Lawny pretensions
josusa47
Posts: 3,530
I have two small grass plots, one in front of the house, one behind, which I would like to improve to the degree that some people might call them lawns. My mower is a 2nd hand hover which doesn't seem to have any way of adjusting the height of the blade. Given how little grass I have I don't feel inclined to invest in anything more sophisticated. I use shears round the edges where the mower can't reach. I've just given it its first cut of the year, and scarified it. First question: Is it best to scarify immediately after mowing? If not, then when?
Next question: is it usual that the coarsest and most vigorous grasses congregate around the edges, from whence they invade the borders? The worst place is where the grass abuts my soft fruit border. The transition is marked by a line of big rough lumps of our local limestone, so there are lots of gaps for the grass to creep through. I'm thinking of lifting the stones, digging all the grass out to a width of about 8 inches, improving the soil with some home-made compost, re-siting the stones and sowing grass seed. Does this sound like a good plan? If so, when is the best time of year to do it? I have 50+ bricks which I might use in place of the limestone lumps, as I could butt them up closer, but I haven't done the sums yet to see if I've enough of them.
Last question: how does an organic gardener feed a lawn? The rest of my garden gets fed by a combination of mulching and adding liquid feeds when I'm watering, but you can't mulch a lawn and I don't intend to water it. I don't want to use those commercial feed-and-weed, moss-killer, kill everything that moves potions.
All advice gratefully welcome, even if not followed. I'm not aiming at manicured perfection, I'd just like it to look a bit less tatty, so please don't offer me counsels of perfection. And they're not weeds, they're bio-diversity. The soil is clay, the front faces west and the back east. It doesn't get walked on much, nor played on by children, nor weed on by dogs.
Posts
Much better if you have pavers rather than bricks as house bricks don't last long with the elements and tend to crumble.
Feed your lawn with your liquid feed.
I feed sections of my grass with fish, blood, and bone meal.. if it looks like it needs something. I also have my mower on 'mulching' mostly, so the grass clippings go back into the area and feed the roots.