Saturday, August 16, 2003
Lawns suck! I finally got the back yard mowed (most of it anyway). Yesterday I did the front. I mowed and then yanked the weeds from the sidewalks and driveway and then got out the old weedwacker and trimmed around the house and the edges of the pavement and the trees and poles and what-have-you.
The back yard is another story. It's mostly mowed now except for a patch near the house. When I moved here a year ago it was bare mud with an occasional weed. Now it's about half weed, half grass. These weeds are supposed to be chicory. They grow about an inch an hour and end up with a pretty blue flower on top after a couple of weeks of being ignored. I'll pull a bunch up after a rain. I tried before a rain and the roots stay in the ground and regrow as soon as I turn my back on them. If it's been raining, I can get a lot of the root along with the plant -- and what a root. Some are almost an inch in diameter and several inches to a foot long. They are fading away, but very slowly. At least now I can recognize grass in the area. And let's face it, scrawny weeds with pretty blue flowers beat dry stinky mud any day.
Oh, I use one of those old-fashioned non-powered reel mowers from Scots. It does a pretty good job assuming you don't let the grass grow too tall, it isn't too wet and you don't have a lot of twigs. A teeny-tiny twig will stop it cold. But it's pretty nice overall. Nice and quiet, no gas and exhaust to worry about it. It's light - I can carry it in one hand up and down to the basement with no hassle. All-in-all a good deal. It's pretty relaxing to use. No fighting with a pull start or worrying about running over a toe.
Weeds in the cracks of the driveway drive me nuts though. How the hell do you kill the little buggers? I've poured on weed killer that has so many warnings on it I keep looking for EPA helicopters to land in my yard and cart me and it away while bundled up in blue tox-suits ala X-Files. When I pull them up, you can almost catch the new ones peeking out as I turn away and toss the weeds away. Cajoling, watering, fertilizing, and playing Barry Manilow music has all not helped my grass grow one little bit. But the weeds? I run them over, pour oil and weedkiller on them, pull them out, scuff them, and there, in the middle of barren concrete and blacktop in the full sun with nary a sprinkler around, they keep coming back hale and hearty.
I figure I have a couple of options. I could tear out all the soil and replace it with green asphalt or Astroturf, but I figure the weeds would come on up through whatever coating I can come up with. Another choice would be to just plant it over with shrubs and wild flowers and say it's a freeform garden. On the other hand, maybe if I start to fertilize and water the weeds and otherwise cultivate them like a lawn, they will die off and follow my grass into oblivion.
http://www.nps.gov/plants/alien/ and http://www.turfoutlet.com/
The back yard is another story. It's mostly mowed now except for a patch near the house. When I moved here a year ago it was bare mud with an occasional weed. Now it's about half weed, half grass. These weeds are supposed to be chicory. They grow about an inch an hour and end up with a pretty blue flower on top after a couple of weeks of being ignored. I'll pull a bunch up after a rain. I tried before a rain and the roots stay in the ground and regrow as soon as I turn my back on them. If it's been raining, I can get a lot of the root along with the plant -- and what a root. Some are almost an inch in diameter and several inches to a foot long. They are fading away, but very slowly. At least now I can recognize grass in the area. And let's face it, scrawny weeds with pretty blue flowers beat dry stinky mud any day.
Oh, I use one of those old-fashioned non-powered reel mowers from Scots. It does a pretty good job assuming you don't let the grass grow too tall, it isn't too wet and you don't have a lot of twigs. A teeny-tiny twig will stop it cold. But it's pretty nice overall. Nice and quiet, no gas and exhaust to worry about it. It's light - I can carry it in one hand up and down to the basement with no hassle. All-in-all a good deal. It's pretty relaxing to use. No fighting with a pull start or worrying about running over a toe.
Weeds in the cracks of the driveway drive me nuts though. How the hell do you kill the little buggers? I've poured on weed killer that has so many warnings on it I keep looking for EPA helicopters to land in my yard and cart me and it away while bundled up in blue tox-suits ala X-Files. When I pull them up, you can almost catch the new ones peeking out as I turn away and toss the weeds away. Cajoling, watering, fertilizing, and playing Barry Manilow music has all not helped my grass grow one little bit. But the weeds? I run them over, pour oil and weedkiller on them, pull them out, scuff them, and there, in the middle of barren concrete and blacktop in the full sun with nary a sprinkler around, they keep coming back hale and hearty.
I figure I have a couple of options. I could tear out all the soil and replace it with green asphalt or Astroturf, but I figure the weeds would come on up through whatever coating I can come up with. Another choice would be to just plant it over with shrubs and wild flowers and say it's a freeform garden. On the other hand, maybe if I start to fertilize and water the weeds and otherwise cultivate them like a lawn, they will die off and follow my grass into oblivion.
http://www.nps.gov/plants/alien/ and http://www.turfoutlet.com/
