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April 04, 2006
zoysiamania
in the process of researching grasses, i ran across this tidbit of insanity:
Q: Is Zoysiagrass any more or less sensitive to the effects of dog urine?
A: Zoysiagrass is more tolerant of female dog urine (the worst kind) than any other grass. If your dog goes in one particular spot it will probably turn the grass of color and if the lights were'nt on, get out? Yeah. Eventually if left untreated the thatch build up acts like talcum powder and causes the water and nutreints to run sideways. Then if it id going to have clippingsSpread around the grass should recover, however as an added measure leaching out the area with a good quantity of water will help enormously.
zoysia grass is the current front runner, if i really do go ahead with renovating my lawn. it's a warm season grass that is drought tolerant and disease resistant. it takes work, but requires relatively little nitrogen (fertilizer) and water as compared to other warm season grasses. warm season means it'll be green all summer, and i can plant it any time this summer.
i was getting excited about native grasses, like buffalo grass, but it appears that we get too much rainfall for those grasses to do well. kind of ironic given the drought we had last year.
to prepare the lawn, one likely technique would be to rent a sod cutter, cut strips in the yard, and flip them over, then plant the zoysia plugs in the flipped-over strips. wacky, eh?
Posted by lisa at April 04, 2006 09:11 PM
Comments
zoysia grass is also hella expensive! Have you priced out how much it would cost to plug your entire yard?
And dog-walking-all-over-yard is way more destructive to grass than dog-peeing-all-over-yard. I know from experience.
But you don't have a dog ...
Posted by: lisa b on April 4, 2006 09:47 PM
i haven't priced it yet, because i haven't yet figured out what part of the yard i want to renovate.
if i do this, i'll also be building beds out from the sides of the yard, and creating basically a big sandbox for the pool i got at lowes last year.
so it won't be a large area. but it's a home improvement just like any other, and therefore worth putting some money in to do it right.
Posted by: lisa on April 4, 2006 10:15 PM
I wonder if the procedure you describe is the same one they use at the Men's Hair Club? :)
Posted by: Joseph H. Vilas on April 4, 2006 11:05 PM
Zoysia. They used to have lots of ads in Parade Magazine (or something similar) when I was a kid mowing lawns in Asheville. The very idea of using little plugs to transform a yard wowed the hell out of me. But I like Lisa's proposed method even better.
Posted by: Phil on April 5, 2006 12:01 AM
I've seen sod cutters but I've never used one. My understanding is, it will save you a lot of backbreaking work.
Posted by: Sarah on April 5, 2006 08:13 AM
another option is to till it. the 'for dummies' book claims that with either of these methods, one does not have to spray roundup first, but i'm a little dubious.
tilling might be less work, since flipping the sod would be pretty tiring-- sod has got to be very heavy.
Posted by: lisa on April 5, 2006 08:55 AM
having never used a sod-cutter, I can't comment on which is more or less work. but I can tell you that a tiller is hard work. if your soil is hard or the weeds are tough, it will tend to sort of bounce off the ground. you have to force it down into the soil, which takes some effort.
also, we tilled the bank by the road to kill the weeds, and they totally came right back. I guess that would be enough if you planted grass right away that was stronger than the weeds. or maybe the book means that you can kill enough weeds by tilling that whatever comes back can be controlled with a hoe or hand-pulling.
Posted by: Sarah on April 6, 2006 07:07 AM
one reason i would consider tilling over sod cutting is that my yard is extremely uneven. if i tilled, i could rake it level before planting.
if i used plugs, it would take 1-2 seasons to fill in, so the weeds would probably become a problem if i didn't kill them prior to the rest of the soil preparation.
the for dummies book recommends using a tiller that has the tines behind the wheels as easier to use. which kind did you use?
Posted by: lisa on April 6, 2006 08:42 AM
ok, so a) your comment won't post right away because i have to approve it first and b) you might get a server error but your comment probably posted anyway and c) previewing doesn't work so i've removed the preview button.