the backyard or one from front and one from back, to be tested. When the results are in, we amend the soil (mostly lime) and till it where/as deeply as we feel safe (buried lines in the sloped that are so shallow they are sometimes exposed due to erosion). We tilled with this which isn't ideal but after alot of sweat we had things somewhat busted up to a depth of about 6-8 inches. Things weren't super compacted anyway. We also incorporated quite a bit (maybe 3 wheelbarrow loads) of homemade/storebought compost in as we went.

After that we plugged with St. Augustine plugs from a local nursery. The plugs were put in checkerboard style with about 12 inches spacing on the diagonal. They lived but never thrived and only got taller instead of spreading out to meet up with each other. They were watered on a decent, if not ideal basis, and it's pretty rainy here anyway and with the shade it stays moist. With every cutting (hand push rotary mower) they seemed to disappear more and more and a year later they were all gone and we were back to bare dirt with weeds interspersed around randomly in an aggravating, but manageable, fashion.

My question is what did I do wrong? I wonder if there wasn't enough sun, even for St. Augustine (which is about the most shade tolerant 'normal' grass I could find). Would this explain them living but not spreading/thriving? I now have isolated plants back there that are doing fine: Elephant Ears, Pinecone Ginger,and Milkweed in the shadiest/wettest area, Four O'clocks against the fence, Asiatic Jasmine in the sunny corner, seem to be doing fine. I also put in some Lirope and Cast Iron plants to see if they liked the ammount of sun and they seem totally happy.

I'm using some of the empty trays from the failed experiment to make my own Centipede plugs for the front yard since the 'lawn' there consists mostly of mixed weeds, clover, and crabgrass. It's such a small area that my thinking was it would be a piece of cake. Well, I'm about 1/4 of the way done plugging (slow process doing it in my spare time) and the plugs are really not spreading, much the same as the other plugs did.

I'm a somewhat handy gardener but have no experience, as you can tell, with grass/lawns and just don't want all this work to be for naught. I'm to the point of going with a pallet of sod in the back yard if necessary and if that fails simply going with a different type of groundcover/landscaping altogether.

Any comments on both front and back yard situations,my (mis)use of plugs, and what to do now is very much appreciated.

Young grasshopper seeks grass-wisdom.

zvs — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:50:06 -0800

How to quickly mitigate a somewhat busted lawn and garden -- and maybe get a small vegetable harvest out of it? Just moved into a rental house (in Seattle), and two urbanites/utter gardening newbies now have about 700 square feet of yard. Only problem is, it's in very mixed condition, ranging from patchy grass to verdant foliage to utter disrepair littered with old cinderblocks and chunks of fencing. In between are some flowerbeds, some of which are good and some of which look like they're 90% sand... all of which may or may not have bulbs buried in them. It's been a dry summer until now and the grass looks pretty starved, especially on the west-facing front lawn.

(There's also a big Japanese Maple. I have no idea what I have to do to keep it happy... other than to admire it.)

Lease says the lawncare is our responsibility. OSU and WSU have excellent extension websites with gardening tips (as do past Metafilter posts), but they're mostly how to fix problems you've already diagnosed. I know I should pull up weeds, but that's about all I know.

How do I get a handle on this lawn, and what steps can I take over the next month to get it looking decent? Suggestions for vegetables or flowers that I can plant right about now would also be great -- looking at some peas or collards, at the moment, but I'm sure I can grow more than that in September here, right? I also have a lot of unused driveway space that I'd like to pack with vegetable containers. (I have a billion containers from previous tenants.)

Replacing the weeds in my lawn with grass this fall.

waylaid — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 23:04:36 -0800

Replacing the weeds in my lawn with grass this fall. Best way to do it? I recently bought a house. The backyard is pretty big (and unshaded) - about 4500 square feet. The backyard is pretty much all weeds (clovers, crabgrass) which looks okay when mowed, but looks pretty bad after growing for a week.

What's the best way to replace my lawn with grass? People have suggested bags of 'seed and feed' at Home Depot - to kill off the weeds and drop in new grass seed.

I'd like to start it as soon as I can. I live in the Maryland suburbs, just a few blocks outside of DC. My soil is pretty moist and clay-y.

Overhauling the yard

emilyd22222 — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 14:53:42 -0800

What do I need to know before overhauling my packed-dirt backyard? Bonus points for inexpensive and green/sustainable suggestions. I have been Googling this for a while and haven't found consistent advice on what I should do and things I need to know. I've never done anything like this before and I don't know a ton about gardening, so I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed.

