My lawned areas, of which I have 2. 1 is the front yard, that is the bigger piece and the second is the BBQ area. (photo in earlier blog)
The lawns were pretty bad when we first moved in and I didnt do much with them other than mow for years, and while they got fuller, they pretty much stayed the same mix of weed and mixed grasses.
Along comes COVID and me such at home with too much free time. Fence painted, gardens are too well attended to the point I was waiting for a weed to germinate so I could pull it out😂. So into YouTube and the lawns became the project.
Now I had to be imaginative, because the first lockdown was not so great for click and collect, countdown and pak & save had a few limited options of seeds (little lawn patch packets) and fertilzers.
Lesson 1 is that the birds liked my seeds😂.
Lesson 2 was that weeds love the grass, and the more you do, the faster they grow!
Lesson 3 was covering patches with netting created areas the were nice but made the not so good ares look even worse that they were before...
Lesson 4... Grass likes water... Lots of water... and while nice looking, and great to sit on, it does not provide anything else in return for the efforts and costs..
So, should the lawn go? No, I like the green flat areas. Alternatives I looked at started to add up in costs, and growing time.. ready lawn a big and expensive job...
So like teaching the cat to stay off the bench... Which I used my wife's advice of 'choosing my battles' I decided to rework with what I had. Reaccess what I had and what really annoyed me about what was in the lawn.
Lesson 1. Tha large flat weeds Tha grow out with radial leaves and there are a good few varieties.. Thay had to go and when kept at bay, manually removing them is not too bad.
Lesson 2, mowing at a higher height helps.
Lesson 3, It does takes lots of water, but the higher height reduces this quantity significantly.
Lesson 4. You don't see the fine leaf weeds if you just aprecite the whole lawn, not look and analyse what each blade of grass is.
But the most important, if there are no prickles, it is soft to sit and walk on, it looks nice and presented neatly then it is doing its job. The diversity of weeds and grasses tend to stay nice and green all year round and neighbours still compliant the gardens beauties, not noticing the weeds😂
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