Great yard! The wildflowers are beautiful! Its so green compared to your starting point not so long ago!
Funny contrast --- Steve and I just spent 4-5 hours each the past weekend mowing grass, whacking weeds and generally destroying plant life just in the interest of trying to make our farm livable. Not to mention the same requirements with the property here in the city (at least a smaller area to mow!)! Its an ongoing summertime pasttime here in MN. --- if not tended to every couple weeks it would be veritable jungle up there! And here at home the city would be on our case with fines and penalties for not keeping the grass and weeds (just another name for an unwanted wildflower) down! What a difference some water makes!
I know how you feel on cutting the grass - we have just under 5 acres to mow at my house. Because of the drought - it's manageable at once every 10 days - but if it rains, I swear it grows 6 inches overnight.
Yea our grass is looking good - and we are entering the rainy season so we purchased about 15lb of seed and sprinkle it all over the place... it takes about 3 weeks of watering everyday to get the seed to start so we are hoping that the month long rainy season will give us the perfect amount of rain to get [at least some] grass growing in other areas. *finger crossed*
The seed Ron sent us is for a tall Mexican grass, we planted it around the border of our rock line that separates the "groomed" area from the natural area... its very slow to grow it seems. :oT
Patch Perfect is basically grass seed with "seed aide" mixed in - There's a commercial product called Seed Aide that you put down over the seed that you've put out - it's holds moisture (number one reason grass doesn't grow). Sounds great right? The problems arise from the following: species of grass you're planting may not work well in your yard (for instance the blend of grass seed "works anywhere" - because there are 6 different types of grass) or may be noticeably different from the surrounding grass; may germinate and do well for the first 30 days - but as the seed aide fades (it is feeding the grass), the grass dies because the roots never had to "dig deep" for nutrients - that's the reason why it can grow on concrete; the seed aide provides moisture to the soil and any weeds lying dormant can also germinate and provide competition.
There's a lot of different grass types out there and some have gimmicks to them and some don't. If you have patches, there could be a lot of different reasons as to why: pets, too much shade (for the type of grass), too much sun (for the type of grass), low water, too much water, compacted soils, etc. Patch Perfect is a temporary fix - I'd recommend using it if you had a party coming to your house in 30 days and needed grass there - other than that, not really. We bought some at work to look at it and verify the ingredients in there - we did grow it on asphalt (for 24 days before it died) and tried some in a test plot to see what type of seeds were in there. We got bentgrass, tall fescue, fine fescue, kentucky bluegrass, perennial ryegrass, annual ryegrass, and bermudagrass plus several of the weedy poa annuas. Each of these varieties have very different needs and none will survive long term in the exact same conditions (bermudas love sun, fine fescues prefer a medium shade).
Hope this helps - let me know how it works though - I like to add more data to our files.
Our grass is really patchy... I think this is due to how dry it is and that we had to remove sagebrush to plant the grass... Sage brush is toxic to other plants, so I am sure there is some of that still lingering.
Oh yea, and we live in a desert... lol... that may have something to do with it. )
Desert needs are so different from other areas - one thing that can help is adding mycorrhizal fungi to the soil - over time it's depleted - it's beneficial to the plants in that it helps them process the nitrogen and minerals in the soil. Sagebrush most definitely could be having an effect - I'm not how long the toxins stay in the soil - I'll check with our Maricopa station.
Cool! Thanx LJ... I will try some mycorrhizal fungi. We are planning to hit the nursery this weekend for some more grass seed - the next area we plan to add it to is VERY dry and rocky so we will need to add some stuff to the soil to make it livable.
Any advise / help you can provide is greatly needed and GREATLY APPRICIATED!
if you can't get it local, go to http://www.mycorrhizae.com - he's the guy who came up with the stuff that's on our smart seed. How compacted is the seed? What type of seed did you put down in the first spot?
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Maui is such a cutie.
Funny contrast --- Steve and I just spent 4-5 hours each the past weekend mowing grass, whacking weeds and generally destroying plant life just in the interest of trying to make our farm livable. Not to mention the same requirements with the property here in the city (at least a smaller area to mow!)! Its an ongoing summertime pasttime here in MN. --- if not tended to every couple weeks it would be veritable jungle up there! And here at home the city would be on our case with fines and penalties for not keeping the grass and weeds (just another name for an unwanted wildflower) down! What a difference some water makes!
I know how you feel on cutting the grass - we have just under 5 acres to mow at my house. Because of the drought - it's manageable at once every 10 days - but if it rains, I swear it grows 6 inches overnight.
Maui is adorable. Despite all his issues, he still takes time to stop and smell the wild flowers.
The seed Ron sent us is for a tall Mexican grass, we planted it around the border of our rock line that separates the "groomed" area from the natural area... its very slow to grow it seems. :oT
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I saw it on tv late last night and it got me! I'll let you know if it works...
There's a lot of different grass types out there and some have gimmicks to them and some don't. If you have patches, there could be a lot of different reasons as to why: pets, too much shade (for the type of grass), too much sun (for the type of grass), low water, too much water, compacted soils, etc. Patch Perfect is a temporary fix - I'd recommend using it if you had a party coming to your house in 30 days and needed grass there - other than that, not really. We bought some at work to look at it and verify the ingredients in there - we did grow it on asphalt (for 24 days before it died) and tried some in a test plot to see what type of seeds were in there. We got bentgrass, tall fescue, fine fescue, kentucky bluegrass, perennial ryegrass, annual ryegrass, and bermudagrass plus several of the weedy poa annuas. Each of these varieties have very different needs and none will survive long term in the exact same conditions (bermudas love sun, fine fescues prefer a medium shade).
Hope this helps - let me know how it works though - I like to add more data to our files.
Oh yea, and we live in a desert... lol... that may have something to do with it.
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Desert needs are so different from other areas - one thing that can help is adding mycorrhizal fungi to the soil - over time it's depleted - it's beneficial to the plants in that it helps them process the nitrogen and minerals in the soil. Sagebrush most definitely could be having an effect - I'm not how long the toxins stay in the soil - I'll check with our Maricopa station.
Any advise / help you can provide is greatly needed and GREATLY APPRICIATED!
Thanx!
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