I live in central Illinois (to give you a sense of the climate). The yard is about 90ftx60ft, surrounded by a fence. It's packed bare earth with a sprinkling of gravel near the house and covered in weeds near the edge. There's a large tree in the middle that shades most of the lawn. It's been reseeded before (not by me) without doing anything to loosen up the soil or water the seeds, and they didn't take.

Some questions I've had-

Should I have the soil tested first?

How should I kill the weeds? I've heard that I should cover them with something to block the light or spray them with RoundUp, lemon juice, vinegar, or boiling water.

How should I loosen up the soil? Do I need to use an aerator or a rototiller, or both? Or is that overkill?

Do I need to cover the seeds in something? Different sites have said mulch, soil, compost, straw, sod, and polyethylene plastic. Some sites don't mention anything.

What kind of timeline am I looking at? What's the earliest I could plant (hoping to start in the fall)? What should I do before then?

Is there anything else I need to know?

lawn care help please

cheemee — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:13:52 -0800

[lawn care filter] I'm new to the world of lawn care. If I use a manual push mower (without a grass catcher) to cut my grass - would I need to rake and bag the cut grass afterwards or can I just leave it where it lies? (more inside) Additionally, does anybody have any recommendations on which manual push power I should get? Previous related post is 2 years old and I am curious if things have changed.

specifics:
-Vancouver, BC lawn
-front and back yard combine to around 5000 sqft (or is this too big for a manual push mower?

GRASSias!
(sorry)

Re-restoring my front lawn

cebailey — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 09:03:23 -0800

I'm a failure as a husband and a father. Help me rescue my front yard. We moved into our house near Austin, TX a few years ago, and the front yard was in pretty terrible shape. It has been neglected by the previous owners and renters, and the St. Augustine was mostly a thick, dead layer of thatch. I decided it needed to be completely redone.

After doing quite a bit of research, I decided to seed my own bermuda grass. I killed what was left with RoundUp, cleared as much as I could, tilled the entire thing, and planted seeds. In case you're curious, here's a picture of the bare soil: http://blog.chadbailey.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/img-5716-6.jpg

Of course, that was the summer that we had our first child, and one of the driest and hottest years on record in Austin. Add in the fact that we don't have a sprinkler system for our 3,000 sqft front yard, and we just plain didn't get enough water down. The result was some thin grass is some places, widespread weeds in most of the yard, and large patches of still-bare dirt.

I tried another round of bermuda in a smaller section of the yard in September with some success. Of course, winter was especially cold this year, so I'm pessimistic about the young grass coming back out of dormancy well.

So I'm trying to decide how best to proceed this year. It seems to me the best path would be to RoundUp everything again, get down to bare soil (which will only require a weedeater, since there's not really any thatch), loosen it with a rake, apply some starter fertilizer, and drop down some St. Augustine sod. I know it needs a ton of water to start, but it's much more manageable than seed, and with sod you obviously have a heck of a head start.

Does anyone have experience with this? Any do's or dont's? How early can I think about doing this? It's already starting to warm up here, but I want to make sure to get good quality sod. And if you have good recommendations for sod around Austin, I'd appreciate it as well. Thanks!

Pro tips for mowing the lawn?

bystander — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 20:05:22 -0800

Tips from lawn care experts? I've got half an acre of terraced and/or steeply sloping lawn to look after. Mowing it is a chore, so I am looking for any tips to make it easier or better. Some examples? I have taken to mowing on a diagonal to minimise the up and down of one section, but I mowed it for years straight up and down before I thought of it. Another example, I was suffering more and more from hayfever after mowing, but now find a bandana tied cowboy style eliminated 90% of the problem. What is your tip Mefi?

Sod This.

BitterOldPunk — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 10:38:20 -0800

Sodding a bare patch of lawn (for the cheap and lazy). I have received a Sternly Worded Letter from the jackbooted bullyboys who run my mother's homeowner's association. The letter informs me that the lawn doesn't meet their exacting standards. And that I have to fix it.

It's a narrow strip of (what should be) green between the street and an area kept "natural" (ie, untended). Much of it is in the shade. It's all sitting on top of hard red clay. The area is approximately ten feet wide and twenty-five or thirty feet long.

See, the thing is, I couldn't give less of a fuck about the lawn. Having it revert back to clay means to me that I don't have to mow it. I don't see why I should encourage grass to grow somewhere it just doesn't want to. But, I guess I have to do something or they'll come and take away my Suburbanite License or something.

So. What's the cheapest, easiest, most hassle-free way to fix this, short of green spray paint? I know nothing about lawn care. Nor do I wish to learn an expensive lesson about contracting out lawn care.

Bonus points for specifying the best type of grass to plant, the best time of year to plant it, whether to start from seed or from those mat-like chunks, what to do about the overabundance of shade and the dearth of topsoil, and what the cheapest and least maintenance-intensive option would be. Assume that I have zero knowledge of the subject and speak to me as if I had never ever seen a lawn before.

Thanks. I'll be checking the thread and will happily provide more info if needed. Artificial turf is sadly not an option. I'm in central Alabama, btw.

What would happen to my lawn if I just didn't rake the leaves?

Flunkie — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:15:35 -0800

What would happen to my lawn if I just didn't rake the leaves? I don't particularly care if my lawn is covered in leaves. But will it actually damage my (normal grass) lawn if I just leave them there until they blow away or disintegrate or whatever? Come Spring, will I have a barren patch of dirt where there used to be grass?

Damn moles, get off my lawn!

Artw — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 19:28:14 -0800

We've been getting molehills in our front garden lately, and we want them to go away. Which anti-mole technology is best for us? Factors:
* Our garden is about 500 square ft. Only part of it is lawn, the rest being flowerbeds and some planters with vegetables. No sign of moles outside of the lawn so far though. The soil has recently been aerated, which seems to have started our mole problems.
* We have a cat, he catches them occasioanly, but as far as we know does not eat them. Anything which might harm the cat is out.
* Those neat looking plunger traps that skewer have been vetoed as too cruel. Anything that actually harms the moles directly is probably out. Boo.
* So we're probably looking at repellent sprays or some kind of audio device, which of those work best? Any particular brands that are more effective?
* The solar molechasers looks sort of interesting, but it is frequently overcast here, are they going to do anything?
* I kind of like the idea of the windmill mole chasers, but are they going to work with only moderate wind?

I want grass without the fuss

reenum — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 13:31:31 -0800

I'm thinking of replacing my lawn with artificial grass or some other thing that doesn't require constant upkeep. I'd like to hear your experiences with such horticultural matters. I hate mowing my lawn. Always have and always will.

So, I'm thinking of having Astroturf or some other artificial grass installed. I've also been researching ground covering, which appears to be the growing of ivy or some other plant that will cover the sod, but not require mowing.

Has anyone here replaced their grass lawn with either of these alternatives. Anything I need to watch out for? How often do I need to replace artificial grass or ground covering?

All opinions and suggestions are welcome. Thanks!

the green, green grass of home.

thinkingwoman — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 11:10:55 -0800

newbie looking for a sturdy, dog-friendly groundcover for our back yard! our dogs have reduced our back yard to bare dirt, so we have a nice opportunity (trying to think positively, here) to choose our groundcover.

grass normally grows quite happily in our soil (it's all over everyone else's yards, and picks up right at our fenceline), so replanting grass or laying sod is an option. if we do that, does anyone know how long we'd have to keep our dogs off it for it to properly take root?

alternatively, i've been thinking about sowing mint or thyme (or a mixture of both). our dogs will surely nibble here and there--are these safe plants for them? would we have to keep the dogs off this for very long?

any other ideas would be most appreciated. we are in middle tennessee, get lots of sun, and have been in a drought for a few years now. looks are of secondary importance; mostly we need something to prevent erosion, as we're on a slope, and keep the dogs from becoming utterly filthy whenever they go outside.

What do they use to cut grass in China?

niles — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 20:50:11 -0800

AnswerAnOngoingFamilyArgument-Filter: My sister says one of her highschool history teachers mentioned in class a month or two ago that in China, people use scissors to cut their lawns instead of lawn mowers. Obviously, this is pretty crazy (right?), but my sister says that's what he said. Is there anything reasonable along these lines that could have been what he really said?

Grass or weed?

walla — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 21:57:29 -0800

Why can't I have a weed lawn? I like walking on my lawn and playing with my dogs on it. I like the anti-erosion benefits of grass, and that it keeps us from tracking dirt into the house. But I like most green things, and I see little reason to invest the resources and energy a grass lawn requires if there are other options. I've read a bit - some of it on AskMe - about alternative lawns. I've considered mint, creeping thyme, chamomile, etc., but none of them has seemed quite right.

While tending my lawn this week, someone suggested I pull the clover and plaintain weeds that had taken over some parts of it. I thought, why should I pull them? They're green, they're hardy, they do what my lawn does on their own without the hassle. As long as I contain it, are there any reasons I shouldn't have a weed lawn? Has anyone tried this, on purpose or by accident?

A lawnmower that mows, not sucks?

found dog one eye — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 15:44:28 -0800

Recommend a lawnmower, please. We’re looking for a self-propelled, rear-wheel drive, walk-behind mower that doesn’t suck. We hope to pay $400 or less. It will mostly be used as a mulching mower, but we’d like the option of a bag to pull up leaves in the winter.

Our current mower needs to have the carburetor rebuilt every year or so, or it becomes impossible to start and randomly dumps gasoline all over the garage floor. From the research my husband has done, this is because it has a two-stroke engine, and the ethanol in our local gasoline is causing the seals to deteriorate. If this is true, our new mower will need to be a four-stroke.

I didn't rake in the grass seed before covering with straw - help!!

passtehbrainz — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 21:15:05 -0800

Did I totally mess up by meticulously preparing our yard with a tracter/box blade, spending days removing rocks and debres, planting 50 pounds of Fescue seed, thereafter covering it with 23 bails of straw, and watering it almost daily, but completely skipping the part about raking the seed into the soil? 7 days and counting. Did I totally mess up by meticulously preparing our yard with a tracter/box blade, spending days removing rocks and debres, planting 50 pounds of Fescue seed, thereafter covering it with 23 bails of straw, and watering it almost daily, but completely skipping the part about raking the seed into the soil?

What an idiot I am! How could I not have done a little research first!

Its been exactly one week, and I do see -some- grasslings poking through the straw, but everything im now reading online says to use a rake so as to get the seed into the ground - which makes perfect sense a week later!!

Is there anything I can do or is it too late? There has to be some seed just sitting on top of the ground not doing anything - or will they find there way into the earth on there own? I don't like the sound of that - but i'm not made of money and can't start over. Surely there is a solution! My bodying is still in recovery from all the work ... ohhh me I think I must stop typing now.

Please help!

Help me, Obi Lawn; you're my only hope

theredpen — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 08:26:44 -0800

How do I convert all-crabgrass and sand to grass, on a low budget? I live in central New England. Our back yard was filled in by the previous owner (post-septic installation) with cruddy, sandy soil. Or really, just sand. After years of neglect by me, it is now a lovely crabgrass haven. It's almost all crabgrass, plus a few assorted weeds. I've thought about just leaving it, but this year I'd like to put a little work into it and not end up with nicer crabgrass. I particularly hate the few bare patches. I don't have very much money to spend on it -- can't resod or cover with all new topsoil or hire landscapers, unfortunately. I know it will cost a little to buy the seed at a minimum, and perhaps some soil to improve what's there. It's a relatively small yard -- this part is perhaps 1/4 to 1/3 acre.

The yard is mostly sunny, with about 1/3 in shade toward the back that is less sandy, mostly moss-covered. I'm willing to ignore this part for now. I have one sprinkler but could get another. I'd like to avoid heavy chemical treatments if possible, but would resort to them if that's all that can be done.

So my questions are:

-- What's the cheapest best way to fix this? That is, should I kill the crabgrass with something like corn gluten meal (which will leave me with an even more horrendous and naked back yard) and then seed, or should I just lay down grass seed and rake and water? Or should I invest heavily in martinis and pretend that the crabgrass is regular grass like that of our neighbors? Or what would you do?

-- What kind of grass seed do you recommend? Ideally, there's something that grows in sandy soil and will eventually shade out the crabgrass, yet doesn't hurt my feet or eyes.

Keep my lawn healthy, and dogs not dirty and smelly

cmiller — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:25:26 -0800

Here in sunny Florida, my two large dogs tend to wear my back lawn down to the dirt. Is there a grass that recovers easily? I have sprinklers, and slightly sandy soil. It's rarely cold enough to frost. My current lawn is (I think) centipede grass.

My dogs aren't out much, but when they are, they trample and scamper about enough that there's soon more brown dirt than green lawn. I want something that doesn't require a lot of effort to keep green. Bonus points if my dogs smell nice after they roll around in it.

Do I have to find a geneticist to splice kudzu genes and spearmint genes into ryegrass?

No good to touch the green, green grass at home . . .

deejay jaydee — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 10:43:57 -0800

How can I kill the grass currently growing in our backyard? We live in the Northeast, and we have a small (15' x 40'?) patch of lawn in our backyard. I'd like to kill all the grass there, and replace it with thyme as a groundcover. I've already found a source for the groundcover. We're not so crazy about the grass. It's bermuda grass? Or whatever your garden-variety grass is, we don't care. I've hated grass lawns ever since I was tasked with mowing the lawn in the house I grew up in. Grass makes us sneeze, it makes us itch, and we don't like it.

We do like thyme as a groundcover, because it's soft, because mosquitoes don't like it, and because it'll make our yard smell yummy. We'd like to plant it next spring. (Because I'm html-challenged, I'll just offer this link for more info on thyme as groundcover: http://www.mountainvalleygrowers.com/groundcoverthymes.htm)

However, the helpful folks at Mtn. Valley tell me that "we need to kill the grass before we grow the thyme." Apparently grass is very hearty, and will likely strangle much of the thyme we plant as groundcover. My question to the green is this: how can we kill the grass currently in our backyard, but not poison the ground we'd grow the thyme out of? It seems to me that Round-Up and other herbicides would only be half-useful to us, because while it'd get rid of the grass, it'd also make it difficult for thyme to grow, no?

If you've replaced your grass with a non-grass groundcover, please post your tips here. If you've brought an organic holocaust to your own grass-infested lawn, how did you do it? All the other posts here I found have to do with maintaining or mowing grass . . . who can show me how to murdalize it??

We'd appreciate any tips you might have with when to plant groundcovers, too. Mtn Vly tells us to do it in the spring, but what says MeFi?

My First Yard! (tm)

arcticwoman — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 04:04:02 -0800

After years of renting apartments, I have moved up in the world: I am now renting a house. Strangely, the house comes with small organic green things projecting from the ground. Having never been responsible for a lawn before, I don't really know what to do with it. I also have two, I don't know, shrubs (I think). One is low growing, thick, with branches that kind of double as rhizomes, and one might be a juniper. As you can see, I'm pretty clueless. What do I need to know/what must I do/what must I buy to take good care of my lawn and it's various planty inhabitants? How can I find out what my shrubs are (other than consulting the Knights of Ni) and how do I take care of them? What kind of lawnmower do I need and how do you mow a lawn? Fertilizer? Watering schedule? Various tips?

If it matters, I am in a small city in Southern Alberta, Canada.
I think the juniper-y one is a juniper because it smells like gin and has "berries" like the ones I saw on wikipedia under "juniper berries."

I hate mowing. I love moss.

agropyron — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 13:37:46 -0800

Lawn alternatives! Has anyone here tried replacing their high-maintenance grass lawn with an alternative lawn? I've read about some of the no-mow lawn grass types, and I understand other people simply let the moss and clover grow. Have you seen a lawn like this? How did you like it? My (back yard) lawn is usually either brown and dead from lack of watering, or enormously tall from lack of mowing. I've noticed that moss is creeping in, and I've read that some people allow the moss to take over. I wonder what the disadvantages of a moss lawn would be. Would it get torn up from vigorous activity like kids playing on it?

I also like the clover idea. I know it attracts a lot of bees when it flowers, but I have the impression that you can just mow it once or twice when it's flowering to prevent this.

I'm not too interested in the gravel lawns some people use, but failing other alternatives I might resort to strewing nice-looking wood chips all over instead of grass.

What alternative lawns have you seen? What did you think?

Why does the dirt stink?

The corpse in the library — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 16:31:22 -0800

My backyard stinks like a stable. Not all the time, but when we have dry, hot weather (as we do this week). What to do? The previous owners had two large dogs, and they just moved out a few months ago. I thought we cleaned up everything the dogs left behind, but maybe they buried something... or the smell just sunk in... or maybe it's not dog-related at all. The smelly area, by the kitchen door, is sparse grass, dandelions, and dusty dirt.

What can I do to get rid of the smell? The cheaper and easier, the better. I'm not interested in landscaping this area, just being able to leave the door open without gagging.